Part 9

“Whoever killed Monteagle,” he continued, “was in that room when he entered--always assuming, of course, that it was not Stromberg.

“Now I have something additional, through the King and his invaluable sources of information on men and affairs. It is this: Monteagle is known to certain portions of the night life. He was a two-faced society blatherskite, with a broad streak of primal vulgarity, who drank tea in swagger drawing-rooms with his fiancée and her friends in the afternoon and champagne with an entirely different social set after midnight. You know the kind. Was rather keen about women in an underhanded, quiet way. It is not difficult for a man of his means to do a lot of things behind the unassailable French restaurant walls and get by with it.

“You recall the knife was drawn neatly across both cheeks. I see you indulged in a theory that he possibly was the victim of some blackmail brotherhood. You even hinted at the Mafia. I am surprised at you. You ought to let that exaggerated institution rest for a while. I have a little theory of my own on that knifing business, which, I think, we will now work upon. ’Phone Sampson when you get a chance that it pleases Lanagan to go to work for his sweat-shop wages again.”

We parted company with Monahan after he had promised Lanagan to drift through his particular world--or that portion of it which was then up--and endeavour to learn something of the identity of any of Monteagle’s affiliations under the rose.

We headed for the Sutton Building, and in the lobby found Murray, just coming on duty.

“Do you think anyone could have gotten out of that room in the excitement after you found the body?” asked Lanagan.

“No, sir,” said Murray, with aged preciseness. “I locked the door on the outside when I went for an officer, and it could not have been opened, because in my hurry I left my master’s key turned in the lock when I went for a policeman.”

So much for Lanagan’s very plausible theory of the “get-away.” He came up from it as suave as ever and asked:

“Could anyone have been in that room before Monteagle came in, do you suppose?”

“No, sir,” said Murray, with the didacticism of the aged again. “No, sir. There was nobody in that room. I know because the elevator boy, Denny, heard the telephone bell ringing for eight or ten times, and finally let himself in and answered it, but the party hung up. Mr. Monteagle was very free and easy with us men, which accounts for Denny taking the liberty. There was nobody in that room when Denny was in there, and that was well after eight o’clock, after I came on duty. It all gets me, sir, how that knife sticker got into that room or how he got out after he got there. I don’t like to think Ole Stromberg had a hand in it, but it looks a leetle black for Ole, according to the papers. I know my skirts are clear.”

We went on up to the room. The Public Administrator, with Monteagle’s lawyer and his stenographer, was there. The lawyer was inclined to get forward, but the Administrator was a good programer for a newspaper man and smoothed matters over. Lanagan was studying the stenographer: intelligent of feature, stylishly but plainly dressed, and bearing about her eyes and mouth very plain indications of the nervous tension under which she must have laboured during the last three days. She was one of that type of well-poised secretary-stenographers found in most large offices.

Lanagan made an opportunity of asking her:

“Did Mr. Monteagle have any enemies that you know of? Persons who have threatened him personally, by letter or over the ’phone?”

“None that I know of,” she replied quietly.

“Do you think,” asked Lanagan quickly, eying the girl narrowly with those singularly penetrating eyes of his, “do you think it could have been possible that a person might have been concealed in that closet when you locked the office door for the night?”

“Oh, no, no,” she answered quickly, but her eyes involuntarily swept first to the closet and then to Lanagan’s face as though in secret, anxious questioning. “Why, it makes me shiver even to think such a thing could have happened,” she added, and she unmistakably shivered a little.

There was more conversation, and Lanagan fell to examining the room. He first examined the closet. Then he opened the window and scrutinised the sill for a long time. He got down on his knees and peered beneath the heat radiator of coiled pipes. He lit a match, the space between the bottom of the radiator and the floor being so slight that he could not examine it as closely as he seemed to want to.

“Expect your man to get into the room through that?” asked the Public Administrator with heavy facetiousness.

“Oh, no,” replied Lanagan smoothly; “it’s just possible he got out of the room through it, though,” and continued with his minute examination.

