Part 15

I thought of Sampson and his snug office and his snug salary; and I compared myself, taking the chances of anything from a pistol ball to pneumonia for my thirty dollars a week. I concluded to quit the business at the end of this scrape. But I always determined to do that under such circumstances. So does every newspaper man; and they always show up for work the next day. Were we not at least potential paranoiacs we wouldn’t be newspaper men. Certainly otherwise we wouldn’t do the things we do for the pay we get. Regarding newspaper photographers, there is no question. They are all crazy; except one.

We had drunk the last drop from the healthy flask apiece we had brought and I was settling back in soggy misery for more suffering, my eyes so blurred with watching and staring that I could see slinking forms in fancy every place I turned, when Lanagan’s lean hand clutched my leg. He had taken a position lower and nearer the path than I and could get a dim perspective of the edge of the cliff just where the path descended.

I peered ahead. Faintly I could see a single figure, outlined in blurred relief and then it disappeared, apparently into thin air. Whether it was man or woman I could not have told. That it disappeared before my eyes I knew.

It gave one a creepy feeling. I was about to speak to Lanagan but his warning pressure was still on my calf. Probably thirty minutes passed, or it may have been only three. Another figure came into view; and then another, and disappeared.

Then I realised that the first figure had simply slipped down the path and out of sight. I wondered if something of the sort hadn’t happened when McCluskey was ghost hunting.

Still Lanagan held that vice-like clutch on me. Another prolonged interval. Two more figures bulked into view and disappeared. Many more minutes passed and Lanagan said no word. The wind during the hours had died away, but the rain continued, pelting now straight down. Lanagan’s hand finally loosened itself from my leg. He pointed over the ocean toward the intermittent flashes of the lighthouse at Land’s End. Between the Land’s End and Fort Point lights could be seen--the lights of a vessel.

“She’s a day overdue on account of the storm,” Lanagan shot up at me. “She’s heading through the Golden Gate now. We’ll have some fun shortly, I reckon.”

He straightened up and stretched himself and I did likewise, threshing my arms to start the blood into circulation. I was cold, cramped and grouchy.

“Jack,” I said impatiently, “cut out this mystery stuff and give me the facts. You’ve got me neck and neck with pneumonia now. Kick through with this story, whatever it is, or I’m going to tear down that cliff after those fellows and start something if only to keep warm.”

Of course he only laughed. The man must have been made of chilled steel.

“Easy, Norrie. Think of the ten cents’ carfare you can charge up on this assignment. That ought to be some compensation, that and the glory of the thing, even if you do get sciatica or lumbago or some other old woman’s complaint. Norrie, sometimes you make me weary. Here I’m staging one of the finest climaxes you have ever participated in. I have adopted a true Shakespearean method of suiting the natural surroundings to the action. It’s rather an epic situation, in my opinion.

“Now that liner--it was the Mail boat _Hongkong_--has finally passed inside the gate. Any minute something may happen, and I pick you out of the entire staff to be here when it does happen; here in an elemental atmosphere where human lives may be snuffed out as we snuffed out the contents of those flasks, and still you’re not satisfied. It’s a big, vital, gripping situation. Where’s your imagination?”

“Oh, hell. You’re drunk. Let’s chase down after those men. Let’s do something to start things, whatever they may be. I’m cold.”

Lanagan was genuinely put out with me. Later I knew why. He had been hanging around those bleak cliffs for two nights and skulking in the sand dunes for two days watching the Stockslager hut. No wonder I was a “quitter” by comparison. He whirled on me and I saw his eyes flashing with that curious light that I had seen in them on rare occasions when he was thoroughly aroused.

“You either quit whining or beat it back to town.”

If he had struck me in the face it couldn’t have affected me differently, such was the magnetism of that remarkable man.

“I beg your pardon, Jack. I didn’t mean to rough you,” I said, and he was his natural self in a moment, too.

“All right. Forget it. Let’s take a peek over the cliff.” We crawled to the edge of the path. Lanagan was ahead. He was on his feet with a leap the instant he struck the ledge, and I up beside him.

