Part 8

But Koshloff frowned impatiently and in a second more Carlos was whisked away, a wierd scream floating back wearily from some hidden corridor to indicate the terror that gripped him. There was something in that scream of fear of more than the knout. As it rang through Lanagan’s ears, he recalled the crossed axes and the hangman’s noose of the pin. It was clear enough. There would be another burglar killed. He wheeled upon Koshloff.

“Professor Koshloff, or whoever or whatever you are,” he said in a tone of deadly acidity, “that man is turned up out of here unharmed by so much as a scratch, or I’ll have you snaked into the city prison within twenty-four hours, and some other very general suspicions will incidentally be given an airing. You may be the right eye or the right hand of His Serene Majesty Nicholas, but I’m Jack Lanagan of the San Francisco _Enquirer_, and in my own particular bailiwick, something of a czar myself. You’re a long way from Russia right now. You’re in little old San Francisco. Did you get me?”

The catlike quality of Lanagan’s eyes to glow under the stress of anger or great excitement, exhibited itself. His face in anger was not what was calculated to put infants to slumber. He had forgotten the Secretary for the moment; the agents had all withdrawn. He was recalled to him when that person, taking his cigar from his teeth and gazing upon its ash contemplatively, said in even tones:

“I think possibly you are unduly exercising yourself. Something of a Czar?” The smooth voice went on. “Indeed, and it is a pleasure to meet the Czar of the bailiwick of San Francisco,” and the Secretary bowed profoundly and gravely. “Now let us talk business, Mr. Lanagan.

“As for Carlos, his case is absolutely ex-territorial so far as we are concerned. Please inform me how you came by that packet and pin--eavesdropping in matters of State? Do you young men of the press hold nothing sacred? Not your country’s peace or the peace of other nations?”

“So far as that goes,” retorted Lanagan, coolly, “and not condescending to take note of your ‘eavesdropping,’ we young men of the press have a duty to our papers which our papers in turn owe to the people. In this case it is a clear duty. By what right do you or any other man, president or not, arrogate to yourself the power to hold this secret caucus, resting your country’s stand in this grave affair entirely upon the judgment of one or two men? You are the servant of the people. Let the whole people know where you are now and what you are doing. Get the sentiment of your country before you plunge into this agreement. I personally most emphatically disagree with the answer you are sending back. The public are as likely to think my way as yours.”

The Secretary looked bored. “It is not possible.”

“With this exception,” grimly. Lanagan turned for the panel and sought the spring. “It is ten minutes after twelve,” he said laconically. “I must leave here. Open the door, if you please.”

Neither man moved. The Secretary said:

“We have not quite covered our ground. You have not answered my question.”

“The pin I received from a friend who claimed to have taken it from a pawnshop. The packet was put in my pocket by a swarthy man who met me on the street and who said ‘scoraya.’ So did another chap in Koshloff’s automobile. I wanted to see the thing through that so accidentally came my way.

“Now, when I came in here I did not come alone. I am fully aware that nations, planning wars to cost hundreds or thousands of lives, would not scruple at one. My friends should be breaking in here now. I told them to give me until twelve o’clock.

“So far as your man Carlos is concerned, I can only surmise that he was to meet a courier at the steamer, but had his pin stolen from him. The courier then wandered the streets seeking the pin, and by happy chance tumbled against me wearing it, and likewise wandering the streets. The other ‘scoraya’ boy I presume was one of Koshloff’s secret service men, sent out to see that the messenger reached here safely. He must have likewise picked me up on the matinée promenade by accident.”

“Correctly reasoned,” murmured Koshloff. “And I believe you have cleared the situation. A most remarkable series of coincidences; but then, anything may happen in this remarkable city of yours.”

“Do I go peaceably?” asked Lanagan, glancing at his watch. His voice hardened a trifle. It was twelve-thirty.

“After--ah--a bit,” purred Koshloff, and the next instant was gazing coolly into Lanagan’s police Colt.