The stenographer, Grace Northrup by name, although assisting the other two sorting out papers, found time each moment to flash a quick glance at Lanagan. Whether it was merely active feminine curiosity I could not determine. As for me, I had been over the room half a dozen times already. It held nothing further for me; but I never could even guess at the clues Lanagan might turn up on a trail that a dozen men had tramped over, so I remained to see him work with keen interest. When Lanagan had finished we left.

“Now, Norrie, my boy, to the Bush Street office of the telephone company,” he said with as much enthusiasm as I ever saw him exhibit. “You are a fine old blunderbuss for fair! But the others aren’t any better. Plain as the nose on your face! Lord, Lord!” He stopped and looked at me, laughing immoderately. I was inclined to be a trifle sulky; he made me feel like a six-dollar cub.

“Only,” he continued, “it’s a three days’ trail that I have taken up, and that dirk wielder has got just that much of a start--always assuming, for the sake of the argument, that it was not Stromberg.”

I didn’t ask him what he was going to the telephone office for; it came to me with a sting that I had heard that same bit of information about the telephoning dropped during the last two or three days, and, in the press of clues that I considered more important, had dismissed it. Which was the difference between Jack Lanagan and the rest of us; he had that intuitive faculty of eliminating the superfluous and driving at the main fact. It is, after all, a faculty found in all successful men of whatever occupation.

We both knew Lamb, traffic manager of the ’phone company. Lanagan asked for permission to talk with the girl who on Monday night handled the board having Bush 1243--Monteagle’s number. Lamb was a substantial chap, and promised to keep our visit in confidence. It was just before 4 o’clock, and the 4 to 10 shift of girls was coming on. In a few moments a young girl of sensible, pleasant demeanour was shown to the room, and Lamb retired after requesting that she give us all the information she might have on whatever subjects we discussed.

“You will be performing a service that will be appreciated,” said Lanagan, “if you could recall whether on Monday evening, along about 8 o’clock, you had several calls for Bush 1243?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” she instantly answered. “It was not a busy night and I was handling three positions. The call came from the east office. We do not talk to the party direct on an outside call, and east supervisor came on the line several times to instruct me to try and raise the number. That is how I recall it so distinctly.”

“I may tell you that that is the telephone number of the office of Mr. Monteagle, who was murdered,” said Lanagan. “I don’t suppose you ever got a line on whom his telephone calls might be from as a general thing, did you?”

“No, sir,” she answered primly. “I pay no attention to whom is on a line.”

“Thank you,” said Lanagan. “I think you can be trusted not to say anything about our visit or questions?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

We got a card of introduction from Lamb to Adams, manager of east office, and hurried there.

“Wasn’t that rather an indiscreet thing to do, tell her Monteagle’s number?” I suggested. Lanagan laughed and slapped me on the back. It was evident he was in high feather with himself. I was trundling along, absolutely in the dark.

“My dear Norrie, when you meet a girl like that take her into your confidence. Did you get that ‘to whom’? She smelt a rat and would have looked the number up and blown the glad tidings all over the office that a couple of detectives or newspaper men had been interviewing her on the murder. Recollect, too, that the telephone from the reporters’ room at police headquarters comes in on this exchange. It’s just possible that some of those gay young blades on night police have affiliations with some of these gay young blondes. I have got many a story through ’phone girls--and have occasionally lost a story through the same medium. Get me? As it stands, she is all puffed up with her own importance and pat with us. There are times when you have got to take a chance at spilling your hand. This was one of them.” I subsided, humbled.

Not to occupy too much space with the merely routine details of working out the clue, we met Adams, another substantial chap. The chief operator recalled distinctly the number, more particularly because the woman calling it had been nervous and irritable. The call came, she said, from the public booth at Shumate’s pharmacy. It was only a couple of blocks away, and we went there.

