Dead Men’s Letters

Dead Men’s Letters

I’ve always been particularly sensitive to the eyes of others. I can tell whenever a person is looking at me, just by a peculiar, crawling sensation that comes along my spine.

Almost as soon as this flapper commenced to give me the twice over I knew what was going on, and I shifted around in my chair so I could see her out of the corner of my eye. On the surface she was just like all the rest of ’em, — boyish bob, long black eyelashes, vivid lips, low, short dress and rolled socks.

It was the man who was with her that drew my gaze. He was like a great octopus. His body seemed to sag beneath his evening clothes, just as though the flesh was too flabby to cling to the bones. It started at his forehead where his eyebrows seemed to fold down over his eyes, and his cheeks sagged down into his collar. His nose hung down and his head drooped; his chest was on top of his stomach and the rest of him was hidden by the edge of the table. But it was his arms and hands that were striking. His hands were great, red, hairy affairs with long, red fingers that kept twisting and twining about. His arms were restless as well, and they flung about over the table like two great serpents that were joined to the flabby body at the shoulders.

Also there was a reddish tinge to his eyes, and a beak-like nose that still further bore out the impression of an octopus I had received. There was a fascination about those long threshing, restless, nervous arms, a something that held one’s eyes. He couldn’t keep them still. The rest of his body was a limp mass of hanging flesh, but his two arms, contrasting against the white of the table cloth, twined and twisted about, while the fingers wriggled and squirmed.

Particularly he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off of the girl. Neither could he keep them on her. There was a temperamental inability to keep his hands still in any one place. He’d thresh his arms about over the table, finger a salt shaker, play with a knife, shift the sugar bowl, and then slide his red, hairy hand along the bare flesh of the girl’s shoulder, down the smooth, gleaming skin of the arm, and back to the sugar bowl. All of this time neither his body nor his face moved a muscle.

I could almost see the girl wince under his touch, and yet she didn’t give him a glance. Her eyes were on me, studying my face, boring into my back whenever I would avert my head. There was a steady, unwinking something about her gaze that spelled desperation, also a dazed something, like a dove that’s held by the glittering eyes of a serpent. That girl had something on her mind beside the boyishly bobbed hair that was done in the latest style.

She was young and she was good looking. How young I couldn’t tell, but young enough to look well in a boyish bob, young enough to have a thin figure without sag lines in the skin of her face, young enough to have eyes that gleamed with the sparkle and vitality of youth, for all of their dazed expression of incipient terror.

About us was the blare and jazz of the cabaret. Couples twisted about the narrow space of the floor, the odor of food, perspiration and coffee mingled with the composite smell of cloying sweetness which is the result of blended perfumery. Over all crashed the syncopated rhythm of jazz music, music that assailed the ears, insulted the mind, and yet appealed to some inner urge in a series of throbbing pulsations.

On the whole it was no place for me. I wasn’t exactly hiding, but I wasn’t courting attention from young flappers in a jazzy cabaret. Ever since some young and ambitious reporter had featured “Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook” in a Sunday magazine supplement, my life had been miserable. That article had been a wonder, and it would be years before it was forgotten. I was a marked man.

If that flapper didn’t know who I was, it was because she didn’t read the papers, or because she hadn’t a good memory for faces. From the look in her eyes I fancied she did know who I was. Of course I’d changed my apartment, had resorted to all of the petty, simple things to throw the public off of my trail, but I could only go so far. If I’d had to, I could have hidden myself pretty effectively, but I didn’t exactly want to. In the first place there was no necessity for it, and, in the second place, it had got so it tickled my vanity to be pointed out as the man who was too slick for the police. However, I didn’t like to advertise too much.

That flapper over there was looking at me with some fixed purpose, and it was just as well for me to get started for some other place. There were lots of cabarets to go to, and then there was a book I hadn’t finished reading at my apartment. I stretched, yawned, and decided I’d go and slip on a dressing gown, read for a couple of hours and go to sleep. I’d had enough cabareting for one night, anyway.

As I paid my check, the flapper got up, walked past me, and went to the ladies’ dressing room. I sized her up and she sized me up. Her skirts were as short as the shortest ones I’d seen, but, aside from that, there was nothing about her I hadn’t noticed when she was at the table. As soon as she was out of sight I left, called a taxi, and headed for home.

Halfway there and I knew I was being followed, and it was a slick job. The other machine wasn’t tailing right along behind, but was working its way through traffic a block below, waiting for me at the intersections, swinging up and crossing ahead or behind the taxi, running circles around it, and always keeping the taxicab in sight. It was one of those low-hung roadsters that are as long as a battleship, have a pickup that nearly jerks the spare tires off, has four wheel brakes for emergencies, and a flexibility of performance that makes a taxicab look like an ice wagon. The bird that was handling that car could sure handle it, too. It was as though the traffic just wasn’t there.

Somehow I got the idea of an aeroplane escorting a big dirigible, and that made me grin. Hang it! If anyone wanted to know where I was hanging out they were welcome to the information. If someone else was going to try and frame something on me and make me the fall guy for a gang of crooks they could hop right to it, but they’d better be sure their life insurance premiums were all paid up.

I drove right to the apartment house where I have my rooms, paid off the driver, and waited a second or two in the dark of the doorway after the cab had driven off. There was the usual line of traffic whining by on the boulevard a block away, and one or two machines that came down my side street, but nothing suspicious. Five minutes passed, ten, and then the big roadster with the balloon tires slipped around the corner and the four-wheeled brakes ground it to a stop fifty feet away. The bird had been parked down the block somewhere, waiting for me to get all nicely settled. I could get a glimpse of him as he unwound from behind the steering wheel, a slim figure wrapped up in a coat, and then there was the sound of light steps on the pavement and a shadow slipped up into the doorway.

I reached out a firm hand.

“Come on, brother, we’ll go up together.”

As soon as I grabbed the arm and spilled the words I knew I had made a mistake. It wasn’t “brother,” it was “sister.” I turned her around to the light and took a look at her face. It was the jane who had been sitting with the human octopus.

“Oh, won’t that be lovely!” she said with a funny catch in her voice, and we started for the elevator.

Going up I could feel her big eyes on my face. I didn’t look at her much because I’d given her the once over in the cabaret, and had seen all there was to see on the face. If anyone can tell anything about these flappers by looking at their maps they know more than I do. They all of ’em doll up with rouge, lipstick and powder, talk about things that’d make me blush, have codes of their own, and yet I’ve a hunch most of ’em are as straight as a string. Anyhow, if she wanted to look a hole in my face I’d let her. She was going to do some explaining when she got to the apartment, and in the meantime I’d let her look to her heart’s content.

When I opened the door of my apartment Bobo, that’s the dog, made one leap to welcome me, and then drew back and looked at the girl. Bobo wasn’t used to seeing me come in with visitors, particularly with flappers.

“Hello, Bobo!” remarked the girl, snapping her fingers.

She knew his name. That meant she’d been reading that article in the paper all right. Bobo looked at her and then at me, sizing her up, and then he wiggled the extreme tip of his tail a bit, sort of dubiously. That was that. There was only one girl Bobo had ever taken to on sight, but the wiggle of the tip of the tail wasn’t a bad sign. Dogs have sensitive ears and sensitive noses, and a dog can read a hell of a lot more about a flapper than a man can by inspecting the color design of their exterior decorations.

“Spill it,” I said, short and crispy.

She let her eyes lazily wander around over the apartment, easy, assured, self-possessed, mistress of the situation and apparently wanting me to realize it. That made me mad, something of her easy assurance, something of the pains she was taking to make me understand that she was the one who held all the cards, knowing all about me, while I knew nothing about her, got under my skin. I decided I’d fool her a bit and give her something to think about, so I ostentatiously went over to the door, turned the key in the lock and dropped the key in my pocket.

She laughed,

“Subtitle, ‘I have you in my power,’ hissed the villian. Not so good, Ed. You’re just peeved and trying to get my goat. When a man’s going to try rough stuff there’s a different look in his eyes, sort of an animal gleam. You just look mad.”

I sighed. Here was this little twenty-year-old flapper kidding me and getting away with it.

“All right, kid,” I told her, “don’t let me keep you up. Speak your little piece and be on your way.”

“Don’t call me kid, call me Lois,” she purred, grinning a bit, her eyes all bright and starry, “Lois Lambert, that’s my name, and I called to invite you to a dance at our house next Thursday. It’s a dress up affair, but you’ll have a good time just the same, and you’ll get a chance to look over lots of good looking dames, and some good looking jewels.”

I gulped. I’m used to most things, but this was something else again.

“Where’s your house?” I asked innocentlike, but I knew the answer before she spilled it.

“Out on Shropshire Drive. I’m John Lambert’s daughter, you know, an only child and spoiled, I guess. Promise me you’ll come.”

I was damned if I was going to let this little flapper see she had my goat, but she sure was ragging me to death. John Lambert was a sort of newcomer in recent years, but he had got there all right. He was reputed to be an engineer of ability and integrity. He had been fortunate in some real estate holdings he’d had when California started to become a tourist mecca, and the old boy was worth a wad of dough. That was all I had on him, but I knew he was in the social upper crust. Here was this moll, posing as his daughter, trying to get me out to his house for a dance on Thursday… Evidently the human octopus was a crook, the girl was his moll, and they were going to make a gem cleanup at the dance, and make sure that I’d be out there where the police would pick me up. That’d make it soft for them.

“Sure, I’ll be there,” I told her. “That is, if the date doesn’t conflict with some of my other social engagements. I’ll have to wait until my social secretary arrives in the morning. I never can remember my engagements. Let’s see, though; there’s the supper party at the Mayor’s some time this week, and the president of the First National Bank wanted me to drop in for an informal family party either Thursday or Friday, I’ve forgotten which, and I promised the Chief of Police I’d sit in on a bridge party the latter part of the week. I’ll look up the dates and let you know tomorrow.”

“Then I can count on you being there?” she asked, her red lips smiling up at me with a daredevil expression. “You’d ditch any of those dates to come out to my party wouldn’t you?”

I walked over, stood by the door and bowed.

“You can count on me accepting your invitation,” I told her. “Don’t give it another thought. Just tell the butler I’ll be on the list of those invited so he won’t throw me out because I haven’t an engraved invitation.”

She ducked her head in a grin.

“Oh, that’s all right. There’s just going to be a few intimate friends there, no mob, you know. I’ll come right and get you as soon as you show up and see that you’re properly introduced. Remember now, Thursday at eight-thirty.”

I took her arm, and felt her wince as my hand grabbed the warm, bare flesh.

“Look here, kid. I’ve got nothing against you, but I’m getting tired of being a fall guy. Just get this settled in your think tank. I’m coming, and I’m going to be there with bells on.”

