Chapter 15

Kennedy shook his head affirmatively.

I had been wondering who it could be. Certainly this was not the work of Dopey Jack, even if the far cleverer attempt on Langhorne's safe had been. But it might have been one of his gang. I had not got as far as trying to reason out the why of the crime.

"Call up your house, Carton," asked Craig. "See if William, your valet, has returned."

Carton did so, and a moment later turned to us with a look of perplexity on his face. "No," he reported, "he hasn't come back yet. I can't imagine where he is."

"He won't come back," asserted Kennedy positively. "It was an inside job--and he did it."

Carton gasped astonishment.

"At any rate," pursued Kennedy, "one thing we have which the police greatly neglect--a record. We have made some progress in reconstructing the crime, as Bertillon used to call it."

"Strange that he should take only photographs," I mused.

"What were they?" asked Kennedy, and again I saw that he was looking intently at Carton's face.

"Nothing much," returned Carton unhesitatingly, "just some personal photographs--of no real value except to me. Most of them were amateur photographs, too, pictures of myself in various groups at different times and places that I kept for the associations."

"Nothing that might be used by an enemy for any purpose?" suggested Kennedy.

Carton laughed. "More likely to be used by friends," he replied frankly.

Still, I felt that there must have been some sinister purpose back of the robbery. In that respect it was like the scientific cracking of Langhorne's safe. Langhorne, too, though he had been robbed, had been careful to disclaim the loss of anything of value. I frankly had not believed Langhorne, yet Carton was not of the same type and I felt that his open face would surely have disclosed to us any real loss that he suffered or apprehension that he felt over the robbery.

I was forced to give it up, and I think Kennedy, too, had decided not to worry over the crossing of any bridges until at least we knew that there were bridges to be crossed.

Carton was worried more by the discovery that one he had trusted even as a valet had proved unfaithful. He knew, however, as well as we did that one of the commonest methods of the underworld when they wished to pull off a robbery was to corrupt one of the servants of a house. Still, it looked strange, for the laying of such an elaborate plan usually preceded only big robberies, such as jewelery or silver. For myself, I was forced back on my first theory that someone had concluded that Carton had the Black Book, had concocted this elaborate scheme to get what was really of more value than much jewelry, and had found out that Carton did not have the precious detectaphone record, after all. I knew that there were those who would have gone to any length to get it.

A general alarm was given, through the police, for the apprehension of William, but we had small hope that anything would result from it, for at that time Carton's enemies controlled the police and I am not sure but that they would have been just a little more dilatory in apprehending one who had done Carton an injury than if it had been someone else. It was too soon, that night, of course, to expect to learn anything, anyhow.

It was quite late, but it had been a confining day for Kennedy who had spent the hours while not working on Carton's case in some of the ceaseless and recondite investigations of his own to which he was always turning his restless mind.

"Suppose we walk a little way downtown with Carton?" he suggested.

I was not averse, and by the time we arrived in the white light belt of Broadway the theatres were letting out.

Above the gaiety of the crowds one could hear the shrill cry of some belated newsboys, calling an "Extra Special"--the only superlative left to one of the more enterprising papers whose every issue was an "Extra."

Kennedy bought one, with the laughing remark, "Perhaps it's about your robbery, Carton."

It was only a second before the smile on his face changed to a look of extreme gravity. We crowded about him. In red ink across the head of the paper were the words:

"BODY OF MURTHA, MISSING, FOUND IN MORGUE"

Down in a lower corner, in a little box into which late news could be dropped, also in red ink, was the brief account:

This morning the body of an unknown man was found in The Bronx near the Westchester Railroad tracks. He had been run over and badly mutilated. After lying all day in the local morgue, it was transferred, still unidentified, to the city Morgue downtown.

Early this evening one of the night attendants recognized the unidentified body as that of Murtha, "the Smiling Boss," whose escape day before yesterday from an asylum in Westchester has remained a mystery until now.

"Well--what do you--think of that!" ejaculated Carton. "Murtha--dead--and I thought the whole thing was a job they were putting up on me!"

Kennedy crooked his finger at a cabby who was alertly violating the new ordinance and soliciting fares away from a public cab stand.

"The Morgue--quick!" he ordered, not even noticing the flabbergasted look on the jehu's face, who was not accustomed to carrying people thither from the primrose path of Broadway quite so rapidly.

XXI

THE MORGUE

There had come a lull in the activities which never entirely cease, night or day, in the dingy building at the foot of East Twenty-sixth Street. Across the street in the municipal lodging-house the city's homeless were housed for the night. Even ever wakeful Bellevue Hospital nearby was comparatively quiet.