It was a large establishment with half a dozen clerks. We worked down the list. The fourth man had been on duty Monday night and recalled a young woman who had entered the booth repeatedly on that evening. She lived some place in the vicinity, he said, and usually got off the Sutter Street car shortly after 5.30 o’clock. The car stopped directly in front of the door, and if we would wait he would point her out to us if she came that way this evening.

I took a position outside to signal in when a car approached and Lanagan remained inside. It was then just after five.

Among the passengers from one car I noticed Miss Northrup, and was about to step forward and speak to her on a chance of her dropping something additional when I caught a glimpse out of the tail of my eye of Lanagan signaling me with a swift gesture. I dodged around the corner before she saw me. She passed on up Sutter Street, and in a few moments Lanagan picked me up, his sallow face taking on a tinge of colour and his dark eyes sparkling.

“Pretty near scrambled the eggs that time, didn’t you?” he chuckled. “_That’s the woman who did the telephoning._”

I stared.

“Do you recall that furtive look with which she followed me at the office? She lives just up there, where we will let her rest for a time with her troubles. And I fancy she has them. Let us go back to Connors’. I am to meet Monahan there.”

The King was waiting for us. He took Lanagan to one side. All I could hear was Lanagan’s “Good!” once, and then the King had slipped out the side door.

“Best single asset the police have is Monahan,” said Lanagan, apropos of nothing in particular. “Knows more about the night life of this city than any four men in it. But he tips nothing that might hurt his own game or his own people. In a way he preserves a certain code even while acting as a police ‘stool.’ In this matter, however, the invaluable Mr. Monahan is working for Jack Lanagan; and the police are consequently about three laps behind.

“I see nothing in sight for some hours. We will eat our dinner and take in a show for a few moments. I rather anticipate a climax later and some rapid-fire work for us both on the typewriter. I need a little stimulus--that hasn’t got wormwood in it.”

He would give me absolutely not a line on his “lay.” He could be a baffling, enigmatic, impersonal proposition when he took the humour.

We headed for the Oyster Loaf, and I groaned for the four and a half that was between me and pay day as Lanagan methodically disposed of an onion soup, special; French mushrooms on toast, a New York cut, Gorgonzola, and a two-bit cigar. He drank three glasses of ice water, but that didn’t cost anything.

“A man’s meal,” he said with vast creature content. “Now give me that other half you have left. I want a shave. You go up and touch Dan for a five-spot. We may need expenses later. I’ll meet you at Dan’s at nine o’clock. I want to pick Monahan up again before I see you, and also see Leslie.”

At the time appointed we met. “Let’s take a ten-twenty-thirty,” suggested Lanagan. “By half-past ten we will have to get busy. There’s a singer over at the Continental that some of the dramatic critics say has real fire. La Pattini, I think she is called.”

So we drifted into the Continental and caught part of the performance. There were trained birds of more than ordinary sagacity; the stereotyped and fearful cornet soloist; the girl singer, La Pattini, with a wonderful mezzo, remarkable beauty, an undoubted future, and an ability to sing the “Rosary” in a manner to bring tears. Then came a slap-stick tumbling act that was impossible, and we left.

Lanagan had suddenly become thoughtful. “Do you know what I think?” he said. “I think the world would actually do better to sweep away every vestige of law and ordinance and make a clean start again. Our system of punishment is all wrong. Take one heinous class of crimes; we punish the individual who takes upon herself to punish. We say the State has the power of punishment and the prerogative; and yet in the very crimes that are the most damnable, the State can never interfere because the injured party must suffer in silence. You might as well expect children to learn English through hieroglyphics as to make applicable to present-day conditions the antiquated penal code to which society is harnessed. That’s about enough of the sermon stuff. It’s not in my line.”

Lanagan was taking the lead, but I was not altogether surprised when we finally found ourselves in the neighbourhood of the Northrup home. Nor was I altogether surprised when Chief Leslie, that shrewd and veteran thief-taker, suddenly stepped from a doorway. My mind shot ahead to the Northrup home, a few doors away, and I could not bring myself to believe it could be possible that she was a principal.

