Octavus Roy Cohen

“ Darkness settled early over the Drive, a deep, cloudy darkness punctured by the faint twinkling of lights from the Jersey shore, the sparkle of apartment house windows, glaring arrows of brilliance from the head lamps of speeding automobiles and lumbering busses. From a window in the Lathrop apartment Mary Lannigan fancied that she could discern the overlarge figure of Jim Hanvey bulking in the gloom across the way. ”

“ Hall gave back a step.
“Eunice! You know I’m not. He has confessed to the killing.”
“It’s a lie!” A pause, and then: “What man?”
“Frederick Badger!”
“O-o-o-h!” As suddenly as she had risen, she relaxed. The light died from her eyes. She crumpled on the couch. “Why—why—didn’t you say that?”
“I did. I explained. That’s why I asked you who he was. If you’ll withdraw your confession now we’ll probably let you go home. Badger killed him.”
She turned her haggard face to him.
“I told you Badger is crazy. I repeat it. He didn’t kill Mr. Hamilton. I did—shot him with his own revolver!” ”

“ It does not see the daily grind—the battering and hammering, the merciless criticism, the fierce combat sans color and applause, it is the long days of football practice which test men’s souls, for it is nothing but hard, hard work; bitter and minus the exultation of a big game. And it was during these long grinding afternoons of scrimmage that the sentiment against Dolly Parker crystallized into a deep, sullen, thoroughly understandable dislike.
Nine varsity men on the team—nine fine players—nine men letter perfect in the art of affording Dolly Parker opportunity to add laurel to his wreath. ”

“ Was this Ellen Shannon seated here in an unfamiliar atmosphere facing a man who belonged—and to whom she was engaged? a man who held her hand and talk blithely of a future together? She was in a daze; but she knew that she was very happy and once her eyes filled with tears at thought that she would no longer be lonely. It was that horrible loneliness which had hurt so badly: there had been no one to trouble himself over her welfare, no one to whom it had mattered whether she was well or ill; no one vitally interested in her or her life. ”

“ In a second, typebars were clicking against platens with a speed that the office had never before known; the filing clerks worked with lightning speed, the other office girls bustled about swiftly, intent on their tasks. The eyes of Cyrus J. Hawkins met those of Miss Marjorie Summers and a smile of mutual understanding passed between them. Somehow, all the girls felt that their victory was complete—that there was more for them in such magnanimity than there could ever be in a triumph which lost to the game little man his position. ”

“ Hanvey expressionless as ever, Kirk struggling to conceal the worry inspired by Jim's air of confidence. Whitey knew that he had never slipped in his decade of criminality—he knew but he wasn’t sure. Perhaps, somewhere in that period, there had been an error of judgment, a weakness which he did not suspect. He knew the axiom of the criminal world—a detective may make a thousand mistakes and yet be successful; a criminal cannot err once. Warren Kirk realized that he was only human—and therefore fallible. ”

“ If it only wasn't for Jim Hanvey, those wide-staring eyes. He couldn’t get away from those eyes, from the insolent indolence of the man, his apparent indifference to the mystery he was supposed to be solving. All day he lounged around the bank; ignorant, bunglesome, awkward, inactive. He inspected no books, asked no questions, exhibited no suspicion of Cliff Wallace. Yet Cliff felt those inhuman eyes focused upon him at all times. And that incident of Hanvey's presence at the cage when he cashed Phyllis' pay-roll check—that was fraught with deep significance. ”

“ Scenes of that sort were vastly impressive to Jim. He hated bad sportsmanship, and the villain-chauffeur in this picture had been a bad sport. Crookedness Jim loved. He admired a clever crook and worshiped a good woman. There was something massively pitiful about the man as he gazed raptly upon the silver screen in the picture show; something inexpressibly sad in his demeanor, his abject loneliness. Jim himself would have been the last person in the world to realize the void in his life. ”

“ I wasn't falling in love with Ethel Dale. Why I hadn't known her but an hour and—say! She is a pippin, though!
The Elm Inn isn't much to look at unless you're interested in antiques. I guess there isn't a southern town of under 15,000 without the twin sister to the inn: a two-story frame structure, once red but now turned a weather-beaten, dirty brown; two long verandas spanning the front, three town loafers sitting in an old fashioned swing on the side of the lower veranda, two shade trees in front and the odor of fried chicken coming from the mysterious realms in the rear. ”