She gave my cheek a swift pat as she twisted her arm free. “That’s what I want you to do, silly. Now the key, please, because the folks will be worrying about me.”

I unlocked the door and gave her a cold glance.

“How did you happen to get me on your invitation list?”

“Oh, I just wanted to pep things up, Ed,” she said. “You’ll be the life of the party.”

I let her get into the elevator before I got busy. I won’t say that I beat the elevator down, but I came pretty close to it. I was back in the hallway as she went through the door, got a glimpse of flashing skirts, neat ankles, and heard the whine of the starting motor. When the machine purred down the street I had the license number and three minutes later I had my own roadster under me.

John Lambert’s house number I got from the telephone directory, and I was out there in as short a time as I dared to make it without running the risk of a long jail sentence. I waited in the darkness across the street, watching the black hulk of the gloomy house, the piled up shadows of solid respectability.

Thirty minutes after I started watching, the long roadster nosed around the corner, hesitated for a minute at the entrance to the driveway and then swung into the Lambert garage. The girl got out after she’d closed the garage doors, skipped up the front steps and let herself in with a latch key. She was alone.

I gumshoed over to the garage, took a look at the machine, saw that it had the same license number, looked at the registration card and saw that it was registered in the name of Lois Lambert. Then I beat it. I didn’t want to be seen hanging around the house.

So this girl, whoever she was, actually lived in Lambert’s house, and had enough pull with Lois Lambert to get the use of a damned expensive roadster… There was just the barest possible chance that the kid had told me the truth and that she really was Lois Lambert, but the chances were ten to one in favor of her being a social secretary to the Mrs. or a private stenographer to the head of the family.

Anyway, she and a flabby guy with feverish arms wanted me to be turned away at the door of the Lambert house at eight-thirty Thursday. They must have thought I had a solid vacuum above the ears. Ed Jenkins, international crook, presenting himself at the home of John Lambert, asking to come in and join the dance! It was a goofy scheme all right.

I went back to my apartment and thought the thing over and the more I thought about it the madder I got. Hang it! I was blamed near mad enough to go and walk into their trap and dish things up for them. I’d got to do something spectacular to let all the cheap crooks in the country know that they couldn’t use Ed Jenkins as a stalking horse. I started to ring up old man Lambert himself and tell him to be sure and keep a close watch on his jewels and those of his guests on Thursday, but something held me back. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to sit in on the game and draw cards myself.

It remained to find out who the human octopus was. There was a something about that man that also reminded me of a spider. His hands were like the tentacles of an octopus, but there was a something about the way he sat at a table that made me think of a great big spider waiting for his prey to come and walk into his web. Then I remembered that that was the way with an octopus. Those devil fish get down in the dark caves of the rocky ledges and wait for their prey to come swimming by, then there’s the flash of a great, snake-like tentacle, and the victim vanishes within the dark cave where the inert, jelly-like mass of the octopus regards him through two great eyes, his horrid, parrot-like beak working up and down in anticipation of the bloody feast… Ugh! That man gave me the shivers, and I don’t mean maybe. I’d take a stab at looking him up and see if I could locate him.

I went down to the cabaret and had a long talk with the head waiter, a talk that was sandwiched in between a couple of ten dollar bills, and when I left my head was ringing.

The guy with the feverish arms was named Sly, and he was evidently a sly bird. The head waiter didn’t know much about him except that he was the king of blackmailers. He knew nothing about where Sly held out, or just what he was doing, but he did know enough to be afraid of the big man, and also to know about the blackmail business.

I did a little thinking after that. A blackmailer and a girl who was probably a social secretary to Mrs. John Lambert. They wanted to ring me in on the party for some reason. That reason wasn’t exactly clear to me and it bothered me.

The next night when I was sitting in my deep leather chair, browsing through the paper and relaxing, taking life easy, with Bobo sitting nearby, his head on my knees, there came the sound of quick, light steps in the hall, and then a knock on the door. Bobo ducked in back of a screen, a favorite habit of his when he hears company coming, and I flung open the door. After that damned newspaper article I’d had so many visitors I was getting used to ’em.

It was the girl again.

“I just ran in to make sure you’d be at the party Thursday, Ed,” she breezed, as though she’d known me for ten years. “You see it’s mighty important to me to know whether or not you’re coming.”

“Come in and sit down,” I said, and blamed if she didn’t — just as easy like as though calling on crooks in their apartments was all in the day’s work.

“You’ve got lots of confidence in your ability to take care of yourself,” I told her, with a half-glowering look. It commenced to irritate me, the sublime self-assurance of the girl.

“You’re mid-Victorian in lots of things, Ed,” she rippled right back at me. “What’s more you mustn’t look at my knees when I cross ’em. That’s old-fashioned — a sure sign of age. The young, up-to-the-minute fellows are too blasé to even notice ’em.”

Hang the kid! There she was — no bigger than the second hand on a wrist watch, sitting there laughing at me, and stringing me along on some game I didn’t understand. I made up my mind I’d call her bluff and call it cold.

“I’m coming to the dance all right, but I thought I’d better run out and meet your folks first. I was just going to run out for a chat with your father, but if you’re here with your car you can run me out and perform the introductions.”

She ducked her head so the brim of her hat shut off my view of her face, leaving only the tip of her chin peeping out, and I thought she was going to cave-in and spill it then, but I was fooled. When she looked up she was smiling.

“What’s the matter, Ed? Afraid it’s not nice to talk to me without asking permission from the folks? Come on.”

I picked up my hat. Somewhere along the line she’d have to weaken, that is, unless the folks were out and she knew she could have the run of the house.

“Let’s go,” I told her.

She was a vivacious little thing, all thin legs, bobbed hair and smiles, but I began to see there was something to her after the way she handled the car in traffic. However, I sat alongside of her without a word, waiting for her quitting time to come.

She drove straight to the house, swung into the driveway, skipped out and stood waiting for me. “Come on,” she said.

Doggedly, I got out of the car and walked up the steps.

There were lights in the house and I could hear the sound of voices. Somehow I commenced to have a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

She let herself in, took my hat and ushered me into a parlor.

“Well, Grouch-face, don’t look so stiff,” she said. “Unbend, both figuratively and literally. Turn up the corners of the lips, and then bend forward and park the hips on the family upholstery. You wanted to meet daddy. I’ll go get him.”

I sat there, feeling as cold and clammy as I’ve ever felt on a job. Ed Jenkins calling on John Staunton Lambert! That was a hot sketch all right. The girl was probably a social secretary and she’d introduce me as a friend of hers, and yet… I commenced to have doubts and those doubts centered in a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The door opened and a tired looking man with a gray mustache and keen eyes stood surveying me. The girl was beside him with her arm around him.

“Daddy, shake hands with Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Ed Jenkins. He’s a friend of mine I haven’t seen for some time and here I ran on to him in a cabaret the other day.”

I found myself shaking hands and looking into the tired, gray eyes.

“My daughter says you’re coming to the dance Thursday evening. That’s fine. We’ll be glad to have you. Do you live here in the city, Mr. Jenkins?”

She answered the question.

“He’s here temporarily. He’s got some sort of a funny business, transferring securities, isn’t it, Ed?”

I nodded. That was as good a name for it as anything, and I didn’t want to engage in conversation. I wanted to get out of there. There was some thinking I had to do.

We chatted about the city, the weather and the League of Nations for a bit, and then the old bird with the tired eyes mentioned that he’d leave us young folks to our own devices, shook hands again and went out.

I turned loose on the girl.

“You little, irresponsible idiot!” I stormed. “Haven’t you got enough respect for your father, for your own house, for your own self-esteem, not to go out bringing in crooks and introducing ’em to your dad? Don’t you know it’d make him the laughing stock of the town if it got out that he had received Ed Jenkins as a guest? Don’t you know it’d be enough to ruin his career? That about half of the people would think I had him bribed to give me respectability? If you’ve got any proposition you want to make to me, get your cards on the table and spit it out, but at least have enough sense of decency to protect your home and your dad’s good name.”

She didn’t turn a hair but stood on her tiptoes, her red lips within an inch or two of my face.

“My, but you look nice when you’re mad, Ed! Sort of big and strong like, as though there was nothing you’d stop at. Now do you want to meet mother?”

I shook my head. “I’m on my way, and I won’t be here Thursday,” I said as I headed for the hall.

She got my hat, opened the door, and then came bounding down the steps like a rubber ball.

“Don’t be so hasty, Ed. Remember I’ve got to drive you back. I took you out and I’ve got to get you home. I’ll bet you didn’t bring any mad money with you, either, and I haven’t made a young man walk home for nearly six weeks now, so I don’t want to break my good record.”

I was mad and I’d have said more right then, but I caught a glimpse of someone hiding behind the shadow cast by a shade tree across the street. The street light was just bright enough to intensify the shadows and I couldn’t get a good look at him, but, from the way he ducked back out of sight I was satisfied I was the bird he was looking at.

All of a sudden the solution of the whole thing flashed across my mind. The girl was one of these modem, heartless flappers, probably jazz mad and pinched for money. The old man had shut down on her allowance, and she’d made up her mind to throw in with a blackmailer, get something on him and split fifty-fifty with the blackmailer. If they could prove that Ed Jenkins, the international crook, was being entertained at the home of John Staunton Lambert, someone would have to come across to hush things up. It was a wild idea all right, but things like that are worked every once in a while by the kids of today, and if that was the scheme it wouldn’t be the first time a kid had blackmailed the folks… and yet… somehow it didn’t seem to fit the picture. Of course if the fool kid thought that the human octopus would split anything with her she had two other guesses coming. He’d string her along for a good thing, and then tell her to go chase herself.

“Come, come, Ed. Why so thoughtful?”

There was a teasing note in her voice.

“You don’t need to sit over there all huddled up against the door that way. For a man who posed as such a wicked betrayer of little girls, and took the apartment key and put it in his pocket with that ‘I have you in my power’ sort of look, you seem to be pretty distant when you’re automobile riding.”

She had me guessing. I looked into the dancing devils of those two sparkling eyes, saw the parted, crimson lips, the laughing mouth, and saw something else, saw that there was some hidden emotion lurking in the depth of those eyes. There was a great big, serious something down underneath. It wasn’t fear, but it was worry, worry and something else, sort of a look of desperation such as I imagine a crook has when he’s being taken out to the electric chair.

A machine swung in behind us and the lights shone through the window in the back of the roadster.

“What a nice little boy hims is,” she taunted. “My great big lukewarm daddy.”

At that I kissed her, and her kiss was a surprise, a long, trembling, clinging kiss of sheer youth, of abandon, and yet not of passion. It was more the kiss of a child who is afraid of being left alone in the dark, and yet there was the touch of a grown-up woman in it, too.

