The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 1 — April 1922)

I

Beneath the library window of the millionaire, Garret Garrison, the footprints of a burglar showed plainly in the flowerbed that ran alongside the house. The bright sun following a rainy night had retained them perfectly and the two detectives breathed together in a sigh of satisfaction as they saw there a vitally distinguishing mark.

The toe of each sole had been newly repaired with a patch. Here undoubtedly one of the thieves who had committed the $15, 000 jewel robbery the night before had left a trace that would simplify their work and send him to prison. In these tracks he had undoubtedly stood while he operated the jimmy whose marks showed on the casing above.

A little outside, but still within the flowerbed, were the marks of his heels where he had landed as he leaped back into the yard after his fight with the butler. Here the heels were deeply indented, but the prints of the same repaired toes were again in evidence. In the damp soil the marks of the burglar’s feet were plain, showing where he had entered the grounds through the hedge and crashed out again.

Detective Sergeant Harrison was showing his associate, Harbin, over the ground for the first time. Harbin had been working on another angle of the case.

“Now look up here, Harbin,” he said and led the way to the soil under the adjoining window of the Garrison drawing-room. “Here’s where the other guy jumped out.”

Sure enough, there were the prints of another pair of heels and the marks of a running man’s footprints across the lawn to the same break in the hedge. But on these prints there was no such distinguishing mark as upon the others. The shoes that made these might have belonged to any one of a million men in the big city.

For perhaps twenty minutes the two detectives paced in silence up and down the lawn alongside the house. Twice, with the aid of stepladders, they inspected every window within reach from the ground. Outside the house, they were satisfied, there was not another trace of the thieves who had broken in and stolen a pearl necklace worth $10, 000 and other trinkets worth $5, 000 more. They must be content to rest their case upon these marks in the dirt and the story of the butler who had surprised one of the marauders in the hallway of the mansion.

At the end of this time Harbin, the senior of the two Headquarters men, stopped in his tracks and scratched his head vigorously.

“Tom,” he ventured at last, “do you see anything wrong with these feet tracks?”

“Hell, yes,” replied Harrison. “Have you just tumbled? They show plain enough where scuffle-toes came in and went out and they show where the other fellow came out, but they don’t show this other gink coming in at all. That’s been botherin’ me for an hour.”

Harrison, who had been on the case since it was first reported, had already interviewed the members of the household but since Harbin had reported to assist him they could see nothing to do but start again from the inside.

The robbery, it was again explained to them, had occurred about one o’clock in the morning. The Garrison home was supposed to be untenanted except by the butler and two women servants who slept on the top floor, the family having been called away by the death of a relative. Their departure had been announced in the newspapers the day before. It seemed, however, that the daughter, about twenty years of age, had decided at the last moment to remain behind and was also in the house at the time of the robbery.

Schmidt, the butler, and the other servants had been with the family for years and were, by all standards, beyond suspicion. He had not heard the robbers enter but had been aroused by the noise when the strong box in Mrs. Garrison’s room — just below his — had been forced open and had dashed down, half-clad, to investigate.

In the hallway he had encountered a masked man in cap and overcoat and grappled with him. In the struggle the burglar had slipped out of the overcoat and leaped down the front stairs, firing two shots that missed but halted the servant. Schmidt had paused for slippers and then given chase by way of the front door. By the time he reached the street there was the noise of a starting motor car around the corner, hidden by the tall hedge, and he saw nothing but a blur of tail-lights.

At daybreak the police had found a revolver in the gutter three blocks down the street and an hour or so later an abandoned automobile was reported a mile away. In this was a plaid cap that the butler identified as the one worn by the burglar with whom he had struggled.

In addition to these tangible clues, the detectives had valuable evidence also in the shape of the overcoat the burglar had left in the butler’s hands. It was particularly valuable, since it bore the maker’s name. But there was something strange about all this silent evidence that had been left behind — the coat particularly.

It was an unheard-of thing for a burglar to wear to work such a fashionable and distinctive garment, so easily traced. The cap that had been found was a gaudy affair that would attract attention even in a big city. The pistol still bore its factory number. It had been scratched in an effort at effacement, but apparently the job had been given up as not worth while. As for the shoes with the cobbled soles, it seemed indeed remarkable that a crook would trust himself in a pair leaving so unmistakable an imprint wherever he walked.

With such material to work with, the detectives assigned to the job considered that they had accomplished only an average half-day’s work when they announced at noon that they had solved the mystery of the Garrison robbery.