Koshloff lifted his hand with an indolent gesture, to push the muzzle to one side, took a look into Lanagan’s eyes, thought better of it, and turned with mock deprecation to the Secretary. That gentleman was watching Lanagan with frank admiration.

“We’ve got a place for you, Mr. Lanagan,” he said, heartily, “any time you care to come to Washington.”

Lanagan was nettled. Here were keen, quick-witted, level-headed men poking quiet fun at his spectacular display. Because they were of the quick intuitions of the exceptional mind, they fathomed his mind and knew that he would not shoot. Lanagan felt rather boyish for a fleeting second; got himself in perspective, as it were, and grinned at the grotesqueness of the situation. Then that seven-column scare head in the _Enquirer_--the exclusive that was to hum around the world, focussed before him.

“Open that door!”

Koshloff arose then. There is something singularly compelling about a blue-nosed revolver six inches from your temple, regardless of any psychological conviction you may have that the man is not going to use it. But whether Lanagan would have carried the situation through successfully cannot be answered. For at that moment there came a tapping on the panel. Koshloff stopped at a signal from Lanagan. The tapping came again. The Secretary spoke:

“The situation is becoming strained, however diverting it may be to all of us. For my part, here are three men, all presumably of minds trained to meet sudden exigencies, and yet no one of us can solve this one. But other matters seem to be pressing.” The tapping was becoming more insistent. “Let us call a truce, Mr. Lanagan, of precisely ten minutes. At the end of that time I give you my word we will return matters to just their present condition. It is agreeable?”

“Absolutely,” said Lanagan, pocketing his revolver.

Koshloff sprang across the room and tapped. He was answered to his satisfaction, for the panel slid open, and after a whispered consultation with one of the secret service men, Koshloff stood from before the panel and--

I, Norton, my hands neatly manacled behind me, was ushered into the room.

Never will I forget the look on Lanagan’s face. For at least three seconds, he was jolted out of his traditional immobility. His look was mingled alarm, surprise and amusement.

“Poor Norrie!” half-banteringly, half-serious. “Poor old blunderbuss. I have certainly got him in a fine mess, him and his sick wife at home.”

I was so glad to see that nothing had happened to him, that I paid little attention to the other two for the moment. I was telling him how I waited until 12:15 and had just determined on telephoning headquarters for Brady and Wilson when, standing as I supposed well concealed, I was suddenly pinioned by two figures that seemed to start up from the earth, handcuffed and hustled across the street into the room where we now were.

“I must compliment you on your organisation,” said Lanagan ironically, bowing toward Koshloff. Around that gentleman’s bearded lips played the faintest trace of a mocking smile. I could fancy how that smile ground into the proud soul of Lanagan.

The Secretary was growing impatient.

“The ten minutes, Mr. Lanagan?” he queried.

Lanagan turned and looked at me a long time. “You should have obeyed orders,” he said finally. “I told you to give me until twelve; not twelve-fifteen.”

It was the first time in his life Lanagan had ever criticised me, and it cut to the quick. I knew then how bitter his disappointment was.

“What is your ‘proposition?’” he said, turning abruptly to the Secretary, whom I had at once recognised as well as Koshloff.

“I haven’t any ‘proposition,’ Mr. Lanagan. It is simply that neither the Russian government nor our government can afford to let the world power know that the Secretary of State journeyed, incognito, across the American continent, to reach a diplomatic agreement with Russia. Don’t you realise what the publication of that unprecedented thing would mean?”

“My only proposition is a declaration. You hear most important information. It would undoubtedly make a splendid news sensation to-morrow morning. But you cannot possibly see the great dangers you would involve your country in. You might as well sit on a barrel of giant powder, and drop your cigar and expect to save so much as a collar button, as to print that story now and avoid war.

“My being here was absolutely a matter imperative for certain sufficient reasons. It was necessary that I present myself to Mr. Koshloff in person. That is all.

“I know newspaper men. Among the Washington correspondents I number many warm friends. I will take the judgment upon myself of placing you both upon your honour. If I permit you to go free from here, your lips are inviolately sealed for all time, upon the contents of that telegram. So far as I am concerned, that cannot be used until such time as this trouble has been adjusted; or, let me say, until the present administration is out of power at Washington.”