The last "dead boat" which carries the city's unclaimed corpses away for burial had long ago left, when we arrived. The anxious callers who pass all day through the portals of the mortuary chamber seeking lost friends and relatives had disappeared. Except for the night keeper and one or two assistants, the Morgue was empty save of the overcrowded dead.

Years before, as a cub reporter on the Star, I had had the gruesome assignment once of the Morgue. It was the same old place after all these years and it gave me the same creepy sensations now as it did then. Even the taxicab driver seemed glad to set down his fares and speed away.

It was ghoulish. I felt then and I did still that instead of contributing to the amelioration of conditions that could not be otherwise than harrowing, everything about the old Morgue lent itself to the increase of the horror of the surroundings.

As Kennedy, Carton, and I entered, we found that the principal chamber in the place was circular. Its walls were lined with the ends of caskets, which, fitting close into drawer-like apertures were constantly enveloped in the refrigerated air.

It seemed, even at that hour, that if these receptacles were even adequate to contain all of the daily tenants of the Morgue, much of the anguish and distress inseparable from such a place might be spared those who of necessity must visit the place seeking their dead. As it was, even for those bound by no blood ties to the unfortunates who found their way to the city Morgue, the room was a veritable chamber of horror.

We stood in horrified amazement at what we saw. On the floor, which should be kept clear, lay the overflow of the day's intake. Bodies for which there was no room in the cooling boxes, others which were yet awaiting claimants, and still more awaiting transfer to the public burying ground, lay about in their rough coffins, many of them brutally exposed.

It seemed, too, that if ever there was a time when conditions might have been expected to have halfway adjusted themselves to the pressure which by day brought out all too clearly the hopeless inadequacy of the facilities provided by the city to perform one of its most important and inevitable functions, it was at that early morning hour of our visit. Presumably preparation had been completed for the busy day about to open by setting all into some semblance of respectful order. But such was not the case. It was impossible.

In one group, I recall, which an attendant said had been awaiting his removal for a couple of days, the rough board coffins, painted the uniform brown of the city's institutions, lay open, without so much as face coverings over the dead.

They lay as they had been sent in from various hospitals. Most of them were bereft of all the decencies usual with the dead, in striking contrast, however, with the bodies from Bellevue, which were all closely swathed in bandages and shrouds.

One body, that of a negro, which had been sent in to the Morgue from a Harlem hospital, lay just as it came, utterly bare, exposing to public view all the gruesome marks of the autopsy. I wondered whether anything like that might be found to be the fate of the once jovial and popular Murtha, when we found him.

I almost forgot our mission in the horror of the place, for, nearby was an even more heartrending sight. Piled in several heaps much higher than a man's head and as carelessly as cordwood were the tiny coffins holding the babies which the authorities are called on by the poor of the city to bury in large numbers--far too poor to meet the cost of the cheapest decent burial. Atop the stack of regulation coffins were the nondescript receptacles made use of by the very poor--the most pathetic a tiny box from the corner grocery. The bodies, some dozens of them, lay like so much merchandise, awaiting shipment.

"What a barbarity!" I heard Craig mutter, for even he, though now and then forced to visit the place when one of his cases took him there, especially when it was concerned with an autopsy, had never become hardened to it.

Often I had heard him denounce the primitive appointments, especially in the autopsy rooms. The archaic attempts to utilize the Morgue for scientific investigation were the occasion for practices that shocked even the initiated. For the lack of suitable depositories for the products of autopsies, these objects were plainly visible in rude profusion when a door was opened to draw out a body for inspection. About and around the slabs whereon the human bodies lay, in bottles and in plates, this material which had no place except in the cabinets of a laboratory was inhumanly displayed in profusion, close to corpses for which a morgue is expected to provide some degree of reverential care.

"You see," apologized the keeper, not averse to throwing the blame on someone else, for it indeed was not his but the city's fault, "one reason why so many bodies have to remain uncared for is that I could show you cooling box after cooling box with some subject which figured during the past few months in the police records. Why victims of murders committed long ago should be held indefinitely, and their growing numbers make it impossible to give proper places to each day's temporary bodies, I can't say. Sometimes," he added with a sly dig at Carton, "the only explanation seems to be that the District Attorney's office has requested the preservation of the grisly relics."

I could see that Carton was making a mental note that the practice would be ended as far as his office was concerned.

"So--you saw the story in the newspapers about Mr. Murtha," repeated the keeper, not displeased to see us and at the publicity it gave him. "It was I that discovered him--and yet many's the times some of the boys that must have handled the body since it was picked up beside the tracks must have seen him. It was too late to get anyone to take the body away to-night, but the arrangements have all been made, and it will be done early in the morning before anyone else sees Pat Murtha here, as he shouldn't be. We've done what we could for him ourselves--he was a fine gentleman and many's the boy that owes a boost up in life to him."