The roadster swung off toward the curb, and she twisted back the wheel with a quick turn of the wrist. The other car shot past us, and in the driver’s seat I could get a glimpse of a big, sagging frame that seemed to slump down upon the seat, immobile and inert, while a pair of long, restless arms wrapped about the steering wheel. The human octopus was driving that car, although he did not turn his head.

“Hot siggety boom!” exclaimed the girl as she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “My lukewarm daddy’s come to life!”

And at that I laughed. Here was no innocent kid being made the victim of a conspiracy. Here was a modem flapper, alive, alert, possessing a knowledge of the world and its ways, starting deliberately to play with fire, to seek to trap Ed Jenkins into some situation which would prove his undoing. All right. Let her go to it.

She swung into the curb and parked.

“Ed, you may be a first class crook, but as a necker you’re the bunk. What you don’t know about necking would fill a book. Come over here and let mommer give you a lesson.”

Five minutes later she started the car again.

“The original asbestos poppa!” she said half to herself, half to me.

Once more there was a purring hum and the big car with the human octopus at the wheel slid by. This time I was sure she saw him. Her mouth twitched, and, although her head did not turn, she kept her eyes on the other car.

We drove along in silence for a few minutes, the spell of the warm night, the proximity of the slender girl, the blazing stars, all conspiring to make me moody and reflective. I stole a glance at her face and, as I did so, she leaned forward to turn out the dash light. As her eyes came within the circle of the illumination just before she switched off the little globe, I saw the sparkle of moisture. There were tears in her eyes, tears running down her cheeks. She spun the wheel and managed to dash the back of her hand across her eyes, surreptitiously.

“Hot spit!” she exclaimed, apropos of nothing.

At the door of the apartment she insisted on one more, goodnight kiss, and threw herself into my arms, a bundle of vibrant, quivering, clinging femininity, kissed me, opened the door of the roadster, patted my arm, and took a deep breath, a breath in which there could be no mistaking the quick catch of a sob.

Somehow I felt strangely old as I approached the door of my apartment. Being with such a hot bundle of emotion, such flaming youth, had only emphasized my own, staid, philosophical outlook on life. Here was a girl, young yet sophisticated, playing some deep game in which the stakes were more than any girl in her position had any business gambling for; at one moment seeking to draw me to her by hot kisses, and at the next weeping copiously if surreptitiously, and all the time being shadowed by the human octopus, the king of the blackmailers, while at home waited a tired-eyed, stooped parent…

It was all too much for me. I had begun to drift into the quiet eddies of life, seeking to find some slow stream in which I could drift with the sluggish current. Being sucked back into the vortex of life, into the whirlpool of youthful emotions was too much for my mental equilibrium. This California immunity was making me soft, making me seek the quiet safety of a law-abiding, well-ordered life. I made up my mind then and there that I’d not seek to keep my immunity. I’d go after things in my own way, fight my old duel with the law. Let them catch me if they could.

As soon as I opened the door I knew something was wrong. There was no sound of pattering feet as Bobo launched himself on me in a glad ecstasy. Instead there was a pitiful whine, and a slow, weak, thump, thump on the floor.

Hastily, I switched on the light.

Bobo had been shot, shot with a revolver equipped with a silencer, probably, because there were no signs of commotion in the house. He was lying there on the floor, his eyes glazing, yet summoning his waning strength to wag a greeting with his tail, and he seemed trying to apologize for the loss of blood which prevented him from getting up and fawning upon me.

In a second I who had been contemplating the calm philosophy of life but a moment before, who had been speculating that the mad emotions of youth were gone never to again return, was seeing red with rage, a rage which had never before been equaled in my life.

I stopped the blood from the dog’s wound as best I could, telephoned for a veterinary, and paced the floor, the blood pounding in my temples, my anger too great to enable me to think clearly. Had the girl deliberately held me with the wiles of a vampire in order to enable her confederate to sneak to the door of my apartment and shoot the dog? Had there been some plan underway by which the conspirators had sought to deprive me of my dog? Or had they tried to search the apartment and had Bobo attacked so vigorously and silently that they had been forced to shoot him?

I could not answer my own questions. I could not even hazard a guess at the answers. For once there was a blind rage in my mind which prevented clearness of thought. I only knew that someone would pay.

The veterinary arrived, made an examination, shook his head, and conveyed Bobo away in an ambulance. I rode with the dog, sat up with him during the long night, watched with him the next day until at last the veterinary nodded at me and told me the dog would pull through.

Then and not until then did I leave Bobo, but the mission on which I left was in his behalf. I was seeking revenge, and the rage which had mastered me, still held me in its grip. There remained an inability to think clearly. Whenever I turned my mind to the problem before me, all I could see was the pathetic look in the dog’s eyes as he wagged his tail in greeting, welcoming the arrival of his master with the expenditure of his last, feeble strength, apologizing that the blood he had shed in defense of my possessions, had weakened him so that he could not come to me.

That day was Thursday. That night would be the dance at the home of John Staunton Lambert, and I determined that I would go to that dance. Fate had dealt the cards, and Ed Jenkins proposed to sit in the game.

I laid down and tried to sleep but could not. My eyes stared at the ceiling, wide awake.

I got up, took a shower, and made an examination of the apartment. It had been thoroughly and skillfully ransacked. Whether the search had been made after the shooting of the dog or before I had no way of telling. In one corner, though, I found a scrap of cloth, a cloth of a peculiar check, a check which was familiar, which brought up vague recollections.

I stood studying it for several minutes, puzzling my mind in an effort to recall when I had seen it before and where. My mind would not remain on the problem, but wandered off into a recollection of the events of the night before. “Hot Spit!” seemed to ring in my ears, and then I remembered.

The cloth was bloodstained, tom irregularly, jagged, as though wrenched by the teeth of a dog from a jacket or skirt. It was a part of the suit Lois Lambert had worn the night I first met her.

For a long moment I stood, looking at that fragment of cloth, and then I went to the wardrobe trunk in which I carried my clothes and took out my evening suit. I had decided. I would go to the dance.

Promptly at eight-thirty I drove up to the Lambert house, and I was a desperate man that night. There was a cold rage which had taken possession of me. I did not have sufficient facts at my disposal to strike, but I determined that I would get what facts I needed, and when I did get them I would act. As a criminal, the courts of justice are closed to me, have always been closed. I would be laughed out of court if I ever sought to protect my rights by judicial process. As a result I was my own judge, my own jury, and, at times, my own executioner.

The dance was a simple affair. Not over ten couples were in the private ballroom. Mrs. Lambert was a woman with red hair and keen, blue eyes that seemed to see more than they disclosed. She sized me up carefully and thoughtfully when I was presented. Somehow I had an idea that she read the papers and knew who I was. And yet she did not seem to resent my presence.

Sly was there, and I was formally presented to him. Ogden Sly, his name was, and neither of us made any offer to shake hands. He barely bowed his great head upon his soft, flabby neck, his arms moving about from the shoulders like the great tentacles of an octopus. His reddish eyes gleamed into my own, and I saw his narrow mouth move beneath the beak of his nose. He was mouthing an acknowledgment of the introduction, but I did not hear the words.

Lois was radiant in one of those gowns that women wear to display their charms. There was an appeal about her which was emphasized by the sheer, shimmering silk of the garment, the clinging lines and the vital body beneath.

“Ed, you simply must quit looking at my legs,” she said. “I don’t want folks to think that you are hopelessly old-fashioned, or getting to be an old man. You’re passé, out of date. Take a tumble to yourself, lower the eyebrows, elevate the eyes, and don’t think knees are such a treat.”

I did not respond to her banter. Always I was thinking of the faithful dog lying at the point of death. I was in this game solely to get cards, and I intended to get cards solely to win.

John Lambert gave a glimpse of his real character. Kindly and worried is the best way I can describe him. There was always the kindly care and consideration for his guests, that preoccupation which is the prerogative of men who have developed the power to think deeply, and, under all, was a haunting worry.

Sly seemed literally to force himself upon the girl. He danced with her, and, while he danced, his long, restless arms flitted over her figure, his hairy hands rubbed the bare flesh of her arms and shoulders, while his heavy body and expressionless face seemed merely a jellified mass of flesh. Only was there the reddish gleam of the eyes and the parrot-like appearance of his nose and narrow mouth.

It has been a long time since I have been in a ballroom. I am afraid I did not appear to great advantage, and I didn’t give a damn.

At that, I was better than one of the young sheiks. Walter Carter was the name by which he was introduced, and he was acting as escort for a vivacious little blonde who was bubbling forth good nature and an incessant line of small talk. She ran more words to the inch than any girl I have ever seen, and she said less to the word. That girl could have written a complete set of fifty volumes on the weather and it would all have strung together in perfect continuity and then when a fellow had read everything that was in the fifty volumes he’d still have to stick his head out of the window to see whether it was raining. That’s the sort of a baby she was, and Walter Carter had the facial expression of a man who has just eaten a soft-boiled rotten egg and can’t get the taste out of his mouth.

All in all it was one hell of a party.

I was probably supposed to hang around the females and watch and listen. I looked ’em over all right — these party gowns have to show more than the street styles — but I didn’t do very much dancing. In my opinion there’s better ways of spending life than by walking around on tiptoe to music, carrying some saucy little baggage around with you. However that’s just my opinion.

Along about ten o’clock I drifted around the house, taking advantage of my privileges as a guest to satisfy my curiosity as a crook.

John Lambert had a little study and library fixed up in one corner of the house, and I fancied he didn’t care very much for the social life. He had a place that looked mighty cozy, all lined with leather bound books, containing a safe and easy-chair, a typewriter and long table. I’ve noticed that nearly all of the better class of professional men have sort of a home library and study, but whether it’s because they like to work there or because they get so they prefer books to women is more than I know. Maybe it’s a little of both.

I took a ramble out on the porch, into the little patio in the back, looked over the flowers in the moonlight, and then started back. There were voices in the study. A polite guest would have coughed. A gentleman would have backed out. Being a crook and proud of it, I tiptoed within and listened.

Sly, the human octopus, was talking to John Lambert.

“Of course, he’s peculiar in his demands, but I’ve done everything I could. I’m free to admit that I want Lois, but, on the other hand, I’ve tried by every means in my power to protect you. You can see this letter for yourself. The man is desperate, and perhaps not all there, but he claims to have proofs, and I believe he will use them. You can follow your own judgment.”

There was a silence for a few moments, and then the rustle of paper, the clang of the safe door, and something said in such low tones that I couldn’t make it out. A chair scraped, and the two men left the room.

I waited a decent interval, and then came on back into the ballroom.

“Say, what’s the matter with you men?” asked Lois. “Here everyone goes out and I almost miss a dance. Come on, let’s pep it up. Have some punch, everybody. We just spilled a whole bottle of hair tonic in it by mistake…”

John Lambert held up his hand.