Into the stillness that followed I could distinctly hear Lanagan’s teeth grind together. Those remarkable eyes of his seemed fairly to emit a stream of fire, they blazed so fiercely upon Koshloff and the Secretary. He threw a sweeping glance around the room. It was a look for all the world like you see in the eyes of a caged tiger when he is aroused. For my part, there was a quick drop some place under my diaphragm. I was thinking of my sick wife, and the consequences to her of being held a State’s prisoner.

His hand went to his pocket and he half drew his revolver; but it was rather a subconscious act, I think, than any deliberate design to use it. For Government, after all, is a potent thing. We fight for it and die for it. It has a splendid and natural influence not to be lightly tossed from us. And here sat one of Government’s highest representatives. Lanagan’s hand dropped to his side.

“That is better,” said the Secretary. “For really, Mr. Lanagan, you cannot move from this room until we say the word. You are as helpless as though you were shackled. It is late and we have important work to do. Your answer?”

It was almost pitiable to see Lanagan then. He of a score of brilliant newspaper victories, the genius of his craft, who found no situation too difficult to solve, that striking figure in the newspaper life of the West who knew no duty save to his paper, who embodied the best and the highest ideals that tradition gives to the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate, was beaten.

The glow had left his eyes and his voice was dispirited, as he said:

“You have my word, Mr. Secretary, but on one condition: that Carlos’ life be spared, and that you start him back with your answer. It was no fault of his. There is only one man in town who could have got that pin from him, and I can hardly blame Carlos for losing it, once Kid Monahan wanted it.”

“That condition must be granted, Mr. Koshloff,” said the Secretary. Koshloff hesitated. “The wearer of the pin understands the penalty,” he began, curtly. “I know. But in this case I personally request it.” “It is granted,” said Koshloff, definitely.

Lanagan was morose and savage. The Secretary proffered cigars, which Lanagan impatiently refused.

“There is one thing that I would like, however,” he said with but faint show of graciousness, “and that is this pin. It will not be worn. I would like it as a memento; as something tangible to exhibit some day when I may tell this story, as proof, in support of, possibly, one of the most unusual experiences of myself or any other newspaper man.”

“There are but two in existence,” said Koshloff soberly. “This one belongs to our Ambassador at Washington. It was sent to me for use in receiving the imperial message. The other--is in the possession of the Czar, and will be worn by the receiving courier at St. Petersburg. The penalty attaching to the loss of the pin, either to myself or my agents are--well, they are somewhat stringent and, with the single exception of Carlos, have always been enforced.”

Lanagan snapped the patent clasp and handed the pin to Koshloff.

“You see, if I lost it,” with the slightest inflection on the pronoun, “there would be no Czar of this ‘particular bailiwick’ to pardon me as you pardoned Carlos, Mr. Koshloff.”

We walked the long distance back to town and dropped in at ----. Lanagan had not addressed a word to me. I knew better than to attempt to draw him into conversation. I could feel that he was working the thing over and over again in his mind. He suddenly burst forth passionately:

“I could have beaten them! I could have beaten them! And they didn’t convince me at that, that the story should not have been printed! There’s too much of this one-man-for-the-nation stuff in our government, anyhow.”

It was months before Lanagan told me that it was because of my wife’s feeble health that he feared to take the risk of having us both bottled up for a month, by manoeuvring further for freedom; and had added: “Merely another argument to prove that your true reporter should not marry.”

And as if to justify the truth of Lanagan’s assertion to me that the story should have been printed, within three days the Japanese fleet, scorpion-like, had struck and crippled that unsuspecting and unready Russian flotilla.

“Yah!” Lanagan had cried to me in furious disgust, as he ripped the front page of the _Enquirer_ with its seven-column war head to tatters, “Statesmen! Diplomats! Give me one live reporter, and I’ll teach the whole gang of them the right way! Do you suppose for one single, solitary, coruscating second, that if those Japs knew the Secretary was hobnobbing with the Russian envoy right here in San Francisco, that the blow would have been struck? Well, I tell you No! I wouldn’t even have had to print the message. The story of the meeting was enough.”