“ When she had gone, I asked Hamilton why he was so hard on the boy. ‘Denson,’ he said quietly, ‘you cannot understand. You may think it is—oh, any one of several things! You look at Harrelson through rose-coloured glasses. You like him for the very things I dislike in him. He is idealistic and impractical. He makes a pittance with his daubing, and will not work for a living. Why should I stand by and see such a girl throw herself away on that sort of man? ”

“ Of course, I knew the Kid never could win from Lonegan. No man’s who’s backslid that far ever can come back entirely. But I will hand it to him on the way he worked. In a month the blear had gone from his eyes, and the flabbiness of the muscles was giving way to the rocklike hardness which had been there before he ran foul of Rose La Belle. In two months he could do three miles on the road without exhausting himself. In four months he could do ten and come back to work out some more. In six months I was holding a rein on him to keep him from overtraining. ”

“ But it was in the privacy of the Morse suite that the knowledge received a most thorough threshing out. “Golly!” breathed Edgar. “Think of me bumming around with Jared Mallory. Honeybunch! we’re sure sliding up the social ladder now, we are. I thought there was something funny about those cigarettes. And he's a gentleman right—he is; so much of a one he don’t have to be watching his step all the time. Funny he should like me—er—a-that is, if he really does.”
Thus far Mallory was merely a name to Edgar Morse and Edgar Morse was only a name to Tommy Braden. ”

“ The latest was more sensational, perhaps, and rather closer to the bosom of the police department; but murder, robbery—nothing for a professional policeman to lose his head over.
He turned on his side, and his eyes rested on the figure of David Carroll. For a second he winked unbelievingly—it was incomprehensible that the smooth, slender, boyish face on the cot beside his belonged to one of the best detectives in the country; a man gentle of manner and modest of demeanour; fair to a fault, and with a code of honour as rigid and unshakable as the Rock of Gibraltar ”

“ Hall opened his mouth to mention Badger, then closed it abruptly—like a fish gasping in the fresh air. He remembered two things regarding Badger—first of all, that they had pretty well proven his innocence, and secondly, that Rollins knew nothing of Badger, or his connection with the case.
He remembered, also, the fact that there was a third shot; two had already been accounted for—Eunice’s, which had fortunately gone wild and dug itself a burrow in the ceiling; and Badger’s, which had inflicted the painful wound in Hartigan’s right wrist. ”

“ She was not exactly the type of person he had anticipated encountering in a murder investigation. From the tip of her pert little hat to the toes of her ultra-fashionable shoes she was expressive of the independent rising generation—a generation wiser in the ways of the world than that from which it was sprung—a generation strangely bereft of genuine youth, yet charming in an entirely modern and unique manner. ”

“ Without pausing to weigh his chances of safety, he had yet realized that the possibility of conviction was slight, for juries are ever ready to applaud the man who acts as executioner under the unwritten law—and in this particular case the unwritten law came into play more forcibly than usual, for Mary was innocent: in a hotel room with Dick Bonham—seen there by Morgan and McBride—both Bonham and Mary so innocent of even the evil thought of others that they had laughed about it: automobile trip, rainstorm, puncture, hotel—and Bonham had gone to her room to see if she was ready for dinner. ”

“ Dolly Parker was the outstanding figure of the campus. He had filled out and added poundage. He believed that he alone had made Woodland’s glorious football season—and he was not to be blamed for thinking so. The best writers in the country had united in tribute to this steel-muscled young flash. Of course they admitted that Bill Boswell had coached well and that the team had played adequately; but Dolly Parker was held up as the shining example of the theory that no team can achieve true greatness unless its offensive is built around a flashy individual star. ”

“ Hall had known Hamilton intimately for twenty years. He had known Eunice since her birth. He had watched her grow through a skinny-legged girlhood to a magnificent maturity. He had been present at the guardianship proceedings after the death of her parents, when, by the will of her father, Hamilton was made the girl’s guardian and trustee of her considerable estate.
That she instinctively disliked Hamilton he had realized, but a mere dislike does not usually lead to tragedy. ”