“Folks, the object of this little party is to announce to a select circle of our friends the engagement of Lois to Mr. Ogden Sly. Lois is our only daughter and Ogden is one of the city’s most enterprising and successful young businessmen. Fill up your glasses with punch and drink to their health.”

Mrs. Lambert’s face paled at the words, and I saw her hand rub over her eyes. Lois stood upright, smiling, red lips parted, and she looked over and directly into my eyes at the words, and in her face was a challenge. Ogden Sly wiggled his arms around, patted his hair with a great, hairy hand, and twisted his narrow, parrot-like mouth. Walter Carter took a deep breath, and acted as though he were on the point of saying something, but breeding got the better of impulse, and he kept silent.

That is the worst of breeding.

I bowed, drank their health, took advantage of the opportunity to slip away, and went after the safe in the study. As a crook I wasn’t hampered by etiquette, breeding or conventions.

The safe was duck soup. I’ve been in the game long enough to know more about combination locks than the man that invented ’em. When I get up against a regular safe I sometimes have to use some combination detectors of my own invention, but the ordinary bread box opens with a little pocket stethoscope, and that’s all there is to it.

John Lambert’s safe didn’t amount to much.

The letters I wanted to look over were tied with a string, and lying in plain sight. The handwriting was peculiar, one of those straight up and down affairs that has a tendency to a backhand slant.

The bird that had written those letters was named C. W. Kinsington and he didn’t mince words. Apparently he didn’t need to. He had been mixed up with John Lambert in some big paving contract litigation, and the engineer had taken a bribe for his work. It had been a long time ago, and young Lambert had apparently been green, ambitious and weak in those days. He seemed to have thought the writer of the letters was dead and the evidence had perished with him, and then the man had cropped up with a letter showing he was alive and demanding blackmail. He had selected Ogden Sly as his agent, and wrote that he didn’t want to meet John Lambert personally as there was no need. Lambert would recognize his handwriting and the description of the evidence that the man had, etc., etc.

I took a hasty run through the letters, and then I made a copy of some portions of the handwriting. I didn’t have any very substantial idea right then, but I wanted a specimen of the handwriting. I’ve specialized on three things in the criminal game, one of ’em is opening safes, another is forgeries, and the third is using my wits. There’s damn few safes I can’t open, and I’ve never seen the handwriting that’s had me stumped. A little practice and I can dash it off before witnesses as rapidly as though it was my regular style, and I’ll defy ’em to tell it from the genuine when I’ve finished.

Apparently the thing had been going on for about a year, and Ogden Sly, always as the agent of the other man, had been milking Lambert of all his surplus cash. There were letters, statements, accounts and what not. His last demand had been that Lois marry Ogden Sly. He gave no reasons, simply made the demand.

I skimmed though the papers, made my samples of handwriting on the off chance they might come in handy, and closed the safe. Then I turned, moved by some subtle sixth sense that told me I wasn’t alone. There in the doorway stood Mrs. Lambert, red haired and keen eyed.

“Hell!” I exclaimed involuntarily. I had grown so accustomed to having Bobo with me to stand guard while I pulled jobs like the one I’d just finished, that I’d grown careless, and forgotten to watch my back trail.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

I was mad. Mad at myself, at conventions, and at the silly custom of having a woman say she “begged pardon” when she heard a simple cuss word.

“I said ‘hell,’Ю” I told her, mad clear through, and determined to start the ball rolling right then and there.

“That’s what I thought you said,” she remarked dryly. “We are missing you in the ballroom. Lois said she would like very much to dance with you.”

She spilled that and stood there. She must have seen me at the safe, certainly knew that I was fooling around in her husband’s study with things that didn’t concern me. Was she going to pass the occasion off without comment, and, if she was, was it because of her sense of her obligations as a hostess or because of some other reason? I didn’t know, so I bowed and went in to dance with Lois.

It was some dance.

Lois laughed, breathed her fragrant, warm breath upon my cheek and taunted me with being a “lukewarm daddy.” I could see that there was a game afoot, but I didn’t know just what it was or where the cards were coming from, so I said but little.

“Come on, you lukewarm daddy,” taunted the girl. “I’m not supposed to be dancing around supported by the atmospheric pressure. Snuggle up enough so I can feel that I’ve got a partner. You learned that clinch dancing the Virginia Reel back in the old days when Sunday School picnics represented the hectic height of entertainment. Liven up a little bit. What do you suppose they wrote all those jazzy bits in the music for? Swing around enough to let the folks feel my new friend isn’t an animated manikin from the window of a clothing store. Come on, Ed, snap into it!”

“Where’s the suit you wore the night you first met me?” I countered.

A frown came over her face.

“Girls don’t wear tailored suits at a dance,” she observed.

“Would you mind letting me see it?”

She looked thoughtful for a long moment.

“I can tell you what you want to know,” she said at length. “Someone went into my closet and tore a piece out of the cloth on the arm. I couldn’t figure out what it was all about.”

I glanced at her bare arm on which there was no mark of fang, not even the suggestion of a bruise, and pondered upon her explanation. It would really have been impossible for her to have been in the room when Bobo was shot. She had been with me that evening. The music blared to a stop, the swaying couples parted, and the human octopus made his way forward.

“That’s the last dance before the concluding number, and the supper dance is mine, Lois.”

She nodded, still clinging to me as though loath to break away from the embrace of the dance, or as though clinging to me for support.

“Sorry, Jenkins,” said the human octopus to me, “but it happens that in this little game I hold all the cards, and I know you’ll be a good loser.”

There was that in his voice and manner which made me more than mildly irritated.

“I haven’t lost anything yet,” I told him, “and don’t be too sure about holding the cards. I have a hole card you haven’t seen yet.”

“What’s a hole card?” asked Lois, her brow puckered, but a devil dancing in each eye.

“Usually a hidden ace, when the player is a good one,” I answered quickly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “then I may have a hole card, too. I know what you’re talking about now. It’s stud poker, and a good player not only has a hole card, but he had another one right next to it. How is it you say? Back to back! That’s it.”

“Enough of such nonsense!” said Sly impatiently as he grabbed her in his long, nervous arms and swept her away, his hairy hands sliding up and down her gleaming shoulder.

For several moments I watched them, and then I turned as the vivacious blonde laid down a barrage of small talk, the words running together in a stream. I didn’t feel called upon exactly to start any campaign after Ogden Sly unless it should appear that he was the one who had shot my dog, in which event…

At length the evening was over. Why I had ever consented to attend such a function was more than I knew. I realized it was merely the opening move in a campaign of some importance, and it was the fact that I could not penetrate the motives of the players as much as anything else which had caused me to become intrigued in the affair.

Lois was there when I took my leave, and suddenly, as she escorted me to the door, threw her arms around me and implanted a kiss full on my lips. It was a hard-lipped, hurried kiss, done more for ostentation than for any other purpose, and I looked hurriedly around, trying to see the one for whose benefit that move had been planned.

There were two spectators. Standing at the end of the hall, her eyes expressionless, face a calm mask, was Mrs. Lambert. She was in the shadows at the back part of the corridor, and I was not sure whether Lois knew she was there. At one of the windows which opened on to the porch I caught a hurried blur of motion as Ogden Sly drew back into the shadows. Did the girl know he was there? I had no way of telling.

Of one thing I was sure, that kiss had been for the benefit of either one or the other. I was satisfied that the girl knew of only one spectator. Either she knew her mother was watching, and took that opportunity to show her parent that she was not in love with Ogden Sly, or else, she did not know her mother was watching, but did know that Sly was posted at the window. If that were the case, I began to wonder just what was going to be the next move in the game.

I got into my roadster, with the girl’s hard-lipped kiss still tingling my mouth, and shot down the street, turned a side street, doubled back, and then slid into the shadows of some trees away from the street lights, and waited to see if I had been followed. The street seemed deserted.

I drove down to the dog hospital going slowly, thinking, letting my subconscious mind take care of the operation of the automobile. I was more interested in Bobo than in anything right then, and yet I could almost feel in my mind the psychic sweep of forces which were hurling me into the vortex of an adventure concerning which I knew but little.

All about me was the play of conflicting emotions, emotions so strong as to affect the lives of the various parties, and yet which were masked under the atmosphere of respectability. It was a strange situation, and I found myself being drawn more and more toward the girl, some impulse caused me to extend to her my liking and sympathy, and it is seldom that emotions enter into my mind when I am reasoning out a problem.

The dog was better, and for that I was thankful. His strength was coming back rapidly as his splendid system manufactured new blood to take the place of that he had lost. They told me that it would only be a few days until he would be with me once more. The news was welcome. I fancied that I would need my four-footed pal before many days had passed.

I returned to my apartment, placed the car in the garage, ascended the elevator, and fitted my latch key in the door. As I did so there sounded a heavy thud from within. The door flung open in my face and a dark figure scuttled down the corridor.

With that first sound I had thrown myself back and against the wall, prepared to resist an attack. As the door had flung open I was poised on the balls of my feet, ready for anything in the line of an unexpected offensive. What I was not prepared for, was this rushing figure which tore down the hall to the back stairway. He was fleeing, that was certain, and he had apparently foreseen my move in flattening against the wall away from the door, for he dashed madly away without even the backward look which one would give who expected to be stopped.

In one bound I jumped within the apartment. A man was on the floor, lying on his back, his eyes already glazing in death, and his hands clutching futilely at his breast, from which there protruded a hilt of a knife. In that moment I cursed myself for a fool. I should have been prepared. Ogden Sly was no man to stand idly back and allow his game to be interfered with. Seeing me at the Lambert house, he had reasoned that conflict was inevitable, that I could do him no good, and should be placed behind bars before I could do him any harm.

That is the penalty of being a crook, known to the police as such. The police wait, always ready, always anxious to hang some crime on the man who has a “record.” It had only been necessary for Sly to arrange to have some man lured to my apartment, to have him stabbed, and then to wait and let the law take its course. As a crook, known in several nations, a dozen states, I could never convince any judge or jury in the land that it had not been my hand which had darted home that heavy dagger.

Already I was satisfied that the police had been notified by a mysterious voice purporting to come from some “tenant of the building,” who desired his name withheld, that there had been the sounds of a struggle and of a man’s scream from my apartment. Already the police would be on their way to the place in a fast automobile. I was there with the dying man, a well-dressed stranger.

His lips writhed and twisted as he attempted to say some word, to give me some message, and then, as I bent over to hear what he had to say, he died. From the street without there sounded the rapid explosions of an exhaust as a police car skidded around the corner and slid to a stop before the apartment house. The echo of a siren was caught by the buildings down the street and came in through the windows, a bare, ghostly wail of a sound.