Well, the time limit set by the Secretary has long since expired, so here is the suppressed story of the Ambassador’s Stick-Pin, the finest, biggest, cleanest in its elements of any of his whole career, as Lanagan mourned to me more than once.

VI

WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH

VI

WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH

Sampson, city editor of the San Francisco _Enquirer_, sat scowling over the _Times_ and the _Herald_. Stripped blackly across the front pages of those rival morning papers was the unaccustomed seven-column head:

SUSPECT JAILED FOR MONTEAGLE MURDER!

“_Norton!_”

It was Sampson’s voice. When Sampson shot that curt call in his ugly voice through the swinging doors of his office I felt as though the warden was calling me from the condemned cell for the drop. Only the able-bodied newspaper man who has been trimmed hard by the men of the opposition papers can understand the sensation. It belongs in its exquisite misery solely to such as speak the language of the tribe. For the head in the _Enquirer_--my story--had been only a three-column:

POLICE ARE BAFFLED IN MONTEAGLE MYSTERY!

Sampson contemplated me coldly and long; he fairly brooded over me. But there was no outburst, and that, after all, hurt worse than if he had put me on the irons for a broiling.

Ralph Monteagle, broker, millionaire, well-known, popular, and engaged to the equally well-known and popular Helen Dennison, had been found in his office on the fourth floor of the Sutton Building, stabbed to death. No weapon was found, the door was locked, the window shut. Neither money nor valuables were taken. The knife, curiously, had been sliced once across each cheek, evidently done after death, with deliberate intent to mar the features. Monteagle had entered his offices at 9:15 o’clock on Monday evening. The watchman had discovered the crime at midnight. The system in the Sutton Building permitted an absolute check on all persons entering the building after 8 o’clock, when the outer doors were locked. Any person coming in after that hour was admitted by the watchman, Murray, who until 12 o’clock was stationed in the lobby. The night elevator man kept a record of each person entering the building and to which room he went. It was a building given over to brokers, capitalists, and large law firms, and several robberies of magnitude had brought about this particular system of keeping a check on all persons in the building after night.

The elevator man, on going off duty at midnight, turned his book over to the watchman, who thereupon made the rounds of each of the offices where there were still tenants or visitors. It was in this manner that the crime had been discovered after Murray had rapped repeatedly on Monteagle’s door and had finally admitted himself with his master’s key.

Only three other tenants had been in the building during the evening, and they were able to clear themselves of all suspicion. The police turned their attention to the attachés of the building. Suspicion fell on a janitor, Stromberg, who had the fourth and fifth floors. Apparently clinching proof of the police suspicions had been afforded when Stromberg’s jumper, blood stained, was located at his laundry. It was in the arrest of Stromberg, which had taken place late the night before, that I had been “scooped” through my zealousness in leaving the detectives uncovered while I followed a lead that subsequently proved entirely wrong.

Stromberg claimed to have cut his hand with a scraper while cleaning the mosaic tiling, and had a deep gash on the ball of his thumb. The police theory was that he had gashed himself purposely, and in answer to his defence that it would have been an insane thing for him to have sent his jumper to the laundry if he had committed the crime, held to the theory that he had taken precisely that method, in combination with the self-imposed gash on his hand, to divert suspicion by seeming frankness.

With the commendable faculty of the American police in usually working to fasten the crime upon whomsoever they may happen to have in custody, the officers were devoting their energies to “cinching” their case on Stromberg.

When Sampson had completed his disquieting survey of me, he finally said:

“I am giving this story to Ransom and Dickson to handle to-day.” I could see that he had it all figured out in his cold-blooded way; that nothing else was to be expected of me than to be scooped, and that any remarks would be superfluous. But it ground me. “What I want you to do,” he continued nastily, “is to find Lanagan. Possibly you can succeed in that at least. I wouldn’t be sorry at that if some more of you fellows drank the brand of liquor Lanagan drinks once in a while. I might get a story out of the bunch of you occasionally. Instead, the _Times_ and the _Herald_ give it to us on the features of this story three days running--_three days_. It’s the worst beating I’ve had in a year. You find Lanagan and tell him I want him to jump into the story independent of Ransom and Dickson. I would like to get the tail feathers out of this thing, anyhow.”

