Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 60, No. 1, July 4, 1931

Ransom’s Bluff Forces the White Cross Killer into the Open, and Brings About a Dreadful Confession.

William Delaney has been murdered by a poison known as monkshood, and Jane Shannon shot as she entered the room where Delaney slumped in death. When Lieutenant Ransom and Detective Jim Pensbury get to the house of murder, they find the gun which has killed the Shannon woman in the dead hand of Delaney, and a bullet from the same weapon in Delaney’s head.

Lieutenant Ransom believes this murder connected somehow with the suicide of Lucius Talbot, Delaney’s stepfather. All through the case runs a strong undercurrent of terror and witchcraft. Delaney’s wife, Gail, testifies that her husband was tormented by some mysterious dread preceding his murder. Delaney’s brother, Giles, is also sure some powerful criminal force is at work, and Ed Hopeton, who knew Jane Shannon, tells the police that she too walked in fear.

Police are unable to discover why William Delaney was at the house where he was found murdered. The house is owned by Eva Wallace, a stenographer in Richard Boyerson’s office; Boyerson was a partner of Lucius Talbot.

Ann Darien, a newspaper reporter, comes forward with the story that her brother was framed and sent to prison several years ago in Montana, in a case strangely resembling the Delaney one. Lieutenant Ransom immediately gets in touch with the Great Falls Montana, police department.

Chapter XLVIII Ransom’s Bluff

After Delaney had left him, Lieutenant Ransom took up the receiver of his desk phone and called the sergeant on duty in the room below.

“Get hold of Pensbury, Ralph,” he instructed him, “and tell him to throw things about in Boyerson’s apartment as though a detailed search has taken place. I want Boyerson to know it. See? No; I don’t know just where Jim is at present. But get this over to him immediately.”

Replacing the receiver, he called the hospital where death had stepped in and robbed him of his strongest card in the complicated witch murders as the cases had come to be called — Jane Shannon. The expressionless voice of the head nurse spoke to him after a time.

“Miss Garfield, I don’t want the news of Jane Shannon’s death to creep out until I permit it,” he told the woman. “Simply say to people who inquire that she is still very ill, but will be able to talk to the police in the morning. Be sure to give that out. And let my guard remain outside the door of the room where she died. If you can keep her there until to-morrow, it will be a big help.”

The editor of the Daily Messenger, who was a close friend of Ransom’s, received his next call.

“Frank, I want you to do something a bit out of the usual for me,” said Ransom when the editor’s booming voice spoke to him. “I want you to run in your next edition scareheads or whatever you call them announcing that the mystery woman in the Wallace house murder, Jane Shannon, is about to talk to the police. Say that she is anxious to tell all she knows about the case, that the identity of the criminal will be published within another twelve hours. Get that? Do that for me, will you?”

“But, why the ingratiating tone and the request?” laughed Frank Cogswell. “That’s big news. Will I publish it? Try to stop me!”

“You don’t get me right,” said Ransom. “It isn’t news, Frank. It’s a lie. Jane Shannon died to-day.”

“What!”

“Yes. In dying without opening her lips she knocked the props from under our investigation, and we’re up against a tough proposition. I want the man we are after to think his game is up. That the girl is about to talk. And I want you to help me.”

“I suppose you’ll stand back of our statement,” said the editor caustically.

“Certainly we will,” snapped Ransom. “And the girl has no people. If we get the man through this ruse you’ll be a public benefactor.”

“Well, on one condition,” agreed Cogswell finally. “That you let us have the news of her death before any other paper.”

“You know how I play, Frank — fair,” said Ransom.

The lieutenant’s next call was to the offices of a broadcasting station where, nightly, local news was sent out over the air. The man in charge of the station was another good friend of Lieutenant Ransom’s. Ransom had found that it was important to have friends in certain positions.

“Ray, I want you to do something for me in this Delaney case,” he told the man earnestly. “I want you to slip into your broadcast to-night the announcement that Jane Shannon is about to talk to the police and tell what she knows about the Wallace house murder. Say that she knows the identity of the criminal and will not hesitate to make it known to the police. Lay it on thick, Ray.”

“That’s big news!” said the other man. “Sure I’ll have it announced for you.”

“Not so fast,” said Ransom grimly. “Jane Shannon died to-day. She was our one best bet to get this fiend. I’m trying to reach him through the same medium he used to wrest money and their lives from his victims — fear. Whether it will turn and trap him or not I can’t say. But we’ve got to try it. Do this for me, will you? Our department is back of any statement you make.”

As Ransom replaced the receiver he sat for a moment in silence, staring across the office.

The man, whoever he was, who had poisoned Delaney and killed Jane Shannon, had not only been able to get Hopeton’s gun from his room and place it in the dead man’s hand. He had used some of Hopeton’s paper, in all probability — although they could not be sure of this — to write that note to Delaney, the note which had cost three lives. The killer, then, knew all about the Wallace house and Hopeton.

He had acted with demoniac humor, for he had used Hopeton’s gun to kill the woman Hopeton loved, and at the same time had tied her up with murder! He had known that Jane Shannon was breaking under what she knew and that she was going to the Wallace house to meet Delaney. The killing in Montana had pointed the way to this second spectacular crime.

Sergeant Pierce entered the office while Ransom sat deep in his depressing thoughts.