The dead man on the floor I had never seen before. The man who had rushed so madly down the hall had also been a stranger. I had not seen his face, but there had been a queer, one-sided set to his shoulders as he ran which would have attracted my attention anywhere. Also I noticed that there was a bandage about his left arm. I wondered about that bandage. There was a chance that beneath that cloth were the fang marks of a dog. If that should be so…

I had no time for speculation. The police were at the door of the house, and would be at my apartment in a matter of seconds.

I looked out of the window. The yard, three floors below, grown up with ornamental shrubbery and flowers, loomed black and forbidding, shielded from the meagre lights at the street corners by the bulk of surrounding buildings.

There was a long coil of rope in one of the closets, and I took the man and also the mg upon which he had fallen, tied the rope about his shoulders in one of those knots which are known to sailors and which will hold as long as there is a tension upon it, yet break loose when the rope is slackened and given a shake or two. I rolled a bed against the window, giving me a section of the brass bedpost about which to make a turn of the line for a snubber, raised the body to the window, and lowered it into the yard.

As soon as the rope slackened I gave it a shake, slipped loose the knot and then drew back the rope. Sixty seconds later there was an authoritative rap at my door, and I opened it to confront a squad of uniformed men. I was in dressing robe and slippers.

“There’s a rumor of a fight up here. What’s the row?” asked the man who stood in the lead, his face tense and white. Quite evidently he had heard enough about Ed Jenkins to make him fear for his own safety. He had four men with him, and they were all rather subdued for policemen. Their attitude gave me my clue.

“You got my telephone message straight?” I asked.

“Your message?” asked the man in uniform.

I looked at him vacantly.

“Of course; who did you think did the telephoning?”

“The desk sergeant told me it was a man who declined to give his name who said he had an apartment here, and that there had been a commotion in the apartment above.”

I nodded. The thing had worked out as I had anticipated.

“I didn’t give my name because I was afraid of police skepticism. I am having an increasingly hard time trying to make you fellows believe that I am on the square. There was a racket in the apartment above, and I am sure I heard a man fall to the floor. After that there were running feet, and then silence. I telephoned to the desk sergeant at once.”

The officer scratched his head.

“The man who telephoned said that the apartment above was occupied by Ed Jenkins, the famous Phantom Crook.”

I laughed at that.

“That was all twisted up. The sergeant asked who to see if they needed more information and I finally told him to have his men come to the apartment of Ed Jenkins. That’s how he got things balled up. I really wish you’d take a look upstairs at the apartment over mine, officer. You know with my record the fact that I’ve reformed doesn’t protect me a bit. If anything should go wrong within a mile of me there’d always be those to say I was responsible. That’s why I always notify the police.”

He stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, his forehead puckered in what passes for thought with the average flatfoot.

“I’ll go up there, all right,” he said at length, “but before I do, I’m goin’ through this here apartment, an’ I’m going through it right now.”

With that he lowered his head, dropped his right hand to his pocket, and came boring on into the apartment.

“Pray come in, gentlemen,” I said. “I regret that a certain organized bloc of voters have made it impossible for me to provide you with what was once considered the first essential in the way of hospitality, but a constitutional amendment is, of course, binding on crooks, if not on police officers and legislators. Pray, come in.”

It took them a moment to figure out that speech, and when they did, they didn’t know much more than they had before. They came in with a belligerent attitude, and they prowled around the apartment, looking things over.

“Of course you’ll understand headquarters looks the place over every two or three weeks,” I remarked smoothly. “If there’s anything I can do, or any way I can be of assistance, just let me know.”

The main squeeze disregarded the comment, and they all flatfooted around the apartment until they had convinced themselves there was nothing concealed within the walls of the small place, and then it occurred to the head of the gang that he’d better take a look at that upper apartment. I begged him not to do so.

“If I was mistaken you’ll simply be unnecessarily arousing the people upstairs, and if I was right in my hunch and there has been any crime committed up there they’ll now have had sufficient warning to have concealed all of the evidence. Pray let them alone.”

The flatfoot looked at me moodily and then led his men up the stairs to the apartment above. There was a chorus of sleepy grunts, rather an explosion of verbal threats as the other sensed what the men were doing there, and then some angry words on both sides. I rather gathered that I would not be a welcome neighbor in that apartment, and that I had better plan on moving in the very near future.

The man above made the mistake of making too many threats, of telling what he would do in the line of gathering in the official scalps of the various members of the squad, and they searched his apartment. I could hear their heavy feet tramping through the place. They found some booze. How much I don’t know, but enough to enable them to save their official faces, and they came down the elevator, bringing the man from the apartment above and several cases of “evidence.” I hadn’t known he was a bootlegger, and for once fortune was playing right square in my hands. Otherwise they’d have probably come back for another interview or argument with me.

As it was, I gave them a bare minute to get started, and then lowered myself out of the window, shook loose the rope, and found the still, black bundle of lifeless flesh below. It was an effort to get it into my roadster, and slip out of the garage into the still shadows of the noiseless street, but it was only a matter of minutes.

I had taken the precaution to ascertain where Ogden Sly lived, and when I parked my machine a block or two away in a dark alley and slipped into his garage and stole his machine, I took the trouble to make a scientific job of it. I opened the padlock carefully, taking the greatest care to leave no fingerprints, slipped the car in neutral and backed it by hand well out into the street. I short circuited the ignition wires back of the switch because I had no key that would fit the ignition lock, and then drove up to where I had left my car. I slipped the body over into Sly’s car, got in, heaved a sigh of relief, and drove for the river road. Once there I removed the knife from the man’s chest and threw it far out into the waters. The rug I concealed beneath some shrubbery where I would have a chance to bury it later. Then I sat the body in the seat, started the car toward one of the steep curves, threw on the gas, stood on the running board until it had plenty of momentum, and then slipped to the ground and watched the expensive machine hurtle into the air, waited until I heard the crash, and then started walking back.

At any rate Ogden Sly was out an expensive machine, and if he had been mixed up in the attempt to frame the murder on me, he would probably have some embarrassing explanations to make at a later date.

It was nearing day when I got my own machine back in my garage and rolled in for a few hours’ sleep. I saw that my legal vacation was nearing an end. I’d have to start once more wearing disguises, keeping three and four apartments rented at a time, all in widely separated sections of the city, and take the trouble to build up a different character in each apartment. In my heart I cursed the man with the reddish eyes, the parrot mouth and the octopus arms. I could not help but feel that he was responsible for my present position.

The story broke that forenoon. Fortunately, the police had found and identified the wrecked car before Ogden Sly awoke to the fact that someone had borrowed his machine. After that the facts broke rapidly. It seemed the body was that of Andrew Caruthers, known about the younger set as “Wild Andy.” He was of good family, and had social standing. Recently he had been blackmailed steadily and consistently. Two or three of his more intimate friends knew of the payments he was being forced to make, and had also heard him threaten to resort to desperate measures unless the demands were lightened. No one heard or knew the name of the person who was making the demands, but it was known that they were heavy and regular.

Wild Andy had started out with some unknown companion that fatal night, and had not stated where he was going other than that he had telephoned the steward at his club and said that if anything happened to him to be sure and demand an explanation of a man with a bandaged arm, broken nose, cauliflower ear and three gold teeth, a man who went by the name of Bert Strong and who lived at a cheap hotel on First Street between Pine and Hemlock.

From this description the police were able to identify one Bill Peavey who had a criminal record as long as his bandaged arm. He was living at the place mentioned, and under the name of Bert Strong, but he had an ironclad alibi that could not be shaken. At that he was puzzled and frightened. Very apparently Wild Andy had not been as green as he looked and had managed to shadow the tool to whom he made his payments.

I could put two and two together. Bill Peavey was the tool of Ogden Sly. He was the man who made the collections, who pulled the rough stuff. Somehow Caruthers had found out more than he was supposed to know about where the blackmail was going, and who was getting it. He had learned that the man who made the collections was really a pawn in the game, and had started investigations.

From the standpoint of a source of income he had shrunk to zero in the eyes of Ogden Sly, the real man higher up. As a nuisance he was looming on the horizon as a factor to be dealt with. It had all been arranged that Peavey was to call on Caruthers, offer to confess and expose the real head of the criminal blackmailing ring, and lure the victim to my apartment, where Peavey would promise to side in with Caruthers and they would demand a showdown. As a crook, Peavey would pick the lock of the apartment and he and Caruthers could hide within, waiting my arrival. When my key sounded in the door, Peavey had simply stabbed Caruthers in the dark, and dashed from the apartment, leaving me with the dying man. As soon as he could get to a telephone he had called headquarters, posed as the owner of one of the adjoining flats who didn’t want his name used, and tipped off the police.

I was supposed to be caught just as I was attempting to dispose of the body of a murdered man, a man who had been paying tribute to a blackmailer for a long time, a man who had been getting desperate under the strain of the continued extortions. It had all been rather clever in a maudlin, mediocre sort of a way.

I had dished their plans, and then had put them in a box by seeing that the body was found in the wreckage of Ogden Sly’s machine. I presumed he would have a pull with headquarters. A good blackmailer or confidence man usually has a friend in at the central office who can smooth things out for him, but murder is something else again.

Of course the police were not absolutely certain that a piece of glass from the broken windshield had not penetrated to Caruthers’ heart, but it was funny that he should be driving Ogden Sly’s machine at the time of his death, and that Ogden Sly should have no other explanation than that his car had been stolen. That was so old it was worn threadbare. Every crook who gets into trouble with his car and realizes that the registration numbers are going to be traced back to him always reports that his car has been stolen.

Then there was the Bill Peavey, alias Bert Strong angle of the case. I made up my mind that I’d give that a once over before so very long. They’d fixed up a good alibi for him in case the thing ever got hot around his head, but he was in the same fix I was. He had a police record, and that was a big factor. On the whole, I figured the bunch would be on the defensive for a little while. They hadn’t counted on Andy Caruthers leaving that last message that he could be located through the man he had known as Bert Strong.

However, I’d sat in the game taking a look at cards without having any money in the center long enough. I decided I’d better see if I couldn’t throw in a few chips and take a chance on winning something. I went to the telephone and called up John Lambert’s residence. Lois herself answered the phone.

“I’ll have a few words with you, young lady, at your convenience,” I told her.

“That’s jake with me, Ed,” she purred over the wire. “Are you inviting me to dinner, or do you want to take a joy ride?”

“I’ll meet you at the Rendezvous at eight,” I shot back at her.

“Omygosh! Ed. You’re crude. Your dinner maners are awful. When a gent invites his lady friend to dinner he’s supposed to go get her and see that she doesn’t get kidnapped by some taxicab driver.”

I’d been kidded long enough. There was something about this thing I didn’t like.

“You be there,” I said, short and snappy.

“Oh, Ed, you’re so good to me!” she cooed as I slammed the receiver back on the hook.