“Brady is above,” said Leslie. “He says she came in about twenty minutes ago. We had better move on her.”

“Immediately,” said Lanagan, and in a moment more we were all three before the door to a lower flat of the old-fashioned sort, with a bell jangling noisily as Lanagan pulled out the handle.

It was Miss Northrup who answered the ring. She had on a dressing gown, and her hair, I could see, had been taken down for retiring and then gathered in a loose coil on her head, probably when the bell rang. She opened the door but a few inches.

“We would like to speak with you a moment, Miss Northrup,” said Lanagan. He indicated the chief. “This is Chief Leslie.”

“Kindly permit us to enter,” said the chief. There was a shadow of authority in his tone, and I knew that Lanagan and the chief were planning a drive on the girl and that something would be stirring in this old-fashioned flat before long. She hesitated a moment and then threw the door wide open and motioned us into the parlour. In the hall a gas jet burned dimly, as though for some member of the family who was not yet home.

She reached up and turned on the parlour light, and as she did so her loosely coiled hair tumbled about her shoulders. As the light struck down upon her features they had an appearance almost tragic.

“Be seated,” she said; it needed no expert eye to detect in her drawn lips the evidence of nervous tension.

“Madam,” said Leslie abruptly, snapping his jaws like a trap--and I knew this twenty-year-old girl was in for the third degree--“unless you at this time make a clean breast of all that you know concerning the murder of your employer, Ralph Monteagle, it will be necessary for me to book you for murder as an accessory before the fact.”

She started violently; her bosom began to rise and fall quickly; it was evident a breakdown was imminent, but she managed to say with considerable smoothness:

“I know nothing more than I have already told the police and the reporters.”

Lanagan, fierce eagerness glittering in his eyes, stepped before her.

“Nevertheless, possibly you know,” he said, biting each word off short, “how many persons beside yourself and Bartlett, Monteagle’s former chauffeur, who bought it, knew of the rope in his closet; knew that Monteagle had a morbid fear of being trapped in that building at night by fire; that he had had that fear since his friend Mervin was burned to death in the Baldwin Hotel fire; that he let no one know about the rope for fear of being ridiculed? How many persons, I say, besides yourself and Bartlett, knew the rope was there? _And when you knew that that rope had disappeared, as you must have known it, why didn’t you tell the police? Why did you permit a man to lie in prison whom you in your heart feel is innocent?_”

She sprang to her feet and threw both hands towards him as though warding off physical blows. She was trembling in intense agitation.

“Don’t! Don’t! for God’s sake, don’t!”

She sank back again into her chair, her face buried in her hands, rocking and moaning, with Lanagan standing over her, inexorable as Nemesis.

There was the sound of quick, light running up the front stairs, a key was turned in the lock, the front door swung open, and the girl in the chair, startled from her huddled misery, sprang to her feet and fairly leaped to meet the newcomer. She cried out, but whether in warning or in the joy of greeting could not be said, for her voice was half-smothered in a sob.

“Sister!” she said at last falteringly. “Sister, please go to your room. It is only some more policemen about Mr. Monteagle!” The words came chokingly. The other had not as yet come into our sight, but now she stepped into the light that streamed from the parlour into the hall--and I heard Lanagan’s swift, involuntary ejaculation:

“_La Pattini! Her sister!_”

Leslie, swift as thought, was half-across the parlour floor to the hall, yielding to a natural police impulse, but the newcomer, the other girl clinging to her, stepped fully into the doorway to the parlour.

“Yes,” she said in a voice that had no tremour of emotion, “La Pattini. Her sister. Why?”

“Why?” said Leslie, grimly. “Because we were just going to book her for murder as an accessory before the fact. We will switch the cut now and book you as the principal.”

At the feet of the queenly Pattini the harassed sister swooned. Lanagan pulled shut the door leading to the hall so that no one might by any mischance disturb us, and I fell to chafing the wrists of the senseless girl.

La Pattini sank wearily to a chair, stooping so that she could stroke her sister’s temples.