“Lieutenant, I’ve got something and thought maybe I’d better tell you before we went any farther,” he announced. “I started in on the Wallace woman with my inquiries about Montana, because Eva Wallace worked for Talbot, and Talbot was Boyerson’s pal. And she spilled right away that both men had once been in Great Falls, Montana, for a year off and on. As far as she can judge, it was five or six years ago.”

“Good work, Pierce!” cried Ransom, his face brightening. “We are getting somewhere. Go on with your work. I think you’ve hit the right spot, but go over the others anyhow.”

“Right.” Pierce left the office.

Chapter XLIX On the Floor

Big Jim Pensbury jimmied open a window in Boyerson’s living room, hanging precariously on a fancy little balcony while he worked, and let his bulk soundlessly into a luxuriously furnished apartment, lighted by one solitary lamp.

Moving without the slightest noise, Big Jim saw to it first that he had the place entirely to himself. The chief was right, of course. Boyerson was with Mrs. Delaney.

The instructions he had received to tear up the Boyerson apartment delighted Jim. It made his task easier.

A half hour later, however, he was feeling decidedly down-in-the-mouth. After a minute search of the entire place, from kitchen to bathroom, the only thing of any suspicious or interesting nature which he had unearthed was Boyerson’s bank book, or rather, one of them. Examining this carefully, Big Jim decided that, since a scare was to be thrown into the lawyer, he might as well take the book with him instead of copying its contents.

Placing it in his pocket he looked about at the living room with a grin. It would throw a shock into Boyerson all right when he entered it! The disappearance of the bank book might add to the shock.

Opening the door, Big Jim left the apartment by way of the stairs which wound down behind the elevators.

At the garage which ran along the rear of the huge apartment house he sought the man in charge with no attempt at secrecy.

“Police business,” he announced, displaying his badge. “Which is the garage where Mr. Boyerson keeps his car?”

“This one, sir,” said the man, walking along the row of doors. “One of Mr. Boyerson’s cars is out. He took it himself.”

Jim nodded. “Got two, has he?”

“Yes, sir. Roadster and sedan.”

“Which is out?”

“The roadster.”

“All right, let me into the garage. I want to examine that sedan.”

Looking very uneasy, the man opened the garage door and Jim walked up to the sedan, a handsome, expensive car. The doors were unlocked, and bidding the curious and anxious garage man to hold his flash light inside the car, Jim took out the rugs and proceeded to examine the floor thoroughly.

As he worked, he wondered how the chief was going to get out of this tangle if Boyerson was an innocent man. He was a clever lawyer. He could make a squawk. But in Big Jim’s mind Boyerson was not an innocent man. And suddenly, on the floor of the car, he discovered what, in his opinion, closed the case definitely. Instructing the garage man to hold the flash light closer, he proceeded gleefully to work scraping up the damning evidence. Wait until he showed this to Ransom!

Chapter L The Broadcast

At quarter to eight that evening, Dorothy Wilde was dismissed from the hospital, a bandage fastened about her head, and rage in her heart.

What was the use of a girl getting mixed up in such a notorious case as this and being interviewed and all, if she couldn’t make something out of it? Both Bacon and Delaney had failed her.

Even the interview she had given the reporters who had stopped her as she was descending the hospital steps did not soothe her disappointment. She had hoped to get her hands on some real cash.

And then she heard the raucous cries of the newsboys, shouting the late editions.

“Read about de mystery girl! Extry! Jane Shannon talks to the police! Extry! Jane Shannon says she knows de killer in de witch moiders!”

Jane Shannon! The little widow that lived across the street. She was able to talk! The case was, then, finished.

Buying a paper, Dorothy held it in shaking hands while she waited for a bus to take her back to the Wallace house. The announcement about Jane was run in as a bulletin — four sentences. But they were set in huge black letters.

“Jane Shannon has recovered and will talk to police and give details of the witch crimes. She says she knows the killer. The mystery of the salt cross will be explained, police believe.”

She had thought that that girl was going to die. Dorothy sat motionless in the bus as it bore her uptown to the Wallace house. Nobody knew her. Every one around her, reading the extra, talking about the cases, ignored her as she sat back in her corner, her close little hat drawn down about the bandage under her hair. Even when she slipped out at Camac Avenue they did not notice her. All heads were craned to get a good look at the notorious Wallace house.

The next night she would be able to go back to her place in the Bolton Avenue Theater. Life would go on. And if she had been smart she would have got some sort of a haul out of this murder!

Closing the front door of the Wallace house carefully behind her, Dorothy Wilde stopped short, staring with a touch of horror into the apartment the papers had called the murder room. Albert Bacon was reclining in an easy chair near the table lamp, reading, and the radio was playing softly. Bacon was a cold-blooded one, he was.

“Hullo!” said Dorothy with a sneer as she entered the room. “I should think you’d find a pleasanter place than this to sit.”

“Oh, so you’re back, my pretty little liar!” remarked Bacon, glancing up from his book.

“Yes,” said Dorothy, with a yawn, throwing off her hat and coat. “You didn’t kill me, after all, with that wallop. Honest, Bert Bacon, where were you going when you knocked me out?”

Bacon lifted his brows.

“Say, they oughtn’t to have let you out when you’re running a temperature,” he said soothingly.