The coat had been speedily identified. The name the purchaser had given the tailor was not known to the police but his description was and the maker had instantly recognized his Rogue’s Gallery picture. The third of the police stool-pigeons consulted gave the name of the owner of the plaid cap — a known crony of the owner of the coat, and a man who had often driven the abandoned automobile. The tracing of the revolver and the shoes would take a little time, but if they did not belong to the same, two men, the police felt certain at least that they could name two of their friends to whom they did.

The greatest mystery was why such men as these should leave such a trail. The two men positively identified were two of the best known burglars in the country but had never before been known to work in New York City. It was their home — their playground. Almost any night they could be found in Eichorn’s restaurant with their friends. In fact, Harbin had seen them there the night before.

It was incomprehensible, yet there was the evidence. And so, at noon, the police alarm went out to bring in Dave Bamfield, Red Doran, Billy Evans and Jim Anthony.

II

Harbin, more methodical than the other detectives — perhaps a trifle more intelligent — went over the evidence like a schoolmaster as four police officers sat down to lunch in Eichorn’s, where he had seen two of the wanted men the night before, apparently just before the robbery. Bamfield and Doran had been seated at the marble-topped table in the corner with June Jennings, Evans’s girl. As the detective noted that Billy Evans was missing, he recalled the gossip he had heard that the coming of the pretty blonde girl into the society of the gang was threatening to disrupt it.

His attention had been attracted to the gang by meeting, just outside, Frog Fagin, looking as though he had failed in his nightly effort to sponge a meal from the prosperous crooks and slinking away to quarters more within his measly means. Just beyond he had seen Evans hurrying toward the restaurant with determined stride and protruding jaw. He had been half tempted to wait to see a grand row over June Jennings but his bed had called loudly and he had gone home.

Now it seemed that while he slept these acquaintances of his had been, not fighting, but hard at work. The picture identified as that of the purchaser of the overcoat was that of Bamfield. The cap had been definitely placed as one used by Doran for motoring — indeed, had his initials scratched on the inside of the sweatband in small letters. Thus two of the men were fixed to a certainty. It was considered almost certain that a third man had acted as lookout and also that a fourth had remained at the wheel of the automobile. What two men would Doran and Bamfield most likely have with them on such an enterprise? They associated habitually with Anthony and Evans. The deduction seemed clear as gin and the finding was so entered and confirmed by the Old Man himself.

The capture of the four was ridiculously easy. Jim Anthony was found in what his wife violently insisted was a sick-bed and she was not a whit placated at the grinning assurance of the officers that the prison physician would give her husband the best of care, without cost. Doran was nabbed as he came to Eichorn’s for a belated breakfast. Bamfield was arrested at the hotel where he always stopped when in town, and Evans was found drunk, with a bottle beside him, in the furnished room he had lately occupied with June Jennings. The girl was nowhere to be found. Probably that was the reason for the bottle.

To say that the men denied their guilt is putting it far too mildly. They were profanely vociferous about it — almost in tears at the injustice of the accusation. A strange feature of their behavior, though, was that as they sat in the same room for a time at Headquarters, three of them each shot searching looks, as though of puzzled inquiry, at Jim Anthony. That cracksman, however, seemed to have troubles of his own. He was either a most excellent actor or really had a severe cold in the chest.

It wasn’t necessary to take their finger prints. These were already on record. To attempt a third degree with such veterans would have been a waste of time. The police listened with amused grins to the strenuous denials and calmly locked up the quartet in separate cells to await arraignment on what seemed to all a clear case.

III

Returning toward Headquarters on a street car, Harbin and Harrison heard an excited hail from the opposite track and recognized Detective Kelso as he swung to the pavement and joined them on the sidewalk.

“They’ve traced the gun,” he announced hurriedly. “It’s Bill Evans’s. June Jennings bought it across the river a month ago. She’s been packin’ it for him. That’s what they’ve got her for — gun moll, sabe? Come on and we’ll get her.”

“Where? Get her where?” demanded Harbin of Kelso, who was already hailing another car.

“Bill Evans’s room,” spluttered Kelso. “Just got a flash she was seen going into the house. Hurry up”; and the three clambered aboard to continue Kelso’s journey.

Kelso had been there before and knew the place. Running noiselessly up the stairs of the rooming house, the three hurled themselves at the door and burst it in at the second shove to confront an astounded young woman who grabbed frantically at her throat. Harrison seized her wrist and, forcing open her clenched fingers, disclosed a diamond brooch she had torn from her waist. Twelve diamonds, set in platinum, it fitted to a T the description of one article of the Garrison loot.

“Great Gosh, this is the plant!” ejaculated Kelso hoarsely. “Search the dump. The other stuff’s here, surer than hell.”

