“SAMPSON,” said Lanagan, “there’s something queer about that Robbins case. Professional second story men aren’t returning to the scene of a $10,000 burglary and sending by messenger a written proposition to return the property for a cash settlement. They know how and where to negotiate the stuff and they take no chances; particularly not with one of their number under arrest—assuming the Ward boy is one of them. And that is another queer angle: seasoned crooks don’t operate with sixteen-year-old boys.”

“How do you account for the ring found on him?”

“I don’t—yet.”

“What’s your theory?”

“Haven’t any. But ten ‘second-story’ cases in three months in one district winding up with a $10,000 job is against all form.”

“Dig into it then. Here, see who this is as you go out. May be about the suspect. Same name.”

He handed Lanagan a visitor’s card. Scrawled across it in a nervous hand was: “Jennie Ward. Important.”

In the ante-room a girl with a crutch arose to[Pg 236] meet him, but he motioned her back to her seat. She had the pinched face and the wistful sadness of those condemned to life but half-whole. It was evident before she spoke a dozen words that she came as so many others come to the newspaper ante-room: in futile, uncomprehending protest at the entire system of News.

It was her brother, Jimmy, who was under arrest, and she said he was innocent. Jimmy told her he found the ring, therefore he did find it, because Jimmy never told her a lie. She did not see why papers should print such things, even if he had been arrested, and why they did not try to prove a boy innocent rather than aid the police in trying to prove him guilty.

Lanagan listened patiently at first, with an occasional question; and then he listened with a deepening interest as the girl’s fervour grew.

“It is only the rich whose wrongs you right!” she exclaimed at last passionately. “What rights have we poor? I cannot afford even a lawyer. Mamma does washing. She is old and timid, and she was afraid to come to the papers. I mostly educated myself, sir; I had to. I have learned the piano at the Sunday school. I have a little class of pupils there. The teacher helps me get them. I just teach the first lessons, you know. I make $4.25 a week. Mamma makes about $7 when she is not sick. Jimmy has been making $8, with a raise to $9.50 coming the first. So you see we manage to[Pg 237] make out, all of us together, and send my three little brothers to school.

“And now—now—all the people on the street are talking about us and my little brothers won’t go to school—the others call them names—everyone saw Jimmy’s picture in your paper to-day—

“Won’t you please help us? We haven’t any men folks to fight for us now with Jimmy locked up. Please, sir, help us get Jimmy out!

“I went to police headquarters and waited hours and hours to see Jimmy—and then—and then finally the detectives—they took me and said I would see Jimmy—but they took me to a room and shut the door—and they swore at me—

“They said I—better tell everything or go to—jail—why—why they talked like I—knew about the robbery and they were—going—to arrest—me—”

She fainted; just drooped quietly back into the chair, wearily, hopelessly, woefully, without so much as a sigh. Lanagan breathed quickly as he ministered to her.

“Poor little sis!” he said, softly. “Plucky little mother of the tenements! Taking a full-grown man’s place! But what a handicap!”

Her eyes opened. “Oh,” she fluttered, her thin, sensitive lips quivering in apology, “I fainted, didn’t I? How queer. I never fainted before. I cannot afford to give way like that. Sometimes, though! Oh, sometimes I wish I could! I wanted to in front[Pg 238] of the detectives—my brain whirled and whirled and whirled with fire like pinwheels but I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction!” Her slight hands with their long fingers clenched; her eyes sparkled. “Harrigan. That is his name. He was the worst. The brute! oh, if I were a man! I would kill him for what he said to me!”

“Never mind Harrigan. Leave him to me,” said Lanagan. “You are only exciting yourself. Go home now and try not to worry. We are going to look into your brother’s case.”

“Thank you,” she said, with shining eyes. There were at no time any tears. She had been trained in a life where tears are inadequate.

Lanagan watched her as she hobbled on her one crutch down the hall to the elevator, her useless limb swinging loosely. She was a pathetic little figure, with her man’s brain, her grown woman’s pride, and her little misshapen body; a fourteen year old girl, wearing “long clothes” in grim earnest. A quick pang shot through him; cripples always saddened him. They have infinitely so much less than the meanest wastrel who has health.

“The judgment of a cold-blooded detective against the judgment of a loyal sister,” mused Lanagan. “Which is it?”

An hour’s study at police headquarters of the reports on all ten of the burglaries established in Lanagan’s mind one settled conviction: they were all committed by the same author, and whoever it[Pg 239] was—whether an individual or a gang—had first become reasonably familiar with the interior arrangements of the houses entered, and with the daily routine of the households.

In the Robbins case, for instance, from the time the last member of the household left the bedroom, or second floor, to go down to the dining-room on the first floor for dinner, until a member of the household returning upstairs found the evidences of the burglary, only twenty-five minutes had passed; and yet in that time the thief or thieves had entered the house and had left it after cleanly ransacking three bedrooms. An open bathroom window and the drain pipe to the ground gave mute evidence of the burglar’s route.