“_Ha!_” he shouted. “_They’re at it! Now we’ll see! Now we’ll see! Le grand hasard!_”

Far down below I saw a half a dozen flares in the darkness; smattered, smeared flares of yellowish light and then all was blackness again. There came no report from weapons, the roaring of the surf drowning that. More by instinct than anything else to be on the scene of action, I made a quick step toward the path. Lanagan’s hand was on my arm.

“Wait,” he said, curtly. “This is no funeral of ours. Wait.”

He knelt down, arching his hands around his eyes and peering long and intently.

“Revenue officers,” he said. “We can’t monkey with them. Haven’t got them on my staff like Leslie and his men. They’ll be up.”

Revenue officers! A light began to dawn upon me.

The toot, toot of the engine came.

“Beat it, Norrie! Hold that train,” ordered Lanagan. “There may be some wounded here to rush to town. Quick!”

I was already off on the run past the Stockslager hut to the little platform where the train stopped. It was some distance away around the curve. As I stood there, with the rain pattering a monotonous tattoo on the planking, there came a sudden groan, a drawn-out, rasping groan, and I whirled toward the house; my body one quiver of gooseflesh. It came again, from up toward the roof; and as it came there was a breathing of light wind across my face. I laughed aloud; but nervously. Another light puff of wind, another long-drawn groan--loose shingles, or a loose piece of clapboarding, giving, evidently, just the slightest against a nail. The other end of the ghost mystery was cleared.

The train pulled in. I told McCluskey there had been a shooting, and to hold the train.

“Can’t back her in. We’ll run out to the first switch!” he cried, as he jumped into the cab with the engineer.

I ran back to find four men bearing a form between them. Lanagan was alongside the leader of the four, talking swiftly. They kicked in the door of the hut and made a light. On the floor, littered just as it had been littered the Sunday morning of the murder discovery, they placed the figure they bore, a stalwart figure of a man. A leg and an arm, I could see, were useless. They felt of his arm and leg and he never winced, staring straight at the ceiling. They ripped away his oilskin coat, his over-shirt and undershirt. He had a bullet just over the heart, a deep wound and one that bled inwardly, for no blood oozed out.

Two of the four men had deposited on the floor bulky bundles wrapped in rubber, around which double pairs of life preservers were strapped.

He who seemed to be the leader of the four (“Marshall, chief revenue inspector,” Lanagan whispered to me), took the man’s pulse after the examination was ended. No one had spoken. In the faces of all, as far as I could detect in the murky light of the smoky chimney of an oil lamp, was a set, grim look; not the look that officers usually wear when there has been a killing or a successful capture in a crime.

Marshall straightened up. He said, solemnly:

“Billy, I think you are going. What have you got to say? Any message?”

“No, Jim,” said the man on the floor, weakly. “You got me right. I went into the thing with my eyes open. Only don’t ask me to squeal on the others. I got what I deserved, I guess. I’ve brought shame to the service and I’m ready to pass. Thank God, thank God,” he burst out with sudden choking, “the wife is not here--passed out last year, you know; and there never were any kiddies. No one to suffer but you boys that I’ve disgraced.”

A tear rolled from his eyes to the floor.

“Can I say a word to him, Marshall?” It was Lanagan who spoke. The other men had bowed their heads. On one or two faces I could see a tear, for all the wetness that the rain had left there.

“Enright,” said Lanagan, kneeling down beside the stricken man, “you know you are passing. Make a clean breast. _Who killed Mrs. Stockslager?_”

His eyes closed and he seemed to shrink as though trying to hug the floor he was lying upon. “Whisky!” came Lanagan’s sharp whisper. Unconsciously he was taking command of the situation, asserting his natural leadership as he always did in tense moments. Marshall passed him a pocket flask and he forced a sip to Enright’s lips, holding his head up with his left arm. The eyes opened.

“_I did._”

“Oh, God, Billy! No, no! Not that, not that!” It was Marshall. He broke down and sobbed like a boy. Twenty-five years he had been in the federal blue with Billy Enright, one in the revenue, the other in the customs service.

“Yes--_I did!_ Jim, get me a priest! Don’t let me die like this! For old time’s sake, Jim!”

The train was whistling on its return.

“We’re taking you right in,” said Lanagan, soothingly. “We’ll have a priest for you. Why did you kill her?”

Enright motioned for the flask with his free arm. Lanagan gave him a long pull. For a time at least his voice was stronger.