“ THUS it was that Conrad Ellison came into the quiet, manless life of Ellen Shannon; it was thus that the little blind archer sped an arrow which pierced her heart and remained fixed there for all time; it was thus that, for the first time in her life, a man, a young personable man—was cast in daily contact with her; and it would have been strange indeed if the long dormant love instinct within the girl should not have been brought to life. ”

“ Game as she was, there was considerable trepidation at the thought that she was thus wilfully abandoning the placidity of her existence for a future unknown and with a man whom she had just come to realize she scarcely knew.
She climbed thoughtfully into the roadster, assured herself that her suitcase and Whitey's were there, and then started the motor. Its rhythmic hum brought no elation this night. Just before slipping into gear, she reached to the dashboard and switched on her head lights. As by magic the interior of the garage was illumined by the brilliant glare. ”

“ She placed herself immediately between the table and the door, on a line with the comer of the room. Carroll walked back across the room and extended both hands—one to Eunice and one to Harrelson.
“I think that about absolves the pair of you two foolish children,” he said heartily.
A gasp of surprise went up and a chorus of “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Carroll slowly, “that the bullet that was fired from that spot never hit Mr. Hamilton at all. It struck in the very corner of the walls and ceiling yonder! You can see the hole for yourselves!” ”

“ Mary Lannigan had the correct idea. A man as crooked as Lathrop had shown himself to be in this instance had been crooked before. He would be crooked again. He had indicated that he was moulded of conscienceless stuff. Somewhere in his past there must be a skeleton which he would not care to have displayed. And in order to prevent that display he might even be willing to confess his guilt as a smuggling accessory. In that way—and in that way alone—Tim Lannigan could be saved from facing trial— and certain conviction—for the crime which he had not committed. ”

“ Carroll knew that modern police methods have received a great deal more than their share of unjust criticism. He knew that the entire theory of national policing is based on an exhaustive system of records and statistics. It operates by brute force and all-pervading power rather than by any attempt at sublety or keen deduction. The former is so much safer as a method. And the combination of the two—keen analysis, logical deduction and plodding investigation—can perform wonders, which explains why Carroll and Leverage worked hand-in-hand with implicit confidence in one another. ”

“ The first round ended tamely. A half-dozen blows had landed on each man, but no punishment had been inflicted.
Somebody laughed. But I didn’t. I knew that the Kid’s hate had become a cold hate, doubly bitter—that it was cold enough to enable him to fight the right sort of a fight.
The second round was a repetition of the first, and the third of the second. Slowly and surely Eddie Lonegan was piling up a lead on points, but despite his downward swoop and his booze-fighting months the Kid was as fresh as when he started the first round. That was his fight. ”

“ They walked quietly about the grounds, inspecting every foot of the lawn. Then they crossed the lawn and mounted the steps which led to the centre of the veranda, a veranda different from the usual and modeled upon the Southern colonial style.
The front of the residence rose sheer from the ground, having merely a small flight of steps leading from the walk to a small vestibule, but the entire length of the house was bounded by the wide veranda, which ran the length of the library and living room, there to jut in with an abrupt L and thence along the narrower dining room. ”

“ Forty minutes later the street car reached the end of its run and Jim alighted. The suburb silently proclaimed the opulence of its residents. Wide, tree-shaded streets bounded by broad, velvety lawns behind which hugely handsome residences reared their architecturally perfect forms; gardens which paid flowering tribute to landscape experts; sinuously winding driveways, spurting fountains, cleanly clipped hedges. An atmosphere of forbidding and exclusive wealth. Parked by the curbs were limousines of the more expensive makes. ”

“ She was small and demure and very simple in her manner of dress, and there was an air of quiet, expectant wistfulness in her big brown eyes as though she knew that life had withheld much from her; withheld unjustly, for when the capacity for love has been implanted so deeply in a woman it is mockery that she should be denied the opportunity to exercise it. ”

“ He shook off the thought of Jim Hanvey, but throughout the day watched the ponderous, big-jowled man lumber about the lobby and through the cages, those great fishy eyes blinking with a deliberation which reminded him of a man making physical effort to remain awake. Occasionally Cliff looked up to find the glassy eyes staring at him through the bars of his cage, the detective's unpressed tweed suit against the marble shelf. His eyes would flash into those of the detective, then would come that interminably slow blinking, and Hanvey would move away apologetically. Once Wallace Shivered. ”