While Harrison clung to June Jennings the other two swiftly and thoroughly searched the room. Almost at once Harbin chuckled in added delight. In a tin of smoking tobacco his fingers encountered something hard and drew forth another one of the Garrison jewels — a ruby-and-diamond ring. But Kelso found nothing and the three turned again to the flame-faced girl.

“Where’s the rest of the stuff?” they demanded. “Where’s the pearl necklace? Where did you get that brooch? Where’s the plant?”

“Leggo my arm,” was the defiant reply. “Howdje get that way? That brooch was given to me by a friend of mine. If it was stolen, I didn’t know it. Prove it was, if you can, and take it. I was wearing it, wasn’t I? You can’t do nothing to me for taking presents from a friend.”

“Who gave it to you?” demanded Kelso. “Bill Evans gave it to you.”

“That skunk? Why he wouldn’t—” the girl began, then stopped and changed her tone. “Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn’t,” she concluded.

“When did you see Bill last?” asked Harbin quietly.

“Not since—” Again the girl stopped her reply — “this morning.”

“Where’s the necklace?” demanded Harrison with a shake of her arm.

“He hasn’t given me that — yet,” the girl replied and laughed in the detective’s face.

With a snort of anger Kelso suddenly dashed across the single cheaply furnished room and seized the knob of a door in the corner. A bare closet was revealed as he flung it open, but fastened to the wall and reaching to a skylight was a narrow ladder, placed there to conform to the fire laws. A scraping noise caused him to look up just in time to see vanishing through a door in the glass one trousered leg that undoubtedly belonged to a man who had lingered perilously long to hear what was going on after the detectives burst into Bill Evans’s room.

“Evans, by—,” he shouted and fired a futile shot through the opening.

Harbin, waiting for no explanations, dashed for the street, but Harrison kept his head and held to the girl.

“Don’t be a fool, Kelso,” he ordered. “Evans hasn’t been sprung this quick. It’s some other guy in the gang. Get up there after him.”

Whoever it was apparently knew the block better than the detectives, because they did not find him on the roof or in the streets roundabout. From the girl they could get nothing but malicious chuckles, and after a half hour spent in tearing the room to pieces, despite the angry protests of the landlady, the three summoned a patrol wagon and locked up June Jennings in a cell at Headquarters.

Disgruntled as they were, they had at least one satisfaction. They had traced two pieces of the loot to Bill Evans’s room.

As for the revolver, June Jennings readily admitted purchasing it, when confronted with the dealer.

“Sure, I bought it,” she says. “Bought it for protection against guys that grab a girl’s presents of jewelry. You didn’t find it on me, did you? Is there a law against buying a gun in another state?”

IV

Somewhat shamefacedly, the three detectives glared at one another after this job was over. Apparently even though they had easily rounded up the men in the case, they still had the women to contend with.

“You know, boys, Jim Anthony’s Nell has got a pretty nasty temper,” said Kelso, by way of contributing to the general gloom.

“Yes,” said Harrison, “and then there’s that Miss Garrison. She ain’t telling a story that’s any straighter than a hound’s hind leg.”

“What do you mean?” said Harbin.

“Why, she told me three different stories in as many minutes this morning about where she was when the robbery was pulled.”

“Excitement — reaction from excitement,” explained Harbin in his best manner.

“Excitement my eye,” came the discouraging answer. “There’s a pair of men’s rubbers in the hall with last night’s mud on them that won’t fit Schmidt and won’t fit Old Man Garrison either. I suppose excitement put them there. No visitors at the house, they say. Now what do you make of that?”

To avoid a direct reply, Harbin turned to Kelso. “What’s Nell Anthony up to?” he demanded.

“Well, you know, I went out to trace those cobbled shoes,” Kelso explained. “I did, all right. They’re Jimmy Anthony’s. No doubt about it. That’s admitted. Didn’t have time to tell you before. But guess where I found ’em.”

Neither Harbin nor Harrison was in a mood to try.

“I found them in the cobbler’s shop where Anthony left them a week ago. But they’ve got mud on the new soles and it’s the same mud that’s in Garrison’s flowerbeds. Now, how the hell and why the hell did they get back there?

“More than that, Jim’s wife and all the neighbors will swear on the original text of the Bible that Jim was in bed all night. And besides that Mrs. Jim has gone out on the trail herself and offered to bet me her savings bank account that we’re dead wrong on the whole proposition. Now, what do you make of that?”

They did not have much time to speculate over what to make of it, as they journeyed down to Headquarters.

Pacing up and down in front of the building they found Jim Anthony’s wife, angry, sarcastic and triumphant in one mingled mood.