“Oh, yeah?” Miss Wilde sauntered to a chair and sat down, spreading the evening paper on her knee. “Well, it won’t be long now! Not long. Have you seen the Daily Messenger?”

“No.”

“Well, you ought to read it. Jane Shannon is going to talk to the cops. She says she knows the name of the killer an’ all. She’s got well.”

“What!”

Bacon dropped his book and bent forward. There was an unpleasant look in his eyes.

“Yeah. Is that a shock? It ought not to be to an innocent man. Here, read it, big boy, and weep. If you are what I think you are, you better beat it.”

Bacon seized the paper and read the extra, while Dorothy watched his paling face. She grew honestly interested in the man while she sat there looking at him. Did the recovery of Jane Shannon really throw a scare into him?

“This is newspaper talk,” said Bacon presently, throwing the paper back at her with contempt. “That girl could never talk yet with the kind of wound she had.”

“Anybody would think you don’t want her to talk,” observed Dorothy mildly. “What is it to you?”

“Nothing.”

“You look as though it’s nothing to you, getting as white as chalk, with your eyes bulging with fright. You ought to see yourself. I’ll get you yet, Bert Bacon, for trying to get me mixed up in this case and for handing me that wallop.”

“I tell you, I never hit you in my life,” snarled Bacon. “And I never knew the Shannon woman. She can die or she can get well. It’s nothing to me. But she can’t get well with the shot she had in her.”

As though to give the lie to his words, a man’s voice spoke suddenly over the radio in the far corner.

“Word has just come from the hospital that Mrs. Jane Shannon, mystery girl in the Wallace house murder, has recovered sufficiently to talk to the police and tell what she knows about the case. She has already informed her nurse that she knows the name of the killer. I believe that by morning the doctors will judge her in strong enough condition to make a statement.”

Dorothy Wilde rose to her feet with a piercing scream, the evening paper dropping to the floor.

“Bert Bacon, don’t you dare!” she shrieked. “Don’t you dare!”

Chapter LI The Man Behind Bacon

“I took this bank book,” said Big Jim, as he handed the book to Ransom, “because I thought it would throw an extra scare into him maybe. You can see what enormous deposits he has been making these last six months. Guess he has other banks, too.”

“Wonder where he got all this money,” mused Ransom, as he studied the book. “It will be interesting to find out, Jim. No lawyer on this earth ever made this much in this length of time. Not honestly.”

“He ain’t honest,” chuckled Big Jim, taking an envelope from his pocket. “Look here what I scraped up from the floor of his sedan after I took out the carpet.”

Onto a piece of carbon paper Big Jim poured a tablespoonful of small, white grains.

“What is it?” asked Ransom, bending forward.

“You can taste it,” exulted Jim. “It’s salt!”

“Salt!”

“Yep. Guess he hauled the bags of salt around in that sedan. Had to have a good sized bag to make that salt cross like we saw on the Wallace porch and the Raddock porch. Wet salt.”

Ransom’s eyes were shining with excitement.

“He kept all his supplies or whatever he wanted to hide at that cottage which he burned out at Sparrow Wood, I’ll wager,” he said. “Jim, I believe he is our man!”

“I’ll say he is. What you tumbled to about poor Talbot yelling at him when he jumped that it was the only way out was a plenty. Boyerson knew why he took that way all right.”

“Poor Mrs. Delaney,” said Ransom softly. “She seems out of luck. I can’t believe she is involved.”

“She had enough luck getting rid of Bill Delaney,” said Big Jim indifferently. “That woman has darn bad taste, if you ask me.”

As Jim spoke, Sergeant Pierce burst into the office, agitation written all over his round face.

“Lieutenant, that Wilde girl from the Wallace house just telephoned us,” he cried, “and she’s plain goofy. Gone off her head. She’s yelling that Bacon just shot himself after he heard the radio broadcast about Jane Shannon getting well!”

Ransom and Big Jim, both on their feet, looked at each other speechlessly and then Big Jim blurted two words as he reached for his hat.

“Bacon! Damn!”

Eva Wallace and Hopeton were both in the living room of the Wallace house when Ransom and Big Jim arrived. They were trying to quiet Dorothy Wilde, who was in hysterics.

Across the same chair where the body of Delaney had sat upright for so many hours, the inert form of Albert Bacon was flung, the gun with which he had ended his life fallen from his hand onto the rug.

Dr. Vandyke, arriving a few minutes after the others, pronounced Bacon dead.

As he spoke Dorothy roused from her hysterical condition and breaking away from Mrs. Wallace walked to Ransom’s side. She dropped her contemptuous glance upon the body of Bacon as she passed him.

“He tried to get me mixed up in this, the cheap skate,” she sneered. “Well, I handed him a shock all right. I beat the radio to it.”

“Tell us about it,” urged Ransom gently, and Big Jim, chewing gum, stared a bit impatiently. He never could see how his chief could be so decent with these skirts.

“I got out of the hospital and escaped from the reporters to hear what the boys was yelling about this Shannon woman getting well and talking,” said Dorothy. “I bought a Daily Messenger and read about it. When I walked in the house here Bert Bacon was sitting right there in that chair reading that book. I sat down and said a few things to him about me not dying on account of the wallop he had given me, and I asked him if he’d seen the paper. I gave it to him to read and he looked sick. It gave me a shock to see how sick he looked, and for the first time I really believed he had killed Delaney and the girl.