I was about half mad at that jane and yet I was grinning. I had a little job to do before I met her and I started out to do it. There are ways of getting information in the underworld, ways that are not always open to the cops. I thought that I could get a slant on the ways and methods of one Ogden Sly, a slant that might come in handy at some time in the very near future.

I’d have got the information all right, at that, by following ways of my own, but it was chance pure and simple that played into my hand and gave me the clue I needed. The way to the joint I was headed for lay past the steps of the courthouse, and I noticed a little crowd standing there at the foot of the steps with a man halfway up the flight holding out a bundle of letters.

I stopped long enough to hear what was going on, and got the idea he was auctioning off a pile of letters which “might contain anything or nothing.” I was further enlightened by a loquacious bystander.

“That’s the public administrator. Whenever a poor bloke passes in with a little bit of an estate he sells off the stuff at auction. They’ve found out that there’s a certain demand for letters, and if a stiff passes in his checks and leaves a bunch of letters tied up with a pink ribbon, or a pile of old papers that have some love letters in ’em, they do ’em up into bundles and sell’em off after they get enough of ’em. There are collectors that follow the game all the time, and it’s got to be a regular fad. The administrator gets enough out of it to pay him for his trouble all right. There’s one of the regular ones now, bidding in that bunch. I work here in the courthouse and get a chance to see all of the auctions, that bird’s been a regular customer for years.”

I glanced toward the man who was bidding in the bundle, and, as he mounted the steps with outstretched hands, I got a good look at him. He was my esteemed contemporary Ogden Sly, his fat, lifeless paunch protruding, his flabby face emotionless as his great, writhing arms stretched forth for the bundle of letters.

I ducked back out of sight and did some thinking. Here was Ogden Sly, mixed up in a mysterious death, very probably under request from the district attorney’s office to hold himself in readiness to be examined further in the event the grand jury should want him, and yet he couldn’t afford to miss one of these auctions of dead men’s letters.

I wandered back round the block, into the other entrance of the courthouse and caught the stenographer in the administrator’s office. Would she please look up the index of pauper estates and tell me if one C. W. Kinsington, deceased, had had his effects sold at auction. She looked at me in the aimless, inefficient way of all clerks who are in the employ of the taxpayers, yawned, left the room, and finally returned with a big book in which was entered the record of the estate of C. W. Kinsington, deceased. There had been no property beyond a pistol and cartridge belt, a watch, some clothes, a suitcase and a file of correspondence. All of these had been sold at auction, and the net amount of the returns were neatly entered.

I had seen all I wanted to. I ventured that I could tell right then why Ogden Sly was such a mystery, why he acted as he did, and why and how he managed to blackmail quietly and without undue notoriety. He’d pick up a bunch of letters, skim through them, look up the history of the man who had owned them, and then find the writers of those letters. It was a cinch.

The men whose letters were sold at auction were the ones who were failures, admitted failures, the letters they saved were the important letters that represented the most vital phases of their lives. All in all those letters were a mighty safe investment for a man who was making his living out of blackmail. Of course there’d be a lot of times when he’d draw a blank, and there’d be lots of times when it would be small stuff, such as getting a few dollars from some widow to hush up the pauper’s fate of the son who was supposed by the neighbors to have been making such a success in the city, but every once in a while he’d be bound to stumble on something big, something like the letters of C. W. Kinsington’s, letters which had given him a lead on which he had hooked John Staunton Lambert, had hooked him so cleverly that the Lamberts looked on Ogden Sly as a friend, and had even insisted that Lois should allow her engagement to Sly to be announced.

All in all, I commenced to see a great light or thought I did.

I was thinking, all through that evening with the girl, — thinking hard, and as often as I had a chance. She kept up a running fire of conversation, did Lois; and it was so flippant that I had to laugh in spite of myself. She sure gave the world a life sized picture of a girl who hadn’t a worry in the world, and didn’t care who knew it.

I tried to lead her out about Ogden Sly, about her engagement.

“My, my!” she chided, “I believe my lukewarm daddy’s getting jealous. Naughty, naughty! You’ll actually be making love to me next, Ed Jenkins… Come on, let’s dance. I want to get whirled around the floor once more before I finish that filet mignon.”

I tried a new tack.

“I’m leaving the city for three or four weeks,” I remarked casually.

She missed a step, stumbled, and clung to me.

“Not… not honest?”

I laughed at that, noticing even as I laughed the sudden paling of her cheek.

“Of course honest. You wouldn’t think I’d leave the city to do something dishonest would you?”

We danced in silence, and then she drew me from the floor.

“Come on, I’m tired. I want to get back to our meal and get another swallow of tea. You know, Ed, you’re way behind the times. You haven’t a flask and it’s shocking poor form. You’re supposed to order orange juice and keep it filled with just enough kick to make the girls tell their right names. Being sober is passé. It just isn’t done any more.”

We sat down at the table and she played around the edges of her food with listless knife and fork, eyes downcast and shoulders that suddenly seemed to grow limp. After a few minutes she excused herself long enough to go into the dressing-room, and when she returned her eyes were red in spite of the fact that her face had been freshly powdered. One thing was certain, I was a pretty important pawn in the game that she was playing, or thought she was playing.

Then she reached some decision and cheered up. All of a sudden she was as blithe and carefree as any flapper just leaving for college. I glanced around, trying to find out if the cause of her change had been a signal she had received from any of the other diners. The place was crowded, and one guess was as good as another.

We ate and danced, and then stayed to throw a couple of more dances. The girl insisted that I should take her for a drive, and something in the very nature of her insistence aroused my suspicions. However, I went with her. At that stage of the affair I thought I knew what was in the wind, but I wanted to find out pretty well before I started playing my cards.

That ride was a petting party. I’ve heard of ’em before, and I’ve always had an abstract idea of how they were thrown, but I’d never been on a real one. I had been just a bit too mature to ever get mixed up in one of the things before, and I never had anything that made me feel so downright ancient. There was vibrant youth in the girl’s kisses, a fire in her breath, a clinging, passionate something about her lips that made me realize times had changed, that social customs had changed, and that I was not as young as I used to be.

Also there was something on my mind, a something that kept taking my thought energies away from the present, away from the automobile and the girl, and into the interior of John Lambert’s safe. Also I thought of the flabby flesh of Ogden Sly, the reddish eyes, and that curious parrot-like set to the mouth, and every time I thought of him I seemed to see a mental image of his writhing arms with their red, hairy hands sliding over the bare flesh of the girl’s shoulder.

Again I tried to lead her to talk of her engagement, to find out her real emotions for Ogden Sly, and when I mentioned his name her emotions underwent a sudden and marked change. She shuddered as though the chill night air had penetrated to her warm blood, her kisses became forced, lifeless, strained, and then she abruptly started to cry, soul-racking sobs that wrenched her slender frame and made her quiver as she lay against me.

Then, as suddenly as a thunder shower it was over.

“I love you, Ed,” she said thrusting her wet lips to mine, her tear-stained cheek lying damp against my own, her eyes gleaming through the tears. “Oh, I love you so much! Somehow I can’t see how things are coming out at present, but I just know they will.”

I looked down at her, wondering.

“How’s that for a good line?” she surprised me by asking. “Did I pull that like I meant it? You know how it is, Ed, you’ve got to be the regular little red-hot-mama to hold the boys in this day and age. If you don’t make ’em think they’re your Prince Charmings and that you’ve stocked up your hope chest for ’em they make you walk home. Yuh wouldn’t make a regular guy like me walk, would you, Ed?”

I laughed at her. I thought I knew something of the game, but I sure got a kick out of the way this kid played her cards.

I took her back to the parking station where she’d left her car, and then went on to my apartment. I had something to work out, and I wanted to make a good job of it. The something was no less than a letter from C. W. Kinsington to Ogden Sly, and when I got it finished it was a masterpiece.

Ogden Sly had originally fished up the letters that connected John Lambert with the crooked play, and then he’d sent forged demands from Kinsington, or rather, purporting to come from Kinsington, the man who was dead. My letter was a forgery of Sly’s forgeries, but I fancied it’d get by. In it I told the blackmailer that he had made a mistake in thinking that I was dead; that I had been away and that a friend of mine had taken my name and job and had also undertaken to care for my personal effects; that the friend had died and that I had not been notified, but that I had only been able to trace the letters after a great deal of trouble and that then I found that the purchaser of those private papers and letters had been using them for purposes of blackmail. I was demanding an accounting. Every penny that had been obtained by blackmail must be turned over to me or Ogden Sly would go to jail, and I didn’t mean maybe.

I gave some considerable thought to the manner in which the money was to be paid, and then I hit on a scheme that sounded good to me. I instructed Sly to simply go to the Railroad Terminals National Bank and deposit the money to the credit of C. W. Kinsington.

Whether or not the letter would do the work I didn’t know, but I did have some other means of bringing pressure to bear that would do the work if the letter failed. I could imagine Ogden Sly’s frame of mind. He would be worried about this other matter, know that his right hand man, Bill Peavey was in dutch and likely to turn state’s evidence, would realize that he must be suspected by the police of carrying on a regular blackmail game, and then he would suddenly get mixed up in a charge made by some person who would have all the evidence necessary to back up his charges, a person who had nothing to lose, one who was not hounded by a guilty conscience. Coming on top of all of these other things it would spell ruin to Ogden Sly.

There was only one thing for him to do, and that was to stall me along until he could get a personal interview, and then see to it that I didn’t come away alive from that personal interview.

I dropped a note to the Railroad Terminal’s National Bank and explained to them that I was contemplating coming down to look after opening an account in a few days, but that in the meantime there was a possibility of a rather large deposit being made for me, in which event would they please hold it until such time as I was able to get down and have the account properly opened. I put an address in that letter, a post office box where I could get mail all right, but where the letter could never be traced into the hands of Ed Jenkins.

I took the letters to the main post office, dropped them in the mail chute and then went back and took a look at Bobo. The dog was ready to travel, but I held him there for another day or two. I didn’t want him to open up that wound and there was going to be action ahead. Then I went back to the apartment, called it a day, and rolled in.

The next morning Mrs. Lambert telephoned and wanted me to take dinner with them that night, just an informal party, Lois and her fiancé, Mr. Lambert and herself in addition to myself. I wondered a lot about that invitation. The woman seemed to have an expressionless face yet her keen eyes didn’t miss much that went on. She was following suit for every one of her daughter’s leads. I accepted. I couldn’t imagine any place I wanted to be at eight o’clock that night more than at John Lambert’s.

My letter would reach Ogden Sly in the morning mail, and the same mail would carry the letter to the bank. I happened to know that the bank was the one where Ogden Sly carried his account. The orders in the letters of instructions which I had seen in John Lambert’s safe had given me that information. I could imagine Ogden Sly’s first move as soon as he received that letter. He would hotfoot it down to the bank in search of information concerning the account of one C. W. Kinsington, and he wouldn’t have much trouble in getting hold of that letter of mine to the bank. From that letter he’d get the address I had given, and I could expect to hear from him very soon thereafter.