“She was threatening to tip off the gang. She used to work with us. She was well paid. She didn’t know I was in the service. She found it out some way. I came out one day to talk over with her about her threats. I’d been drinking, worrying over fear of exposure. She wouldn’t listen to reason. She was a wolf. She goaded me crazy, I guess. She taunted me about being a traitor to the country I served. Well, I lost my head. I grabbed the butcher knife and killed her. So help me God as I am about to die, that’s the truth.”

The eyes closed for a space, and then he continued:

“I stuck a few things in my pockets to make it look like robbery. Then I started to cut up the body to pack it in a sack and bury it or drop it off the cliff. I weakened and dropped it outside the door and ran. It was dark but I ran for miles around over the sandhills and it seemed she was always right after me. It was awful.

“I got my wits back later. I saw the police and the papers were after the son. I felt easier. There was a big shipment coming in on the _Hongkong_--$40,000 all told. No one would come out here and take a chance landing it. Afraid the police were watching the house. I volunteered. I figured if any one saw me nosing around I could give them the inspector talk. I hung around last night but the ship was held away out on account of the storm. I had to come out--again--to-night--that’s all, boys--”

The door flung open and through it came Phillips and Castle. McCluskey and Roberts followed. The train had stopped unnoticed, so tense was the interest within the hut in the dying man’s recital.

“Quick, take him up,” said Lanagan. They stooped to lift him.

“Here, what’s all this?” It was Phillips.

“Stand aside!” came Marshall’s blunt command. It was obeyed. Enright’s eyes had closed. He was made as comfortable as possible with cushions on the train, as that ancient rattle-trap strained and tugged to make the greatest speed of its history. Enright’s eyes did not open on the trip in.

They never opened again.

* * * * *

Lanagan filled in for me the details of the story. The bit of red paper, crinkled inside the paper with the Chinese characters, meant but one thing: opium. Here was where his wide acquaintance with the underworld and Chinatown, the customs service and the water front, aided him.

Puzzling over the presence of an opium wrapping in that isolated hut Lanagan had seated himself upon the salt grass hummock to smoke. Into his field of vision steamed the Pacific Mail liner--and his “hunch” came with it. His examination of the shore followed to locate a cove that would give a safe place to float the opium to land from a launch or white hall boat by day or night. Such a cove he had found, where the waters for a sixteenth of a mile deposited their driftwood. His theory was complete. The hut was a smuggler’s runway; the woman was in the ring and for a breach of faith had been slain, an attempt being made to have it appear she was slain by robbers.

* * * * *

That Marshall and his men had been preparing to close in on the gang that made the cabin their rendezvous Lanagan did not know until the night before.

“Then I found the whole map out here sprinkled with them. Recognised Marshall, who nearly tumbled over me; but he probably figured I was one of his men, and said nothing.

“It was funny. McCluskey and Roberts chasing ghosts with myself and four revenue officers as the audience. I nearly laughed when McCluskey told me the story this morning. They didn’t come within fifteen yards of the edge of the cliff, either, although they said they did.

“The weather man told me to-day the storm would blow over by evening and I figured the _Hongkong_ would be making port and the ring would attempt to land their stuff; every liner has been bringing it in. I came out last night on the chance she might try to make port.

“No one suspected Enright.”

It was a quarter to one o’clock when the train pulled into the depot. Marshall turned the body over to Phillips and Castle with a terse resume of the facts and then took his men and his bundles of opium and disappeared. They laid Enright out on a bench to await the coroner’s deputies.

Phillips came over to us.

“I guess I acted kind of stiff,” he said, in awkward apology. “But I want to hand it to you. You scored on us strong.”

Lanagan put out his hand. The detective took it.

“You’ll never make any mistake treating newspaper men right, Phillips. Just do this much for us now, will you? Hold off thirty minutes before you telephone the morgue. That will keep the story exclusively for the _Enquirer_.”

“I’ll do it,” said Phillips.

And he did; which may seem to the layman a little thing, but to the newspaper man a detail of vast importance; because it enabled Lanagan, sending the story to the office by telephone, to score once again in sensational manner over his contemporaries, the _Times_ and the _Herald_.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time of publication has been retained.

Incorrect page reference in the Table of Contents has been corrected.