In all of the cases only precious stones were taken: nothing monogrammed was touched, nor watches, silverware, trinkets or bric-à-brac. But this was of no particular consequence. The average expert thief prefers the precious stones. Removed from their settings they are difficult to identify and easy to negotiate.

“Professional work, all of it,” muttered Lanagan, arguing to himself. “But what about that message?”

The extraordinary boldness that had marked all the crimes culminated in the Robbins case when a man, with smoked glasses, heavy moustache, soft hat pulled down and ulster turned up, gave a small boy ten cents to carry an envelope to the Robbins[Pg 240] home, but a block from where the man stood. Enclosed in the message, which offered to return the jewelry for $5,000 cash, was a brooch that had been among the articles stolen. It was sent as proof that the offer was genuine. The message said the police were not to be notified. If the family desired to negotiate, they were to send the boy back with the single word, “Yes,” and they would be communicated with later.

In the excitement of receiving the message under such singular circumstances a member of the family, forgetting or disregarding the caution, telephoned the police, holding the boy in the house. The police misunderstood the call, and a patrol wagon load of reserves clattered up to the door within ten minutes, under the impression murder was being done.

Naturally, the man on the corner had ample time to escape. No further offers to negotiate came to the family. On the second day the police placed under arrest the Ward boy. He was employed as a helper with the Phoenix Vacuum Cleaning Company, which had been engaged a few days before at the Robbins home.

“And at the start he made a bad case, superficially, by his contradictions,” reflected Lanagan, reviewing the case.

In their investigations the detectives, examining the two men and the helper, Jimmie Ward, who had operated the cleaning apparatus at the Robbins[Pg 241] house, learned that the boy had been noticed that morning examining a diamond ring. Asked where he got it, he had replied he found it on the floor of the washroom at the establishment. No one claimed the ring. The matter was called to the attention of Cutting, the proprietor and manager of the company, but he knew of no customer having reported such a loss.

The detectives—Harrigan and Thomas—took the boy to headquarters for further questioning, and he had there said he found the ring on the sidewalk. On that contradiction he was placed under arrest and locked up in detinue.

Further, the police regarded as damaging the fact that a robbery a week previous had been committed in the same neighbourhood in a home where the cleaning apparatus had been engaged, the Ward boy serving as the helper in that house also. He had worked with a different crew of men than had been on the Robbins house, and this fact, in the police theory, eliminated the remaining employees of the company as it was highly improbable that they were all in a “second story” ring. They redoubled their efforts to find the supposed connections of Ward on the theory that he operated with an outside gang.

“‘Jimmy said he found the ring and if he said he found it he did find it,’” said Lanagan, repeating the sister’s earnest declaration. “Well, for her sake—I hope he did.”

Hour after hour Lanagan, tirelessly, kept at his[Pg 242] rounds, visiting in turn each of the ten homes in the western addition that had been robbed during the last three months.

Long before he reached the Robbins home, the last of the ten, he had formed his startling theory. In nine of the cases he had discovered that which he set out in search of: a constant condition present in them all. There was just one question that he wanted to ask at the Robbins home.

He found the home in a flurry of excitement. Police headquarters had rung up and asked that a member of the household come at once to the detective bureau to identify if possible a bracelet that it was believed had been among the stolen articles and that had been recovered.

Lanagan, arriving just as the senior Robbins was leaving in his automobile, was invited to accompany him. He did so; but first he had asked and had had answered the one question he came to ask.

In the office of O’Rourke, night captain of detectives, they found O’Rourke, Harrigan and Thomas grouped around a woman, huddled down on a chair. Lanagan caught a low sob, a helpless, forlorn, frightened sob, that sent a curious sensation of nausea through him. He stepped quickly forward to gaze down upon the misery-racked form of the cripple, Jennie Ward.

“I don’t know anything! Oh, I don’t know anything!” she wailed. “I found it on the door step!”

O’Rourke had turned as they entered. He[Pg 243] stepped to his own desk, holding the bracelet toward Robbins.

“That is my daughter’s bracelet, sir,” Robbins said. “It was my Christmas present to her.”

Harrigan, listening, nodded in satisfaction.

“I knew it,” he said. “I guess we had better throw the little gutter snipe in, cap; a little pressure now and she’s bound to squeal.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Sobs were shuddering from the girl.

“Squeal! You damned clodhopper! Give her a bullet and kill her now if you are trying to! You don’t throw her in!”

It was Lanagan. He had whirled from the huddled form to send the words cutting through the air at Harrigan like a whiplash. The girl flung up a white face in a swift look of wild hope.

“I don’t know anything, Mr. Lanagan! Don’t let them put me in jail!”

She threw herself from her chair in an attempt to clasp his arm but her withered and shrunken limb crumpled under her and she sank to the floor with a sharp cry of pain. Lanagan leaned and lifted her to the chair.