“And then when he was trying to act natural and saying it was just newspaper talk, the man on the radio cut loose about Jane being well and talking to the police and knowing who the killer was. And right on the heels of it Bert whipped out that gun. I was scared silly then. I yelled at him not to dare to shoot, for I thought he was going to end me that time for good, but he turned it on himself. I was that scared I could hardly get to the telephone.”

“Bacon!” muttered Ransom, looking down at the body and biting his lip. “We slipped badly somewhere, Jim.”

“Nix,” said Big Jim cheerfully. “I got two men watching Boyerson. He’s our man, no matter how Bacon was tied up in it.”

“But just how was Bacon tied up in it?” Ransom asked himself dully, still staring at the slumped body.

“Where did he get that gun, is what I want to know,” said Big Jim briskly. “No gun in this house when I searched it, only the one that shot Jane Shannon. That was Hopeton’s.”

“He kept that gun in the office where he worked,” said Eva Wallace, with a toss of her head. “He used it on the road. I knew he had it.”

“And you kept quiet, huh?” sneered Jim, turning upon her. “You can keep quiet like an expert, can’t you?”

“When I want to!” snapped Mrs. Wallace.

“No matter about the gun,” said Ransom sharply. “Did you see Bacon to-night, Mrs. Wallace?”

“No.”

“She wouldn’t,” sneered Jim. “Nobody in this house ever sees anything.”

“Mrs. Wallace,” asked Ransom sternly, “was it Bacon Bill Delaney came here twice before he died to visit?”

“I don’t know anything about him being here twice before. I told you that a dozen times,” said Eva Wallace.

“I think that Bacon’s suicide answers that,” said Ransom gravely, turning back to the dead man. “It was Bacon Delaney came to see, Bacon who wrote him that note on Hopeton’s paper, and Bacon who got Hopeton’s gun from his room. Very strange things have happened in this house, but these matters were taken in charge by some one who was known here, seen about here, and familiar with each detail of the house. It is the man behind Bacon whom we must get, Jim.”

“Well, we’d have had him long ago if we had an honest lot of folks to deal with,” said Big Jim with a disgusted glance at Hopeton, the two women and the dead man.

Chapter LII Ransom Makes an Offer

Dorothy Wilde crossed the room and stood beside the body of Bacon. Her pert little face was twisted with disappointment.

“To think of me coming out of this pretty business without getting a cent out of anybody,” she sighed. “I guess I haven’t got any brains.”

Ransom had a sudden thought as he studied the little gold digger.

“Dorothy, have you any nerve?” he asked.

“Nerve? Didn’t I dope that cop of yours and trail after Bert Bacon?” demanded Dorothy angrily. “Sure I’ve got nerve, but I don’t know how to use it. That’s what ails me.”

“Come down to headquarters with me and I’ll tell you,” said Ransom, briskly. “Jim, can you get a couple of men into the Boyerson apartment and conceal them there?”

“Sure.”

“All right. Do that right away. Call the Delaney house first and find out from Shafter whether or not Boyerson is still there. Do that skillfully. I don’t want him to bolt yet. See that your men are armed and ready for any emergency. We’ve got to make a play to-night or it will be too late. And just come with us, Mrs. Wallace and Hopeton. We are not taking any chances with you two until this case is cleared up. Get busy on this, Jim. Time is precious. When Boyerson enters his apartment, he must not know you are there.”

“Okay!”

In Ransom’s private office, whither she had driven in a car with a raging Mrs. Wallace and a sullen Hopeton, Dorothy Wilde regarded the lieutenant with curious eyes.

“What you got up your sleeve?” she asked.

“If you want to make a couple of hundred dollars, you will help us out on this,” smiled Ransom. “You will be taking a chance. It will be dangerous if we are right. Want to try it?”

“I want some cash,” said Dorothy frankly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go to Boyerson’s swell apartment as though you sneaked there after Bacon shot himself, and tell Boyerson all about the suicide and the radio and the evening paper. But tell him, too, that while you were alone with Bacon and before he shot, he told you all about the witch killings and who the man is.

“Tell him you want cash and that unless he pays you to keep quiet, you will tell the police what Bacon told you. Tell him Jane Shannon won’t be questioned until morning and he will have a chance to leave town. Ask him a thousand dollars or even more. Any amount at all.”

“And get myself bumped off!” said Dorothy, wide-eyed. “For goodness’ sake, what do you take me for?”

“You said you had nerve,” reminded Ransom, turning to his desk. “All right. You may go.”

“Not so fast. Who is going to act my hero stuff while I am holding up this swell lawyer?”

“Big Jim and a couple of my men. They will be hidden close by. I don’t think Boyerson will want to leave your body in his apartment after he leaves town anyhow. He doesn’t think we have much on him.”

“You’re cheerful,” sneered Dorothy. “Why can’t you wait until this Shannon girl sees you?”

“I am offering you a chance to get out of the case with a little cash to hasten matters,” said Ransom impatiently. “Do you take it or leave it?”

“If you tell me where this bird lives and what I am to do, I’ll take it,” said Dorothy finally, “provided I see the money first. Maybe it will have to be used to bury me.”

Ransom grinned as he walked to the safe in a corner of his office.