Ransom and Dickson had no relish for the story, three days old.

“Might as well try to galvanise a corpse,” grumbled Ransom. I turned over to them what matters I had that might bear watching, and was about to leave the office when the ’phone rang for me. Very fortunately, it was Lanagan; and I couldn’t forbear a sort of gulp, because I felt instinctively that he had wakened up somewhere out of his ten days’ lapse, with the knowledge that I was handling the Monteagle story and was getting badly beaten on it. I was right in that, too.

“Thought I would catch you before you left,” he said. His voice was throaty, and I judged that he had been seeing some hard days and nights. “Suppose that pickled jellyfish of a Sampson has been lacing you? You should be laced. Met Brady a few minutes ago and he said you were handling--or mishandling--the story. You ought to get a month’s lay-off for letting that crowd of two-by-four dubs, on the _Times_ at least, get the best of you. Come on down. I want to talk things over.”

He was at Billy Connors’ “Buckets of Blood,” that famed barroom rendezvous by the Hall of Justice, where the thieves’ clans were wont to forgather. There was nothing of particular coincidence in his ringing me up just when he did; it was shortly after 1 o’clock, the hour when the local staff reported on, and he would be sure of finding me in.

He sat at the rear alcove table with “King” Monahan. “You know my friend the King, of course?” was his greeting. Monahan, one-time designated King of the Pick-pockets, after serving two terms, had retired from the active practice of that profession to establish himself, it was generally believed, not only as a “fence,” handling exclusively the precious stones, but also as a sort of local organiser, to whom any outside gang must report on or before beginning operations in San Francisco. There is system in crime these days as in all things else.

“Kind of stuck it in and broke it off, didn’t they?” he continued.

“I’ve stood one panning from Sampson; I don’t want another from you,” I retorted savagely.

“Norrie,” he said, “you overlooked a very vital point. The King and I have been talking it over,”--he had the three morning papers spread out before him--“and we have concluded that there was a woman in the case. And when two eminent criminologists, like Kid Monahan and Jack Lanagan, agree that there is a woman in a case, it at least is worthy of consideration.”

“A moll, sure,” vouchsafed Monahan in his diffident way. He had a manner as timorous as a girl, which possibly accounted for the success that he enjoyed while practising his profession. He was not one, on the crowded platform of a trolley car, who would be immediately suspected when some proletarian raised a cry of sneak thief and sought in vain for a stick pin, watch, or wallet.

“Stromberg may or may not be guilty,” said Lanagan, “but I don’t think much of the case the police have made against him. It, at least, doesn’t bar us from another line of speculation.

“Tell me, for instance, why in the name of the Seven Suns, didn’t some of you sleuths go off on the theory that whoever committed that crime got into the office earlier in the evening and remained concealed in the closet until Monteagle came in? It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have decoyed Monteagle to his office even if it wasn’t known that he was working nights to make up for the lunches and bachelor dinners and afternoon teas that he’s been going to on account of his coming marriage.

“And as for whoever committed the murder getting out, you have been on the scene of too many murders not to know the hysteria that comes over a bunch of yaps like that. It’s a safe bet they all ran for a regular policeman, and that whoever was in that room--provided he was still there, or she--when the crime was discovered could have walked out of that building with a fair way as wide as Market Street.”

“Murray ran for a policeman,” I admitted, “and some of the janitors with him.”

“That’s what special cops usually do,” was Lanagan’s comment. “And it’s a safe bet that those square-head janitors all ran with him. They didn’t stay around those corridors alone after that crime was discovered until a regular copper came along. I’ve seen the thing happen and so has every police reporter in the business.”

Lanagan paused, pushed back a half-drained suisses and called for a sweet soda--his curious habit when breaking off a “lapse.”