“ A certain number of those facts printed starkly and insinuatingly in Blair's “Spotlight” had effectually robbed the girl of all shred of character. And Walter McBride had killed the man who was responsible.
HE reached his apartment and sat stiffly in a chair. Thoughts were beginning to right themselves: to become ideas rather than impressions. He lighted a pipe. He reviewed again the details of the case and the impulse which had actuated him. As yet no tinge of regret had come: unwritten law or no unwritten law; conviction by jury or no conviction. ”

“ It was early October and the air was chill with the portent of coming winter. Jim Hanvey was sprawled on the lounge in the untidy living room of his apartment reading the pugilistic news in a current sporting weekly. The air was fetid with the odor of his vile cigar, his stockinged feet were cocked upon the table and he had allowed his flowered suspenders to drop comfortably about his tremendous waist. It was a considerable effort to answer the summons of the telephone and his voice was none too gentle——
“Hey! Hello! What you ringin' so much about?”
“Jim? This is Mary.” ”

“ He tried to light a cigarette, but his fingers were unable to hold the match.
He looked around. A street-car, bound for a suburb, passed noisily. It paused briefly before the railroad-station, neither discharging nor taking on a passenger, then clanged protestingly on its way. Impressed in Spike's mind was a mental picture of the chilled motorman, and of the conductor huddled over the electric heater within the car. Spike felt a personal resentment against that conductor. Comfort seemed unfair on a night like this; heat a luxury more to be desired than much fine gold. ”

“ All season I’ve used you as a scrub plunger. ... All season I’ve yelled like hell for a broken field runner. ... I’m a rotten bum. I ought to go out and shoot myself. But wait ’til next year. Oh, my gosh! Just wait until next year!”
And that was the motif of the hysteria which pervaded the exquisite little campus that night. “Wait until next year! We’ve had the swellest halfback in the Conference with us all year and we didn’t know it.” But now—
Between the closing of the football season and the Christmas holidays Dolly Parker was the campus hero. ”

“ Evelyn was piecing the threads of circumstances together and the events surrounding the Warren murder were slowly clarifying in Carroll's brain.
But he knew that now, of all times, he must keep her from thinking that he had any particular interest in her chatter. She was completely off guard—and he knew that for his own interests, she must remain so.
So he assumed a bantering attitude—he resorted to what she would have termed "kidding."
"Aren't you the observant young woman, though? Not a single thing escapes your eagle eye, does it?" ”

“ Con was instinctively of the Rialto. He spent more than four hundred dollars for a new outfit of clothes, the first fine clothes he had ever owned. Ellen gasped when she saw him in them: they were not at all what she would have selected. They shrieked at the casual observer, they commanded attention; and a puzzled frown creased her forehead as she noticed that they became him better than quieter clothes would have done.
One night Con went alone to the famous Broadway delicatessen where he had proposed marriage to Ellen. ”

“ The stands murmured: wise spectators—always eager to deride a fallen idol—murmured “I told you so. Yah! Didn’t I always say this here Dolly Parker was a fluke? Look at him now; yeller! Quitting! Laying down like a dog just because his team ain’t winning!”
The new feeling penetrated to the field. Dolly sensed the current of adverse comment thought which was sweeping the Woodland cheering section. He knew instinctively that they thought he was yellow—a quitter—a front runner to star when things were going well and to lay down when the breaks were against him. ”

“ And if that alone had not been sufficient to arouse my suspicion, you forget that you—and only you—in addition to myself, knew the circumstances published in the 'Spotlight.' We saw Bonham in Mary's room—and we both knew that there was nothing in the situation that there should not be. You're a rotter, Dennis; a worse rotter and a more contemptible coward than I ever believed a man could be. ”

“ For Jim knew that Weston was all-powerful: fair but ruthless, a hard fighter and a game one. The little man in the doorway was rather of the lounge lizard type. ...
As for Weston he could not believe that this mammoth individual who bulked before him was the person who had been recommended as the best detective in the country. Jim was not at all of the detective type. His new raiment accentuated the flabbiness of the form, intensified the general impression of lethargic indifference and general unfitness. ”