“I hardly think so,” he said. “I would not ask you to do this if I thought Boyerson would kill you. By his attitude toward you and your offer he will condemn himself. Lead him on. Get him into the case as deeply as you can. You are a clever girl. Here is your two hundred. If you work this well, I’ll add another fifty.”

Dorothy Wilde took the money in a dazed fashion, counting it, folding it, and placing it in her gaudy beaded bag. Then she lifted her suspicious gaze to the young lieutenant’s impassive face.

“Say, did this Shannon girl die?” she asked quietly.

“All you have to know at present is what I am about to tell you. And we have to work fast. Boyerson may return at any moment from the Delaney house. Now, you listen carefully to instructions.”

Chapter LIII The Test

Behind a thick silken curtain in Boyerson’s living room, Big Jim Pensbury chafed at the enforced inaction. His gun was in his hand, and he hoped that he could use it. A picture of the Raddock girl as he entered her bedroom floated before his eyes, and the thought of Jane Shannon filled him with rage.

Across the room, cleverly concealed, two other detectives also waited, in grim silence.

Two clocks ticked somewhere and one of them chimed richly every fifteen minutes. The air was warm.

After what seemed like years to Jim, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and the door at the end of the long, handsomely furnished corridor which led back to the living room was opened, and the waiting men heard Boyerson’s voice and then Dorothy Wilde’s. The girl had evidently waited for him outside.

The two came along the corridor and Boyerson turned on several lamps in the living room, threw off his coat and hat, and turned to the girl.

“Now, what can I do for you?” asked the lawyer.

“Don’t try to be high hat,” said Dorothy, leaning back against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her swagger little coat. “Bacon shot himself to-night.”

There was a tense silence, during which Jim knew that Boyerson had experienced a dreadful shock. But when he spoke his voice was still suave and pleasant.

“Bacon?” he asked. “I don’t know who you mean. You are, I think you told me, Miss Wilde, one of the inmates of the Wallace house where Delaney was murdered.”

“Yeah, and don’t call me an inmate,” said Dorothy. “It sounds like I’m crazy. I guess you know Bacon, Bert Bacon. Anyhow, he said you did. He said it before he died.”

“Suppose you tell me what you are getting at,” said Boyerson in a level, dangerous voice. “Sit down.”

“No, thanks,” said Dorothy. “I haven’t got time and neither have you. You see, Bacon has spilled the beans. He shot himself, and then he told on you. I’ll tell you how it was. They released me from the hospital after I got that wallop on my head when I followed Bacon out of the Wallace house. When I got home there was Bert sitting in the room where Delaney was murdered, reading a book. He sure had his nerve. So I went in and started to razz him about handing me that slam, and then I showed him the evening paper where it said Jane Shannon was going to talk to the police tomorrow, that she knew who had killed Delaney and was getting well. That threw a terrible scare into Bert. But he bluffed it.

“He said it was newspaper talk and that the girl couldn’t live with the kind of shot she had in her. And just then the radio broke loose with that evening news broadcast, and the fellow announced that Jane Shannon was about to talk and tell what she knew. Well, I’ll never forget that. Bert just went wild. First thing I knew he had brought out a gun from one of his pockets and I thought he was going to shoot me with it. But he didn’t. He shot himself. Was I a wreck? I’ll tell the world.”

Dorothy shivered with the memory of that awful moment, but went boldly on, to Jim’s everlasting admiration.

“And then Bacon began to talk to me. He told me everything, Mr. Boyerson, before he died. And if you will hand me over a thousand dollars I’ll keep quiet until you get out of town. But it will have to be now, for Jane Shannon will talk to Ransom in the morning.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

Boyerson spoke with a cold, contained sort of rage that was more alarming than a burst of temper. He thrust his head forward and stared at the girl in so menacing a fashion that Big Jim’s hands tightened on the gun that was pointed at Boyerson’s heart.

“Say, you know what I mean!” Dorothy managed to laugh tauntingly. “Want me to say it? Bacon told me you killed Delaney. He said you were mixed up in that killing out in Great Falls, Montana, and that when you started in on your getting money from rich men here, Talbot, who knew about that Montana killing, threatened you. Then you scared him with threats, because he had been out there with you. You could throw the blame on him, for you were a slick lawyer with plenty of pull.

“And you drove Talbot crazy as, one by one, these men killed themselves, driven to it by you. He took the only way out. He told you so when he jumped. He couldn’t stand it any longer. And he was fond of Bill Delaney, and Bill was in your power.

“You see, Bacon told me all about it, Boyerson. But nobody else heard it. I was there alone with him right after the shot. You got Rose Raddock because Gail Delaney, the woman you loved, told you about the note in the pocket of that dressing gown, the note Bacon himself wrote on Ed Hopeton’s paper. On my typewriter, I bet. But Ransom was too clever to catch Hope-ton in his net, even if the gun in the dead man’s hand was his. Ransom is a smart bird, Mr. Boyerson.”

“You must be mad!” roared Boyerson furiously. “How dare you come in here and tell me this rot? I don’t know Bacon. I was never in the Wallace house. I’ll call the police and have you arrested!”

Dorothy giggled nervously.

“Say, that would be a good one. Go ahead and call. I can see you. Fork out a thousand dollars and as far as I am concerned, Bert Bacon died with his mouth shut. But you only got until Ransom sees Jane Shannon.”