Refusing them even time to go inside and report, she dragged the three bewildered detectives six blocks up the street and halted them in front of the cobbler’s shop at which Kelso had located Jim Anthony’s wandering shoes.

“I know you’ve been in there and got Jim’s shoes,” she announced dramatically. “That’s good and proper. But are you going to tell the truth about what the old shoe man says?”

“Yes, lady,” responded Kelso, meekly.

“Well, then, come with me and see that you remember the rest of this straight, you bum Sherlocks.” And the indignant wife of one of the best burglars in the world led the unresisting forces of Law and Order around the corner and through a tiny door in a huge billboard which shut off a vacant lot.

Inside were half a dozen rusting wagons and a couple of disintegrating Fords, ranged around the outskirts of the lot. The main part of it was open to the sun and the mud created by the Spring rain of the night before was plainly undisturbed, save for the prints of three pairs of shoes.

One set had been made by a woman and into the first of these prints Nell Anthony set her foot, which fitted perfectly.

“You see that?” she questioned. “I made that this afternoon looking for what I’m going to show you. These are my tracks. Look at the others.”

With a gasp the dectectives read the signs in the baked mud — four sets of tracks of a man’s feet — one plain set going toward the rear of the cobbler’s shop — one with the patch returning — another, with the patch, going toward the shop and, in places, superimposed on the first — and then a set of plain tracks returning to the little door to the street.

Never waiting for a comment, Nell Anthony’s gesture led them across the lot to the rear of the cobbler’s shanty facing on the other street. Before the window in the rear she paused and pointed at the casing. She did not need to explain it to these trained eyes. Along the middle of the sash, just under the catch, the paint had been scraped away by the blade of a knife, inserted to open the window. A plain, neat and simple job of housebreaking was revealed as clearly as if all had seen it.

“Now, then,” Nell Anthony demanded, triumphantly, “who did that? Who stole my Jim’s shoes and put them back again after pulling off a job? Who tried to slough my man and him not out of his bed in a week, as all the neighbors will swear to? Answer me that, you dicks.”

There was a silence in the vacant lot — silence as disconsolate as the dismantled Fords. Finally Harrison ventured to break it.

“Mrs. Anthony,” he said, “admitting that Jim wasn’t in on this deal, have you any idea who did pull it?”

“Huh,” she answered. “Have I now? I’m Jim Anthony’s wife and he’d rather see me his widow, much as he loves me and I love him, before he’d see me squeal to a copper. Go ask June Jennings.”

The last sentence was spoken with so much bitterness that the three men started.

“We — we have asked her, ma’am,” said Kelso, finally. With a laugh, Nell Anthony had started for the gate, but she flung a reply back over her shoulder.

“Well, ask her again,” she said. “She was boasting all over the neighborhood this morning that she was going to wear real jewelry. Go ask her, the hussy. I shouldn’t say this much, but she tried to cop my Jim, because anybody can see he’s the best man in the mob. Ask her. She knows the man who pulled the job.”

Striding hastily forward, Harbin put his hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“You said ‘the man,’ Mrs. Anthony,” he reminded. “Do you mean that it was an inside job?”

“Inside is right,” was the cryptic answer; and with a defiant smile she stooped and vanished through the little gate, leaving the three detectives to stare in contemplation at the dissolving vehicles and the structure of their solution of the mystery.

V

“Inside job!” echoed Harrison. “That’s what I told you, Harbin. Remember the girl — and the overshoes? Remember those one-way tracks up there?”

Harbin did remember all of these things. In the last few minutes he had not been able to remember anything else. Previously he had thought a man’s footprints as open as his soul was closed, but up there in Garrison’s garden and here in this sordid lot were sets of them that did not track at all straight with honesty and square dealing. Impatiently, he beckoned his companions and without waiting for a street-car they hailed a taxi and sped to the Garrison home.

Garret Garrison and his wife had returned from their sad errand and the banker himself received them. This made it a little easier for the detectives, who were able to state their suspicions bluntly to a man not inclined to hysterics and used to dealing with the police.

The result was rather shattering to the structure of evidence the detectives had built up — if that tottering edifice could longer be called a structure — but they stood it like men and pressed on to their new conclusions.

Confronted by facts and suspicions in the presence of her father, Miss Garrison made a frank confession — under pledge of secrecy, of course. It seems that she had practised a little deceit. Having a horror of funerals, she had played a double game — avoided the obsequies of her aunt on the plea of sudden illness and also kept a perfectly proper sub rosa engagement with a young man who lived around the corner. The two had attended a theatre and afterward were chatting in the drawing-room, under a rather dim light, when alarmed by the noise in the upper hallway and the escape of a man through the library window.