I hadn’t doped it out far wrong, either. By noon there was a letter delivered from the post office box. Ogden Sly was willing to talk with me concerning the matter I had mentioned, but he wanted to be sure the conversation was private. Would I please telephone him at a certain number, and would I be good enough to consider the matter confidential in the highest degree?

Very apparently Ogden Sly was worried. Not worried badly enough to actually part with any cash on a crude blackmail game, but worried enough to decide that he’d better get rid of me.

I went to a public telephone booth, and called him up, making my voice dry, husky, and a bit cracked, figuring that he hadn’t any line on Kinsington any more than I had, but knowing that the thing of real importance was to keep him from having the faintest suspicion of any resemblance between the voice he heard over the telephone and the voice of that good friend of the Lambert family, Ed Jenkins.

In one way I felt like a philanthropic fool as I stood there carrying on the conversation, and yet in another I knew that I was doing the proper thing, both from a standpoint of business ethics as well as from the standpoint of the dog. Before I got done with things I’d have a nice piece of cash tucked away somewhere, and Bobo would have his revenge, but it was something that couldn’t be hurried. As for Lois… well, damn those flappers, anyway! I couldn’t be sure of her.

Right at the start of the conversation I could see that I had Sly sold. I knew too much about that deal with John Lambert not to be genuine. He figured that C. W. Kinsington himself was the only one who would have all that knowledge concerning the deal. Sly wanted to discuss matters with me, but I wanted a refund of all the blackmail money first. I was the one who pulled the righteous indignation stuff. I was going to get a refund of the money and take it to Lambert. I was going to have Sly arrested, was going to the police immediately.

Sly was all for temporizing. He wanted to see me before I did anything rash, told me I was mistaken about his ever having exacted any money from anyone, that he could explain everything in a few minutes of personal conversation, and all the rest of the old stall.

After a bit I hesitated, and then gave him a street number. I would be there promptly at seven p.m. that evening and he could see me there on one condition, and on one condition alone, and that was that he have a certified check payable to bearer for the sum of ten thousand dollars. I told him I knew he had received a lot more money from John Lambert than that, but if he would hand me that certified check for ten thousand I’d consider it as a guarantee of good faith.

He went up in the air at that, but said he’d come to the place and talk with me, although he wouldn’t have any certified check, or pay me “one damned cent.”

I kept insisting, and finally he told me that he’d send a messenger with ten thousand in cash if that would suit me any better. I told him it would, and that I’d be in room number nineteen at the address I’d given him. Pretending to be green, but obstinate was my cue, and I played the part to the queen’s taste.

The rooming house number I’d given him was a rooming house that was run by a Chink friend of mine, and of all friends a Chink friend is the most loyal and dependable.

I dropped down there that afternoon and had a talk with my friend Chink, and then I did a little more telephoning. By seven o’clock I was ready for the fireworks.

Ogden Sly’s messenger was Bill Peavey, of course. He and Sly were in so deep on the thing that they had to see it through, and one murder more or less wasn’t going to make so very much difference to them providing they could get away with it and get things hushed up. Events were marching along rapidly, and in the death of Wild Andy Caruthers in such a mysterious manner and in the sudden resurrection of C. W. Kinsington, Sly and his henchman could only see the hand of fate turning against them, a little bad break in the luck. They didn’t know that monkeying with Ed Jenkins, and shooting his dog so they could frame a murder on the phantom crook was guaranteed to bring bad luck to any bunch of crooks.

At seven to the minute Bill Peavey presented himself at the entrance of the rooming house and told the Chink he wanted to see his friend in room nineteen. The Chink nodded, smiled and informed Peavey that the “fliend” had left instructions to the effect that his visitor was to exhibit ten thousand dollars in cash before being admitted.

I was at a peep hole in the upper floor where I could look down on the whole affair. Peavey was mad but uncertain and started to argue with the Chink. The Chink shrugged his shoulders, did things to the switchboard and told the crook he could talk with his “fliend” on the telephone. That didn’t suit Peavey either, but he had his murder to commit, and he wanted to get it over with early in the evening. He talked with me on the telephone, and I told him short and snappy that he had to pungle up the ten thousand dollars so I could see that he really had the goods or I wouldn’t talk with him for a minute. Bill engaged in a lot more conversation, and finally exhibited ten one thousand dollar bills to the Chink. I’d sold Ogden Sly on the idea that I was an obstinate old coot all right, and he’d given his messenger the money to be used in case of emergency. That was all I wanted to know. After the Chink had been satisfied that Bill had the money, Bill not knowing that I was watching the show, I told Bill the Chink would show him up. Bill was suspicious by that time that the whole thing was a plant and he came up the stairs with his gun in his hand, ready for anything.

The Chink showed him into room nineteen and Bill sat down, uneasy, suspicious. He was the only one in the room. I was in an adjoining room, taking a peek at him through the little peep hole I’d had constructed there. Bill was good and nervous, and that was the way I wanted to get him. He was desperate, and he was pretty well suspected of one murder already. On the whole his nerves weren’t in the best shape imaginable.

After I had him in the right frame of mind I suddenly threw open the door of the adjoining room.

“Now yuh can walk in here,” I told him in the same cracked voice, an’ be sure yuh have yore hands well away from yore gun when you come in.

Bill was in a quandary. They were desperate. C. W. Kinsington had to be killed, of course, but Bill wasn’t such a fool as to have the murder pulled off in the house at which he had called to see said Kinsington. That was too raw. He had called with the ten thousand dollars to see what his victim looked like, to arrange for a murder that couldn’t be traced. He didn’t propose to pay over the ten thousand dollars unless he had to, because that would complicate his problem, and he’d have to throw in a robbery as well. If he didn’t have to pay over the money, Kinsington could be killed within a day or two. If he had to fork over that ten thousand bucks it was a cinch Kinsington couldn’t be allowed to leave the house alive.

I was dolled up in a diguise that got by fine in the halflight of the dim globe in the hallway. A white beard hung down on my chest, a broad brimmed western sombrero was turned up over my eyes, riding boots and overalls completed the getup. On the whole I looked like a man who would be hard to monkey with but easy to outwit. I stood out there in the city like a sore thumb. There weren’t half a dozen men in the whole place who looked anything like me.

I could see relief come over Bill Peavey’s face when he saw how easy it was going to be to identify me. He could have even shot me from an aeroplane if he’d had to. There was no more chance of mistaking me in a city crowd than there would be of mistaking a butcher at a vegetarian cafeteria.

I handed it to him straight, toying with a big frontier model of a forty-five the while. I was Kinsington, supposed to be dead. Ogden Sly had got possession of my personal effects and had used the information therein contained to blackmail John Lambert. As far as I was personally concerned I resented it. I either wanted the money all given back and restored to Lambert or I wanted Ogden Sly arrested or both. I didn’t know which. I might be willing to let the blackmailer off without reporting the matter to the police if a complete restitution were made, but I wasn’t so blamed certain about it.

There was a lot more that I rambled on about, not giving Peavey a chance to do much of the talking, but impressing on him that I was hard-boiled, obstinate, and didn’t care who knew it. I was opposed to blackmailers and I was going to leave that very room and go directly to John Lambert and expose the whole affair, but first I wanted the ten thousand to return to him at the time of my talk.

After a while Bill Peavey got the idea. If he gave me the ten thousand would I wait until his principal, Mr. Sly, could call on me and “explain” the situation?

I nodded. With ten thousand paid as evidence of good faith I would.

Bill paid it over. He hated to do it, but he did.

“Now where can Sly see yuh for a friendly little chat?” he asked.

“How’d tomorrer mornin’ do?”

Bill shook his head, and I could see him begin to sweat. He didn’t want me running around with that ten thousand dollars. He wanted to get me to some nice, quiet place where he could pull off his robbery and murder.

All the time I was talking with Bill Peavey I was watching him, watching him as a cat watches a mouse. Bill Peavey was yellow, yellow through and through. If he was ever cornered he’d squeal.

“Nope, I won’t meet him tomorrer mornin’,” I said suddenly. “I’ll meet him right here in an hour, but first I’m goin’ down to a place I know where there’s a nice safe, an’ I’m goin’ to put this here money where it’ll be all right. I wouldn’t want to carry this much of John Lambert’s cash around loose in my pocket tonight. Tell him to be here in an hour and I’ll see him.”

Bill squirmed and pleaded. I was hampering his style to beat the band. He’d have to kill me before I left the house, and that left him a narrow margin of time for a limit. He’d have to find some way to get the ten thousand back… I could see his narrow, beady eyes gleam as he watched me, and knew that he was figuring over the chances of killing me right then and there and making his getaway. I fingered the heavy forty-five careless like, and that settled the matter. Peavey wasn’t exactly a fool. He might have taken the chance if he’d have found me sitting down in room nineteen when he came in and before he’d paid over the money, but things were different now. I’d fooled him when I turned out to be a hard-boiled western prospector with a big forty-five and when I’d had him walk into the adjoining room at my convenience instead of his.

He sighed, agreed to the appointment and walked out.

After he’d gone I took out a wax dummy I’d had brought there for me and transferred my disguise to it, and it looked pretty lifelike with the white beard down on its chest and all. By the time I’d finished, the Chink reported on Bill Peavey. He was cruising around with a high-powered car, curtains closed tight. Evidently he was waiting for me to take that money to the “nice, safe place.” If I was going to meet Sly in an hour I’d have to start on that trip to deposit the ten grand pretty soon, and that was going to be Bill’s opportunity.

The stage was all set, and I rang up Police Headquarters and got on the line with Allison, the detective who had charge of the investigation of the Caruthers case.

“Look here, Allison,” I said in a whiny, high-pitched voice, the sort of a voice that a stool pigeon usually uses, “do you want to get a straight tip on that Caruthers murder, one that’ll lay you right on the inside?”

He was suspicious. “Who is this, where are yuh speakin’ from, an’ what do yuh want?” he asked.

“Never mind who I am,” I told him, “I’m speakin’ from the Far East Roomin’ house an’ hotel, an’ I don’t want nothin’. This is a straight tip to pay off a grudge.”

“All right,” he barked. “Who killed Caruthers?”

“I don’t know,” I came back, whining like a stool pigeon always whines when he can’t deliver the goods, “but this much I do know. There’s an old gent with white whiskers stayin’ here at the place that does know, and the fellows that are on the inside are plannin’ to bump him off. You send a bunch of plainclothesmen and a couple of motorcycle cops down here, and just wait for somethin’ to happen.”

I could feel him hesitate at the other end of the line.