In the darkness, Big Jim grinned. The girl was good.

“Get out of here,” snapped Boyerson. “You little gold digger! Get out of my apartment at once.”

“Oh, sure, I’ll go,” said Dorothy, turning to the door. “But I’ll stop off at headquarters.”

There followed a terrible moment for Big Jim. While Dorothy Wilde walked down that long corridor to the door, each step she took seemed to fall on his twitching nerves. Could it be that Boyerson was not their man? But everything pointed to the lawyer.

The girl had almost reached the door. And then Boyerson sprang forward.

“Come back here, you!” he snarled.

And with a vast breath quickly smothered, Big Jim knew they had won.

Dorothy had turned. Insolently, with one hand on her hip, she walked toward the lawyer.

“Well?” she asked.

“How can I be sure you’ll keep your mouth shut?” grated Boyerson as he stepped to an inlaid desk which stood near one of the hiding places of the police.

“I don’t know,” said Dorothy. “I’ll just swear I will. What would I get out of it if I talked after you paid me? Nobody else would pay me anything. The cops wouldn’t.”

Boyerson was making out a check, and, as he signed his name to it he signed his death warrant. The weird, mysterious witch murders were at an end! Mysterious still to Big Jim, but he cared little for the explanation of them. He had his man. Ransom could take care of the rest.

Chapter LIV A Woman in Montana

Dorothy Wilde took the check from Boyerson’s hand and scanned it through her heavily made-up lashes.

“Suppose you stop payment on this, big boy?” she wanted to know.

“Don’t worry,” said Boyerson. “I dare say you’ve lied to me, but I can’t take a chance on you. You know too much.”

“Well, you better get a move on,” said Dorothy as she placed the check in her beaded bag and turned to the door. “That lieutenant gets up early.”

Boyerson thrust his hands into his pockets as Dorothy turned away. Big Jim, fearing that the man might, after all, shoot the girl, sprang from his hiding place and thrust both arms through Boyerson’s from the rear, taking him utterly by surprise. The other two men stepped out of their corners.

A sharp ring came at the door. Dorothy opened it to Ransom and Sergeant Pierce.

As he passed the girl, Ransom gave her a pat on the shoulder.

“Good kid,” he approved. “It worked, did it?”

“Worked!” cried Dorothy delightedly. “He’s your man, all right, lieutenant. I certainly had him going with Bacon’s confession and all the dope you had told me.”

When Ransom reached Big Jim’s side, Boyerson had been forced into a chair and handcuffs snapped on his wrists.

“Boyerson,” asked Ransom, standing before the cornered man, “why did you do it?”

Richard Boyerson was a brilliant man. He had played a wild game and had lost. He knew when he was beaten. He wasted no time in useless denials. He even smiled sardonically into Ransom’s eyes.

“A woman, first, out in Montana,” he said with a shrug. “Women have always been the ruin of me. This girl to-night — she was your tool? It was a trap?”

Ransom nodded. “A trap, Boyerson. Bacon is dead all right, but he didn’t talk.”

“You’re honest with me,” said Boyerson. “Thanks. I have no chance now, however. I’m lawyer enough to know that. And when Jane speaks—”

Ransom said nothing. Of no use now to tell this man that Jane Shannon lay cold and dead and speechless.

“It was a woman in Montana where I first met Talbot,” said Boyerson presently. “Years ago I met Talbot out there, but this happened more recently. We had gone back there together on a business trip. About five years ago it was. There were two men whom this woman seemed to prefer to me. I knew that if they were out of the way I would have a chance. She had almost told me so. I was mad about her and ready to do anything to win her.

“I killed one of these men with aconitine which I had taken from his own amateur laboratory, and I killed him on a night when I knew my second rival was going to his home to see him. After he died, I waited there for the other man, and when he came I shot him, fired a shot into the first chap’s head, and placed the gun in the first chap’s hand.

“I hoped the cops might think it suicide and murder, and I involved a young fool who had been hanging around Ida for weeks, for it was his gun. I had not figured in any way in the case, and I needed to use this kid. It was strange that he had the same name as the girl who testified to-day for young Delaney — Darien. That upset me a bit, Ransom.”

“She was his sister,” said Ransom softly.

“Ah!” For a moment amazement seemed to keep Boyerson silent. “Well, life is strange,” he went on. “Not much use going wrong. It traps you sooner or later. You see, out west I was not Boyerson. Years before, I practiced law under my own name, that of Gray Patricks. When Talbot and I went back I went as Patricks. Of course Lucius knew all this. I had a rather shady past out there and he started to worry me about it after the crimes, after that Darien boy went to jail. But I had him fixed. I knew too much about him in the old days for him to get smart with me.”

“Then you never saw Darien’s sister in Montana?” asked Ransom.

“No. I was out of there the moment those chaps died. I was not even served with a subpoena. I worked it cleverly and I kept away.”

“And afterward? When you came east?”

“I had learned then how easy it was to commit crime,” mused the lawyer. “I wanted big money. I saw how I could intimidate Talbot. I got the idea of getting stuff on other men and working them. And then the witchcraft murders broke in Pennsylvania. I read up a lot on them. I saw in my work how you can twist some people around by fear — superstitious fear. I used the cross of salt, the old voodoo warning of trouble. And people kept quiet about it.