Quick-witted, like her father, Miss Garrison had instantly realized the embarrassment which would be caused all around by the disclosure of her deception and had practically pushed young Tom Chalmers out of the drawing-room window. She had thrown his hat, coat and stick after him but had forgotten his rubbers. And like the faithful servitor he was, Chalmers had crashed through the hedge and faded out of the picture until betrayed by his one-way footprints.

“Do you mean to say, Miss Garrison,” Harbin asked, “that there was only one burglar in the house?”

“Only one,” she answered, steadily now, with her father’s hand in hers. “I saw him distinctly as he swung around the newel post and darted into the library.”

“Dave Bamfield,” whispered Kelso. “We’ve got his overcoat.”

“He had on a bright plaid cap,” went on Miss Garrison.

“Red Doran,” muttered Harrison. “We’ve got the cap.”

At this moment the telephone bell in the library rang and Garrison went to answer it.

“Detective Jacobs of Headquarters wishes to talk with one of you gentlemen,” he announced a minute later, and Harbin went to the phone.

“Say, Harbin,” said Jacobs, “the Old Man says to go slow. There’s something damn queer about this Garrison case.”

“You said something,” replied Harbin, “but what now?”

“Well, Bamfield and Doran have got a lawyer and sent him over to Eichorn’s restaurant to get their overcoats.”

“Their what?” shouted Harbin.

“Their overcoats. They say they left them there night before last when they left in a hurry. Doran’s coat is there but Bamfield’s is missing and Doran’s cap — the one he uses when he’s auto-riding and carries folded up in a pocket is gone out of his coat. The waiters remember that they had ’em when they came in and left without ’em. They thought they would be back in a few minutes and didn’t say anything about it.”

“Holy mackerel!” said Harbin and hung up the phone without a reply.

When he returned to the drawing-room Miss Garrison was still describing the burglar. He arrived just in time to catch a thread of it.

Harbin forgot his manners, his surroundings and everything else as, with a bellowed “Come on, you!” he leaped for the front door.

“Do you know who did it?” demanded the slow thinking Kelso on the way downtown.

“Yes,” barked Harbin, “a sneak thief.”

“Sneak, nothing,” interrupted Harrison. “We’ve got one burglar left anyway.”

“Yes,” admitted Harbin, “one — such as he is — a dirty sneak — the man who stole Bamfield’s overcoat and Doran’s cap out of Eichorn’s and left them behind him for a plant. The man who stole Jim Anthony’s shoes to track him into the pen. The man who used Evans’s gun and Doran’s car for the same reason. What I don’t know is where he got his nerve and his idea.”

“Nell said to ask June Jennings,” reminded Kelso.

It was rather a bitter pill, but Harrison and Kelso went to the woman’s prison for the girl while Harbin continued downtown. He asked them to wait until he returned to Headquarters and to have the Old Man himself there. Two hours later the mystery of the Garrison jewel robbery with its wanton clues and its track-and-a-half footprints was definitely cleared up.

Harbin entered the room where June Jennings was defiantly awaiting developments, swinging in his hand a string of glistening, rose-tinted pearls. At sight of them the girl gasped, then flung her cigarette into a cuspidor, cursing the world in general.

“Well, young lady,” said the Captain, “it’s all off, you see.”

“Yes,” she answered, drearily. “I might have known the dirty sneak wouldn’t have the nerve to go through with it. If he’d given me the beads this afternoon I’d be on easy street. Now the whole works is off. I’m through.”

“Any use holding those boys we have got locked up?” inquired the captain.

“Not a bit,” replied June Jennnings. “They were just a stall for a good getaway. You fell for that fine. Who put you wise?”

“Oh, a couple of women — Nell Anthony for one,” answered Harbin.

“I might have known that. She thought I was playing for Jim, but I was just sore at the whole gang — afraid to work in New York. Bah! Jim planned the job but didn’t have nerve enough to tackle it. He laid out the whole thing to show how easy it was. Last night was the night for it but they wouldn’t budge, and so when Bill came into Eichorn’s and acted nasty, just after they’d kicked out the Frog—”

“The Frog,” shouted Harrison and Kelso.

“Yes, the Frog,” the girl repeated. “I chased after him, gave him the dope and Bill’s gat and drove him out there in Red's car. I guess that’s all.”

“Yes,” said the Captain, touching a bell, “I guess that is all.”

The door opened and a uniformed officer led in the slinking form of Frog Fagin, outcast even of crooks, who had had his big chance and failed as usual.

The telephone bell rang and Harbin answered it. It was a woman’s voice.

“Have you asked June Jennings yet?” it queried tauntingly.