“What are yuh tryin’ to do? Make a monkey outa me?”

“You send the men down here quiet like,” I came back. “Get a couple of plainclothesmen on each corner to stop any speedin’ machine, and have the motorcycle cops come on down and stay where they can catch any car that gets away from the plainclothesmen, an’ do it all silent like. I’m lettin’ yuh in on the ground floor of a murder, an’ if yuh don’t grab this tip yuh’ll get panned by every newspaper in the city, because it’s straight.”

With that I hung up, without giving him a chance to discuss things any further.

Then I took my dummy figure and went downstairs.

Ten minutes passed, and then a Chink came shuffling in the door, intoned a Cantonese greeting and gargled a bunch of the lingo.

I can speak the stuff when I have to but this wasn’t one of those occasions when I had to, so I just looked blank and waited for Quon Jee to interpret.

“He say policeman come,” said Quon Jee.

I peeked out of the door through the specially constructed peephole that the Chinks have in all their places. There across the narrow street, motor running, was the car with curtains drawn, all ready.

I turned back to the boys and nodded.

We opened the door and shoved out the dummy, keeping well back in the shadows. For a second or two nothing happened, and I cursed softly beneath my breath. Not that it made any great difference. I didn’t have anything to lose. If I didn’t get them in this trap I’d get them in another. The reason I wanted this play to go through was because it would give things an artistic finish, and I like those artistic finishes.

Then, all of a sudden, things exploded.

There came the crash of a volley from the machine, and I could see the waxen figure spouting dust as I took a bamboo pole and pushed it out, face downward on the sidewalk. Bill Peavey jumped from the death car, a smoking gun in his hand and started on the run for the dummy, after that ten thousand. It was only a few feet from the machine, and he’d watched his chance and waited until the street was pretty well deserted. The Chinks were scurrying like rats for their holes, and he ordinarily would have had easy sailing.

Suddenly there was the sound of a police whistle, the bark of a gun, and Bill stopped in mid-stride, looked up the street, cursed, fired his revolver, dove into the black interior of the car and was whisked away, the wax figure lying face down on the sidewalk. Half a block away a plainclothesman was writhing and flopping around on the pavement. Bill was a good shot.

We dragged the wax figure back into the rooming house, and my friends the Chinks took charge of him. The machine speeded away and turned the corner with screeching wheels, and then there came the bark of a motorcycle, the wail of a siren, and a fusillade of shots.

Chuckling, I sneaked out of the back door and went to John Lambert’s informal dinner.

I was a few minutes late in getting there, and I could see there had been a scene. Lois was red of face, but her crimson lips were set in a firm line. Lambert looked flushed and indignant. Mrs. Lambert was the same as ever. If there was anything going on behind those keen eyes I couldn’t tell it. Ogden Sly had evidently been the center of the rumpus. His parrot mouth was working under his beak-like nose, and his great arms were writhing and twisting.

I gave my hat to the butler and stood in the doorway surveying them.

“A cheap crook,” mouthed Ogden Sly, his hands working, arms twisting. “I said it behind his back and I’ll say it to his face. Your daughter, sir, picked him up in a cabaret, and brought him home without knowing who he was. He has imposed upon you all. See, here I have his police record, his photographs. I challenge him to deny that he is the Ed Jenkins of newspaper notoriety, known to the police of the world as the phantom crook, a criminal of international reputation. I challenge him, I dare him to deny it.”

One of his hairy hands writhed into his breast pocket and extracted a bunch of photographs.

Lois looked helplessly at me.

“Deny it,” she said.

I grinned around at the circle of faces.

“Deny it nothing. It’s true. I’m proud of it,” I said. “When do we eat?”

John Lambert arose and pointed his finger at me.

“You don’t eat again, you scoundrel! Not in this house. Get out!”

Ogden Sly’s parrot mouth twisted into a grin.

“As the fiancé of the daughter of the house I felt that it was my right to speak. Jenkins, you should be ashamed of yourself. Get out!”

Mrs. Lambert looked at her daughter, and then spoke. Right then I knew what her red hair was for.

“Not at all. Mr. Jenkins, you will be welcome for dinner. Stay right here.”

All of a sudden the expressionless look was gone from her face and she was standing there, chin up, head thrown back, looking over the crowd of us, queen of the situation.

“Mr. Jenkins is here as my guest,” she finished, “and he is much better company than a blackmailer… no, John, don’t deny that you have been the victim of a gang of blackmailers. Both Lois and I know it, and…”

She never finished. There came a rush of steps on the porch, a pounding at the door, and a squad of uniformed men flung into the room.

Ogden Sly sneered.

“Ah, Jenkins, I perceive that you have been pulling something else. Here are your friends. Perhaps if you would not accept my invitation to leave this house, you will accept theirs.”

The grim-faced man in charge shook his head.

“I don’t know this man, but I do know you, Ogden Sly. It’s you we want.”

Sly’s face went white while his restless arms moved one of the hairy hands to his forehead.

“Me? You want me? Want me bad enough to come and interrupt me at a social evening in the house of my friend John Lambert! What should you want me for?”

“For the murder of Henry Roberts,” said the grim-faced policeman.

“Henry Roberts?” repeated Sly, a look of relief coming over his face. “I never even heard of the man.”

“He was a plainclothesman that your assistant Bill Peavey killed tonight in trying to murder C. W. Kinsington in accordance with your instructions, Sly. Also we want you for the murder of Wild Andy Caruthers. You see, Sly, Bill Peavey has made a complete statement. He’s given us all the dope, also he’s said something about a blackmailing scheme. Anything you say will be used against you at the trial. Come on!”

Dazed, protesting, frightened, they led him away, led him to confront Bill Peavey who had squealed to save his neck. It would be a great race between Sly and Peavey to see which one could implicate the other first and hardest.

When they had left, Mrs. Lambert turned to me and would have spoken, but I beat her to it.

“Mr. Lambert, go into your safe and get out the Kinsington letters and burn them before the police get here. They’ll probably be around asking you questions, and when they do come, remember that you’re a man of family with a daughter to think of, and lie like a gentleman.”

He blinked his eyes. “The Kinsington letters?”

I nodded. “Don’t play innocent. I’ve seen ’em. Ogden Sly forged all of those letters. The real Kinsington is dead, and your secret is reasonably safe. There may be some letters in Ogden Sly’s possession, but my best bet is that they’re hidden where the police will never get hold of them. What’s more, if Ogden Sly ever admits any connection with Kinsington or you, he’ll be playing into Bill Peavey’s hands and establishing a motive for the murder of the real Kinsington, and both Peavey and Sly think they murdered him. What they don’t realize is that they shot up a wax dummy I planted for ’em to practice on.

“Now I guess that about covers everything. I made a slight fee for my services by using my brain, and I’m satisfied if everybody is. Lois, you used me for a tool or tried to, but I just want to let you know that I understand you were fighting for your father and that I haven’t any hard feelings.”

She gulped once and then spilled it.

“At fist that’s the way I played it,” she admitted. “I thought that I could make you crazy about me and that then Ogden Sly would interfere with you in some way and you’d kill him. I read about what a desperate criminal you were and I thought that you’d be sure to murder Sly.”

I laughed at that.

“Oh gosh! You flappers,” I said. “You have an idea that the world runs according to story books.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Well, I’m sorry, folks, but I’m not remaining to dinner. Mr. Lambert, you’ve made one mistake. Don’t make a lot more of them trying to cover up that one.”

The old man’s hand came, reaching out for mine, and there were tears in his eyes.

“I don’t understand it all as yet, Jenkins. I had thought that my secret was safe from those I loved most and it was that feeling which made me such an easy victim.”

“Don’t try kiddin’ the women folks,” I told him as I made for the door. “I hate to be seeming to hurry, but there’s a chance my name may come into this thing some way, and I’d just as soon be where the police can’t locate me any too readily. They’ll want to ask me some questions, and then the newspaper reporters will get my photograph in the papers all over again and I’ll be besieged by flappers who want me to pull chestnuts out of the fire for them.”

It was a mean crack that last one, but I couldn’t but feel a bit peeved at the way the girl had thought she was vamping me.

“Remember if you ever get before any court in this state I’m going to see you get a square deal,” shouted John Lambert as I went down the steps.

“Ed Jenkins,” called Mrs. Lambert, “I don’t like your use of profanity but you make a fine family friend. Please call again soon.”

I waved my hand and climbed into my roadster. The door banged shut and I pressed on the starter. I’d go get Bobo and we’d lay low for a little bit, keeping quiet until after things had settled somewhat on this Sly-Peavey-Caruthers case.

Just as I leaned forward to throw in the gearshift there came a flash of white, an odor of perfume, and warm, slender arms fastened about my neck.

“Oh, Ed,” said Lois, in soft tones, as her lips came to my cheek, “don’t misunderstand me like this. I did get acquainted with you because I wanted to play you against Sly. I recognized you and thought that one or the other of you would start trouble, and, after what that newspaper said about you, I thought sure you’d murder Ogden Sly. I knew he was blackmailing dad, and that he was going to force me to marry him to keep him from exposing dad, and all the rest of it. I could have killed him myself, would have, if he’d ever actually succeeded in making my marry him.”

I patted her shoulder.

“That’s all right, kid. You played your cards as you had ’em to play. Of course, Ogden Sly got jealous first. He wanted to get me out of the way so they planned to get into my apartment, and kill off the dog so they could take Caruthers there and kill him. I blocked that little game for them, and then I had to avenge the dog and make a little expense money. I know that you’re really in love with Walter Carter, and that you’ll marry him as soon as you’ve got this mess straightened out.”

She looked up at me, her white face showing as a blur in the dim starlight.

“Stupid!” she said. “I started in to vamp you all right, but I never did like Walter Carter. He’s crazy about that blonde that was with him, anyway. I told you the other night that after I got to know you I like you. Come and see me some time after things blow over. I’ve seen so many lounge lizards that I like to see a real man, and then you’re so old fashioned I get a kick out of you. I like the way you stare at my knees.”

With that she scampered into the house, and left me sitting there, hand on the gearshift, mouth open. And then, because she’d been such a square little shooter, and because her dad had acted white, and because there was a little soft spot in my heart for the whole blamed outfit, I did something I shouldn’t have done. I beat the police to Ogden Sly’s apartment and made the sort of a search that only a crook could have made, a search that found the original letters of C. W. Kinsington, the ones that had made all the trouble for John Lambert.

I was taking chances and I knew it, and I got out of the place only a few minutes before the police got in, but I made it, all right, and in my hand I had the parcel of dead men’s letters that Ogden Sly had been using as the basis of his blackmailing schemes.

Then with a smile on my face, and with Lois Lambert’s kiss tingling my cheek, I went down and picked up Bobo. We were going to take a little vacation, Bobo and I.