“ Before he finished, the doorbell rang, and Freda announced that there was a lady to see him.
"A lady?"
Freda shrugged.
"She ain't bane nothin' but a girl, sir, Mr. Carroll—just a little girl."
"Show her in."
In two minutes Freda returned, and behind her came the visitor. Carroll concealed a smile at sight of her. She was a little thing—sixteen or seventeen years old, he judged—a fluffy, blond girl quivering with vivacity; the type of girl who is desperately reaching for maturity, entirely forgetful of the charms of her adolescence. He rose and bowed in a serious, courtly manner. ”

“ Twenty minutes later Jim Hanvey departed for the city in one of Weston's limousines. He lolled against the rich upholstery enjoying to the ultimate the luxury and uniqueness of the experience. At his modest and untidy apartment he swiftly packed a near-leather suitcase with those articles which he fancied would be essential to his new rôle of society butterfly. ”

“ It was baseball season, but the members of the diamond squad came in for scant attention during the spring training of the gridiron crew—which was indicative of the hope which Dolly Parker had aroused. It is one thing for college to fall into a football frenzy when the chill October breezes sweep the campus. It is something quite astounding when that interest can be awakened under the clear blue skies of April when the men are wearing track suits instead of the impressive gridiron armor. ”

“ No-o, I think we'd better not arrest the man unless he forces our hand—tries to jump town, or something like that. Better let him remain at large and talk frequently. If he has anything to betray, there's more chance that he'll do it that way. Don't you think I'm right?"
"I wouldn't admit it if I didn't, Carroll. I've seen you in action too often to believe you're ever wrong."
Carroll flushed boyishly.
"Don't be absurd, Leverage! I'm often wrong—very wrong. And don't think that I'm a transcendent detective; they don't really exist, you know. ”

“ Bill Boswell scarcely knew what to say. He did not discern the total lack of teamwork: he, too, saw only that the team was playing brilliant individual football—and that Dolly Parker was not getting away as he should. He didn’t want to ride Parker. ...
The Woodland squad was not ashamed, because the Woodland squad didn’t know what it was doing. Its actions were reflex—born of resentment and nurtured in bitterness. Each man was putting everything he had into each play ... only Dolly Parker understood—and there was nothing he could say. ”

“ Carroll gazed at the girl before him with new interest. Out of her chatter he had at last garnered one important fact. His mind, trained to seize upon the vital and instantly discard the inconsequential, clutched the bit of information, and turned it over. From the first Carroll had scouted the idea that the dead man's fiancee might have been responsible for his death; but still it was a line of investigation which demanded examination, and his pretty young visitor was making that road exceedingly simple. ”

“ He was already determined to keep away from No. 981 East End Avenue. There was something sinister in the unfriendly shadow of the rambling house. He might call the police.
That was it—he would call the police. But how? Go into a house near by, wake the residents, telephone headquarters that a murder had been done? Alarm the neighborhood, and identify himself with the crime? Spike was afraid, frankly and boyishly afraid—afraid of the present, and more afraid of the future. ”

“ Leafless trees stretched their ice-covered tentacles into the cold, penetrating air; pedestrians and horses slipped on the glassy pavements; automobiles either skidded dangerously or set up an incessant rattle with their chains.
Carroll glanced at his watch. It showed nine o'clock. He started with surprise. Then he reached for the newspapers on the table at the side of his bed, and spread open the front pages.
They had evidently been made up anew with the breaking of the Warren murder story. ”

“ Then he saw the big doors at the main entrance of the station open and a few melancholy passengers, brought to town by the accommodation train, step to the curb, glance about in search of a street-car, and then duck back into the station. Spike shoved his clutch in and crawled forward along the curb, leaving the inky shadows of the far end of the station, and emerging finally into the effulgence of the arc at the corner of Cypress Street. ”

“ Dressed simply for an evening at home in a strikingly plain gown of a rich black material, and with her magnificent neck and shoulders rising above the midnight hue—she caused a spontaneous thrill of masculine admiration to surge through the ordinarily immune visitor in the gray suit. ”