Harrigan had an ugly look as he measured the distance from himself to Lanagan.

“Yes, Harrigan; you rotten thief. Clodhopper is too mild for you!”

“You bum,” said Harrigan, with deadly levelness. “You drunken bum.”

[Pg 244]Lanagan’s leap was catlike. It took all the mighty O’Rourke’s strength to tear his fingers free. Lanagan was not a Queensbury fighter when tackling two hundred pounds of policeman. O’Rourke had Harrigan by the arms. Thomas had Lanagan. For a second or two there was not a sound but the panting of grappling men. Then discipline told. Harrigan’s arms relaxed.

“You are relieved from duty, Officer Harrigan,” said O’Rourke. “Until I lay the matter of your insubordination before the Chief.”

The detective turned on his heel and walked from the room, stopping at the door. “I’ll get you, Lanagan,” he said. Lanagan ignored him.

“Now, Jack,” said O’Rourke, grimly, as Thomas freed the reporter. “Why won’t we throw this girl in?”

“Because,” said Lanagan, still breathing heavily, “she is innocent.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. That is enough. If you won’t take my word ring up the Chief and he will.”

O’Rourke knew the close friendship between Lanagan and Chief Leslie and the confidence the chief had in his judgment. He gazed doubtfully at the girl and then at Robbins. Secretly, he respected Lanagan also and he was impressed by Lanagan’s assurance.

“We aren’t justified in holding the girl,” he said[Pg 245] to Robbins. Then to Lanagan: “All right. You win.”

But as Lanagan left the room with the girl to send her home in the police automobile, O’Rourke had an afterthought. He turned to Thomas.

“We might just as well cover up. Watch the house to-night. There’s something queer about this whole business that I don’t get yet.”

“Whatever happens keep calm until I see you again,” was Lanagan’s last counsel to the girl. Through the scene in O’Rourke’s office she had kept crouched down in her chair, watching with wide eyes; save for one quickly shrilled: “Give it to him!” as Lanagan’s sinewy fingers twined around Harrigan’s throat.

“It was terrible of me to say that, wasn’t it?” she asked. “But I couldn’t help it! He is a bad man! I feel it!”

“He’s what we call a ‘wrong’ detective,” said Lanagan, drily. “Don’t think about him any more.”

“Let me have Norton,” he said, some moments later to Sampson, and to me he said:

“I want you to cover 211 Clementina Street. Don’t bother anybody. Just see who goes in or out or hangs around there. I’ll pick you up later down there. Wait for me no matter what happens.”

He jumped into a taxicab at the curbing and whirled away out Market Street. I hastened to my[Pg 246] station, in that gloomy, narrow street of rookeries. Almost opposite 211 was a deep doorway. I flattened back in the shadows, trusting to luck that the occupants were all in bed and that no one would walk up on me. I was not bothered. An hour passed and another. I heard someone come out of a house a few doors above me and saunter down the street toward me. I huddled back. The figure passed within six feet of me. By the dim rays of the gas lamp on the corner, throwing its feeble area of light a dozen yards, I recognised Detective Thomas.

He slipped into the side door of the corner saloon. “Off his job, whatever it is,” I said to myself. “Something should happen now. It usually does in such cases.”

It did. Noiselessly on the opposite sidewalk passed a figure in a heavy black overcoat with a high collar turned up around the ears and a soft hat pulled down. In front of 211 the figure stopped for a fraction of a second, it may have been to look for something that had been dropped; but it appeared to me to fumble an instant by the steps. The figure then passed rapidly on.

Thomas, a fresh cigar between his teeth, sauntered back to his post. The figure that had stopped at 211 had disappeared around the corner at Seventh Street. Thomas had certainly missed the episode entirely.

There was a long interval. The door at 211[Pg 247] opened, slowly. A girl came out, finally; a girl with a crutch. She came down the three steps, looked up and down and across the street, and suddenly dropped down and I could see that she was rummaging in the space under the stairs.

Stepping easily, I saw Thomas, his cigar still puffing leisurely, cross the street. He was almost beside the girl before she saw him. There came a faint cry of alarm, quickly smothered, as she straightened up, her back to the house. I walked quickly to them in time to hear Thomas’s voice:

“Well, miss, find any presents? Little late for Santa Claus, isn’t it? But let’s see. Let’s just see what you were looking for under those stairs.”

He dropped to his knees, threw his pocket flash about, and arose, a small package wrapped in a newspaper in his hand. The girl was staring with startled, wide eyes. She was breathing quickly, her thin bosom rising and falling. Thomas wheeled on me, was about to snap at me, thought better of it, and remarked:

“Oh, well, you’re dropped to me. I might as well let you in.”

He tore off the paper wrapping from the package and in the flash of his pocket light I saw the glitter of a pair of diamond ear drops.

“Do you make them?” he asked, triumphantly. I nodded. The jewels unquestionably answered the description of those stolen from the Robbins home. It came to me like a physical b............