Reverentially even the hardened keeper drew out one of the best of the drawer-like boxes. On the slab before us lay the body. Carton drew back, excitedly, shocked.

"It IS Murtha!" he exclaimed.

I, too, looked at it quickly. The name as Carton pronounced it, in such a place, had, to me at least, an unpleasant likeness to "murder."

Kennedy had bent down and was examining the mutilated body minutely.

"How do you suppose such a thing is possible--that he could lie about the city, even here until the night keeper came on,--unknown?" asked Carton, aghast.

"I don't know," I said, "but I imagine that in connection with the actual inadequacy of the equipment one would find reflected the same makeshift character in the attitude and actions of those who handle the city's dead. It used to be the case, at least, that the facilities for keeping records were often almost totally neglected, and not through the fault of the Morgue keepers, entirely. But, I understand it is better now."

"This is terrible," repeated Carton, averting his face. "Really, Jameson, it makes me feel like a hound, for ever thinking that Murtha might have been putting up a game on me. Poor old Murtha--I should have preferred to remember him as the 'Smiling Boss' as everyone always called him!"

I called to mind the last time we had seen Murtha, in Carton's office as the bearer of an offer which had made Carton almost beside himself with anger at the thought of the insult that he would compromise with the organization. What a contrast, this, with the Murtha who, in turn, had been trembling with passion at Carton's refusal!

And yet I could not but reflect on the strangeness of it all--the fact that the organization, of which Murtha was a part, had by its neglect and failure to care for the human side of government when there was graft to be collected, brought about the very conditions which had made possible such neglect of the district leader's body, as it had been bandied back and forth, unwittingly by many who owed their very positions to the organization.

I could not help but think that if he had served humanity with one-half the zeal which he had served graft, this could not have happened.

The more I contemplated the case, the more tragic did it seem to me. I longed for the assignment of writing the story for the Star--the chance I would have had in the old days to bring in a story that would have got me a nod of approval from my superior. I determined, as soon as possible, to get the Star on the wire and try to express some of the thoughts that were surging through my brain in the face of this awful and unexpected occurrence.

There he lay, alone, uncared for except by such rude hands as those of the Morgue attendants. I could not help reflecting on the strange vicissitudes of human life, and death, which levelled all distinctions between men of high and low degree. Murtha had almost literally sprung from the streets. His career had been one possible only in the social and political conditions of his times. And now he had only by the narrowest chance escaped a burial in a pauper's grave at the hands of the city which he had helped Dorgan to debauch.

Carton, too, I could see was overwhelmed. For the moment he did not even think of how this blow to the System might affect his own chances. It was only the pitiful wreck of a human being before us that he saw.

I was not an expert on study of wounds, such as was Kennedy, who was examining Murtha's body with minute care, now and then muttering under his breath at the rough and careless handling it had received in its various transfers about the city. But there were some terrible wounds and disfigurements on the body, which added even more to the horror of the case.

One thing, I felt, was fortunate. Murtha had had no family. There had been plenty of scandal about him, but as far as I knew there was no one except his old cronies in the organization to be shocked by his loss, no living tragedy left in the wake of this.

"How do you suppose it happened?" I asked the night keeper.

He shook his head doubtfully. "No one knows, of course," he replied slowly. "But I think the big fellow got worse up there in that asylum. He wasn't used to anything but having his own way, you know. They say he must have waited his chance, after the dinner hour, when things were quiet, and then slipped out while no one was looking. He may have been crazy, but you can bet your life Pat Murtha was the smartest crazy man they ever had up there. THEY couldn't hold him."

"I see," I said, struck by the faith which the man had inspired even in those who held the lowest of city positions. "But I meant how do you suppose he was killed?"

The attendant looked at me thoughtfully a while. "Young man," he answered, "I ain't saying nothing and it may have been an accident after all. Have you ever been up in that part of town?"

I had not and said so.

"Well," he continued, "those electric trains do sneak up on a fellow fast. It may have been an accident, all right. The coroner up there said so, and I guess he ought to know. It must have been late at night--perhaps he was wandering away from the ordinary roads for fear of being recaptured. No one knows--I guess no one will know, ever. But it's a sad day for many of the boys. He helped a lot of 'em. And Mr. Dorgan--he knows what a loss it is, too. I hear that it's hit the Chief hard."

The attendant, rough though he was and hardened by the daily succession of tragedies, could not restrain an honest catch in his voice over the passing of the "big fellow," as some of them called the "Smiling Boss." It was a pretty good object lesson on the power of the system which the organization had built up, how Murtha, and even the more distant Dorgan himself, had endeared himself to his followers and henchmen. Perhaps it was corrupt, but it was at least human, and that was a great deal in a world full of inhumanities. In the face of what had happened, one felt that much might be forgiven Murtha for his shortcomings, especially as the era of the Murthas and Dorgans was plainly passing.