“I suppose they laughed at it until they began to know that some anonymous person meant business, and then the less they said the better. I got all sorts of stuff on wealthy men I went about with. Crooked card tricks, affairs with women, rotten politics, graft. I used it all and they paid me well. Some of them ended their lives when they got tired paying. I sat pretty then, too, for they were obvious suicides.

“And then Talbot jumped out of his office window. He did it because he knew too much and his conscience drove him mad, and because I had forced him to make a will leaving all his money to Bill Delaney, the husband of the woman I meant to marry. I intended to get rid of Bill. I had plenty on him and I had been demanding sums of money from him for some time. Of course, neither he nor any of the other men knew who I was.”

“But Bacon and Jane Shannon came into it,” reminded Ransom.

“Yes. I’d seen Bacon with Mrs. Wallace, who worked for Lucius, and I knew Mrs. Wallace owned just the sort of house I might need in my plans. I cultivated Bacon. Six months ago I saw to it that Jane Shannon moved into the house across the street from the Wallace house. She and her husband, Horace, had lived in Great Falls. Horace knew me well and he trailed me east and forced me to send him enough money to live on. He had a bad heart and a touch of lung trouble. I knew he would not last long. It was his wife I feared. He was onto my game and of course he told her before he died.

“When she came to me to protest and to say that she must tell if the suicides did not cease, I knew I had to get rid of her. Bacon put me wise to the vacant little house on Camac Avenue and we sent her advertisements about it with many cheap inducements, and since it was going to cost her less to live there than where she was, in an apartment, finally she went to see it and moved in. I wanted here here, because already the plot which was to finish her off with Delaney was seething in my mind.

“As long as she was where Bacon could report to me regarding her movements and friends, I felt better, and she was hardly ever from under Bacon’s eye. He knew every one who went to her house and he reported when Hopeton began to get attentive. That looked good to me.”

“Just tell me this,” put in Big Jim, “You burned that cottage at Sparrow Wood, didn’t you?”

Boyerson nodded, sneering. “If you cops had ever gone over that, the game would have been up. We kept everything of any importance out there.”

“But what had the police done that made you take that step?” asked Jim.

“You had taken to questioning Hopeton,” replied Boyerson. “And we didn’t know what Jane had told him.”

“What did you have on Bill Delaney?” asked Ransom, while Big Jim returned to jotting down the story as the lawyer told it.

“Bill ran a sort of mild drug traffic,” said Boyerson. “He let people come to his house where his wife and kids were to get the stuff. He was a bad lot, and finally I sent him the last of my notes, which Bacon wrote on some of Hopeton’s paper in the Wallace house. Bacon had summoned Delaney to that house before, when he was alone in it. Nobody knew Delaney knew Bacon. He had scraped acquaintance with him soon after we started our partnership, and he let him think he was interested in the drug racket. Bacon was clever.”

“Then after you had that note sent to Delaney you made the appointment for Jane to meet Delaney in the Wallace house and you waited in the living room and shot her as she entered,” stated Ransom. “Or was it Bacon?”

“No.” Boyerson shook his head. “You see, Jane didn’t know Delaney and she was dead against me. When Bacon wrote the note to her, which was apparently from Delaney, telling her he was in trouble and had known her husband in Montana and wanted to see her about it that he might expose the man who was causing all these deaths, she fell for it. In the note she was asked to meet Delaney in the Wallace living room at midnight. She was probably suspicious because Delaney asked that, for Hopeton lived there. That was likely why she did not go in alone, but hung around watching, not knowing what to do until the taxi came along. I guess she was sweet on Hope-ton or she would have let him in on this.”

“It was Bacon who did for Delaney, then?”

“Yes. I gave him the aconitine and he met Delaney in the living room of the Wallace house and offered him a drink. That was all there was to it. He had Hopeton’s gun and he simply hid it in the living room where I could get it when I arrived later on. Bacon kept an eye on the living room and intended to steer any one away from it who seemed inclined to enter it. If the body of Delaney had been discovered, well — no one was involved, and we would have finished off the Shannon girl before morning anyhow.”

“Where did you get the aconitine?” demanded Ransom.

“I took a good supply of several deadly poisons from my rival’s laboratory in Great Falls,” replied Boyerson. “I didn’t know when I might need them, and I wasn’t anxious to sign a paper to get possession of one of them.”

“This Shannon girl knew, I suppose, about the cottage at Sparrow Wood, and she muttered a lot about hex and made the sign of the horned fingers,” mused Ransom. “Was she trying to tell me something, Boyerson?”

“Maybe Horace told her all he knew. Some of the people I worked for cash were very, superstitious. I knew that if I used the witch stuff strong in the Delaney case and the Raddock case it would make my game all the easier. The papers eat that sort of thing. When Gail told me about the note she found in Bill’s dressing gown and that she had let Shafter take it to the Raddock family, hoping that it would be used by some of that down-at-the-heels lot to injure Bill or bring him to his senses or expose what he was up to, I knew I had to get that note.

“I went to the Raddock house early in the morning while it was still dark and looked the place over. Gail had told me exactly where it was. I had a thought of breaking in and scaring them into giving up the note, but when I walked around back I saw a lighted window and the figure of a girl outlined in it. The girl was posing in that red dressing gown.