“I am glad it is over,” she said, apathetically. “I have only wondered that it did not come sooner. I have expected it hourly.”

The story was soon told: simple, age-old, but ever new, sordid possibly to a slight degree, but profoundly sad. She who was now known as La Pattini met Monteagle while visiting her sister at his office. He had found means to extend the acquaintance, had aided her in a secret way in her ambitions for the stage, securing the engagement at the Continental for her, and as a result of the clandestine relation there had been a promise of marriage. Then had come the engagement announcement of the Dennison-Monteagle marriage and the awakening of the dupe. But this was not the dupe of Monteagle’s many experiences. The picture of Miss Dennison, staring at her from the society columns, had fired a sinister jealousy.

A confession had been made to the younger sister when La Pattini sought an opportunity of pleading once again alone with Monteagle, who had finally repudiated her. The sister had admitted her to the office after Monteagle left for the afternoon, knowing he was to return in the evening. She concealed herself in the closet.

Before she entered the office her plan had been formed. Either Monteagle would marry her or he should die. At that time she had no thought of escaping. She had heard the telephone ringing repeatedly; heard the elevator boy enter the room just too late to get the party calling.

Finally Monteagle had arrived and she had discovered herself. What happened was quickly over. The quarrel was of few words, and he had struck her with his fist. She stabbed him to the heart, and then with a vindictiveness that she could not now understand and shuddered at recalling had marred his features with the knife. Her first thought had been to give herself up. Then she wondered why she should do that. The brief words of their quarrel had not been heard; the janitor she could hear on the floor above. After all, she had done no more than kill a snake.

The thought of the rope came to her. She knew about it, because once when she was in the office as Monteagle worked late she had expressed anxiety at being seen coming from the building with him, and he had showed her the rope and jokingly offered to let her down from the window, which opened upon a divisional alley in the rear of the Sutton building.

The rope was of great length. Seeking for a place to tie it, she naturally turned to the radiator. The thought occurred to her with a flash her means of escape from the room might never be known if the rope was long enough to run under the radiator, letting both ends to the ground. She could then draw it down after she reached the ground by pulling on one end and letting it run under the radiator like a pulley. She tried the length, the light from the windows of the elevator shaft, opening into the areaway, giving sufficient brightness.

“As part of the preparation for the future on the stage that Mr. Monteagle was to help me get,” she said, dispassionately, “I have taken gymnasium work to build up my system. You can see it was no extraordinary thing for me to let myself down by the double rope, pulling the window shut after I climbed out. I left it open enough so that the rope could run free when I pulled it after me. I threw the rope in a street garbage tin. I was at the theatre, remarkable as it may seem, in time for my act at ten o’clock, although I missed the first show. I have been in a daze since; I was in a trance after I did the stabbing. I have known I must be found out. I am glad that it is all over. I have made no attempt to escape. I am absolutely indifferent to my fate.”

The sister, recovered from her swoon, was weeping softly, her head bowed in the other’s lap.

“Tell me,” said Lanagan curiously to her, “why did you telephone to Monteagle?”

She gasped, and it appeared for the moment that she was about to swoon again. Finally she faltered, while her own sister looked at her strangely:

“I--was afraid sister meant him harm--I didn’t think of it until I got home--and then something about her face came back to me--I wanted to warn Mr. Monteagle not to arouse her--I finally succeeded in getting him at his club before he left for his office and--he only laughed--”

“Yes,” said La Pattini bitterly, “he told me so--and laughed--and snapped his fingers when he spoke about you--that was just before he struck me ... and then I killed him.”

The sudden fresh sobs of the younger girl, smothered as they were in her sister’s lap, seemed to wrench her very being. Lanagan glanced at Leslie; Leslie averted his eyes. There was a prolonged pause, broken only by the agonised, stifled sobbing, while she of crime threw her arms shelteringly around the weaker vessel. But her own deathly calm she preserved.

Finally Leslie arose slowly and said simply:

“I am sorry. I have no recourse. My duty is clear.”