"Here at least," whispered Carton, as we withdrew to a corner to escape the palling atmosphere, "is one who won't worry about what happens to that Black Book any more. I wonder what he really knew about it--what secrets he carried away with him?"

"I can't say," I returned. "But, one thing it does. It must relieve Mrs. Ogleby's fears a bit. With Murtha out of the way there is one less to gossip about what went on at Gastron's that night of the dinner."

He said nothing and just then Kennedy straightened up, as though he had finished his examination. We hurried over to him. I thought the look on Craig's face was peculiar.

"What is it--what did you find?" both Carton and I asked.

Kennedy did not answer immediately.

"I--I can't say," he answered slowly at length, as we thanked the Morgue keeper for his courtesy and left the place. "In fact I'd rather not say--until I know."

I knew from previous experiences that it was of no use to try to quiz Kennedy. He was a veritable Gradgrind for facts, facts, facts. As for myself, I could not help wondering whether, after all, Murtha might not have been the victim of foul play--and, if so, by whom?

XXII

THE CANARD

We did not have to wait long for the secret of the robbery of Carton to come out. It was not in any "extras," or in the morning papers the next day, but it came through a secret source of information to the Reform League.

"A clerk in the employ of the organization who is really a detective employed by the Reform League," groaned Carton, as he told us the story himself the next morning at his office, "has just given us the information that they have prepared a long and circumstantial story about me--about my intimacy with Mrs. Ogleby and Murtha and some others. The story of the robbery of my study is in the papers this morning. To-morrow they plan to publish some photographs--alleged to have been stolen."

"Photographs--Mrs. Ogleby," repeated Kennedy. "Real ones?"

"No," exclaimed Carton quickly, "of course not--fakes. Don't you see the scheme? First they lay a foundation in the robbery, knowing that the public is satisfied with sensations, and that they will be sure to believe that the robbery was put up by some muckrakers to obtain material for an expose. I wasn't worried last night. I knew I had nothing to conceal."

"Then what of it?" I asked naively.

"A good deal of it," returned Carton excitedly, "The story is to be, as I understand it, that the fake pictures were among those stolen from me and that in a roundabout way they came into the possession of someone in the organization, without their knowing who the thief was. Of course they don't know who took them and the original plates or films are destroyed, but they've concocted some means of putting a date on them early in the spring."

"What are they that they should take such pains with them?" persisted Kennedy, looking fixedly at Carton.

Carton met his look without flinching. "They are supposed to be photographs of myself," he repeated. "One purports to represent me in a group composed of Mrs. Ogleby, Murtha, another woman whom I do not even know, and myself. I am standing between Murtha and Mrs. Ogleby and we look very familiar. Another is a picture of the same four riding in a car, owned by Murtha. Oh, there are several of them, of that sort."

He paused as a dozen unspoken questions framed themselves in my mind. "I don't hesitate to admit," he added, "that a few months ago I knew Mrs. Ogleby--socially. But there was nothing to it. I never knew Murtha well, and the other woman I never saw. At various times I have been present at affairs where she was, but I know that no pictures were ever taken, and even if there had been, I would not care, provided they told the truth about them. What I do care about is the sworn allegation that, I understand, is to accompany these--these fakes."

His voice broke. "It's a lie from start to finish, but just think of it, Kennedy," he went on. "Here is the story, and here, too, are the pictures--at least they will be, in print, to-morrow. Now, you know nothing could hurt the reform ticket worse than to have a scandal like this raised at this time. There may be just enough people to believe that there is some basis for the suspicion to turn the tide against me. If it were earlier in the campaign, I might accept the issue, fight it out to a finish, and in the turn of events I should have really the best sort of campaign material. But it is too late now to expose such a knavish trick on the Saturday before election."

"Can't we buy them off?" I ventured, perplexed beyond measure at this new and unexpected turn of events.

"No, I won't," persisted Carton, shutting his square jaw doggedly. "I won't be held up--even if that is possible."

"Miss Ashton on the wire," announced a boy from the outer office.

The look on Carton's face was a study. I saw directly what was the trouble--far more important to him than a mere election.

"Tell her--I'm out--will be back soon," he muttered, for the first time hesitating to speak to her.

"You see," he continued blackly, "I'll fight if it takes my last dollar, but I won't allow myself to be blackmailed out of a cent--no, not a cent," he thundered, a heightened look of determination fixing the lines on his face as he brought his fist down with a rattling bang on the desk.

Kennedy was saying nothing. He was letting Carton ease his mind of the load which had been suddenly thrust upon it. Carton was now excitedly pacing the floor.