“The next morning I returned, watched my chance, made the cross of salt on the ramshackle porch, and went in and found Rose alone with the baby. She defied me and held back the note. She was a regular little vixen. Well, I had no choice. I had to get rid of her. Then I walked out the back door and reached my car on another street.”

Feeling a repulsion at the horrible crimes of this polished looking gentleman, who sat so calmly in his handsome living room and talked about them, Ransom kept his voice quiet as he asked his questions, and only the scratch of Jim’s pencil broke the silence when both men paused for a moment.

“And so you shot the dead Delaney to throw us off the track?” asked Ransom presently.

“Not entirely,” said Boyerson. “That hadn’t worked in Great Falls. No; it gave me a kind of satisfaction to pretend that Jane had been killed by the man with whom she was plotting to expose me.”

“You were the cowled figure Dorgan and Jane saw on the Wallace porch?”

“Of course. Wasn’t that clever? Aconitine, monkshood, the cowled figure of the monk! And it was witches’ brew all right, first brewed by that witch in Great Falls. I went to the Wallace house to lay the cross of salt, to see if Delaney had been done for, to learn if our plot had been discovered and if it was safe for me to enter the house and wait for Jane. With Delaney out of the way I could marry Gail and get Lu’s fortune, and with Jane out, Bacon and I could go ahead with our scheme and pile up a few more fortunes.”

Dorothy Wilde drew a gasping breath.

“God!” she whispered to the officer beside her. “I’m breaking out in a rash!”

Chapter LV Red Ink

“What gave me a jolt were those two words spelled on the card table before Delaney’s body,” went on Boyerson gloomily. “Those words, ‘Find Jane’. I knew Bacon had not done that, for he was true to me. He has a fat bank account where you cops haven’t located it. But there, when I crept into the living room where Delaney sat alone, dead, staring at me, I saw those words! I tell you, it gave me a turn. I didn’t know then that Bacon had seen Mrs. Delaney creep into the living room and discover her husband’s body. He let me know that later. It seems strange that Bill was talking to me over the telephone the day Gail overheard the mention of Jane. He had called me to read me a note he had received from his stepfather, Talbot, and in it Talbot told him to find Jane, that Jane could tell him all he wanted to know.

“I knew at that moment that Eu Talbot was breaking, that sooner or later he would tell one of his boys about the game I was playing for millions. I knew Gail had heard that conversation, for she had hinted at it to me several times since the death of Bill and the shooting of Jane.”

“Why was that red ink spilled on the floor of the Wallace living room, Boyerson?” asked Ransom, determined to clear up everything while this amazing criminal was in a mood to talk.

“I don’t know,” replied the lawyer. “I suppose Bill or Bacon knocked the bottle on the floor.”

Ransom was silent for a moment, then, exchanging a glance with Big Jim. For the red ink, accidentally spilled, into which Dorothy Wilde had stepped and which had caused Bacon to try to entangle the girl in the case, had actually trapped Richard Boyerson! Ransom, knowing the man, doubted if in any other way than through this trap baited by a little gold digger, could he have so satisfactorily caught the killer.

“And it was you who telephoned young Delaney and summoned him to the Blue Dragon Inn to meet the brother who would never come there,” Ransom said.

Boyerson smiled grimly.

“Yes. Rather clever, wasn’t it? I knew young Giles was not known in such places and I hoped it would make him tell a fishy story. The Darien girl ruined that. It would have been so nice if both Delaney men were out of the picture and Gail and her fortune were undisputably mine.”

“Those acorns filled with hair,” said Ransom. “Talbot got one. It scared him to death.”

“Others had them, too. But they were suicides. Nobody found them or thought of them if they did. Talbot knew when he got his that I would kill him. I was mad then with gain. It was so easy to play people! I wanted to be famous as a kind of unique terror. A long time ago I paid Race Shannon twenty dollars for a lock of his wife’s hair. I could tie her up then with any crime I was caught with if she got unruly. I fancied I could protect myself against her, and I never believed she would really squeal. It would place her in too bad a position herself. But I found she meant to. You can’t tell about these women.”

“You unnatural devil!” cried Ransom, giving way for a moment to the rage which consumed him.

Dorothy Wilde rose from the couch and went close to the handcuffed man, her small face blazing with fury.

“Say, it was you who hit me that wallop the time I followed Bacon!” she cried hysterically. “It was you Dorgan saw in that monk rig.”

Boyerson grinned.

“Quite easy, my dear, to slip the hood on my head,” Boyerson said. “The story Dorgan told bears out my theory of carefully-built-up superstition. My fame was growing! And it was my one mistake, that. I did not hit you hard enough.”

“Oh, yeah?” screamed Dorothy, completely out of control now. “Well, we’re quits! I not only lied to you to-night about Bacon, I don’t only have your thousand dollars, but I’m going to be the first to hand you a bit of cheerful news! You are the world’s prize dumb-bell. Jane Shannon is dead! She died hours ago! She couldn’t squeal now if she wanted to!”

Boyerson sprang from his chair, his face livid with fury, his handcuffed arms lifted as though he would bring them down with crashing force on the little tap dancer’s defiant head, but Big Jim thrust out a powerful arm and flung him back in his chair.

“You better behave yourself!” he growled. “Dorothy, you calm down now. Your act’s done.”

“Well, I got him told, anyhow!” she said triumphantly.