William J. Burns

“ To-day, also, I leave the Anita Lawton Club. You shall find some one else to play detective for you––you and Miss Lawton!”
With an indignant swirl of her skirts, she turned and made for the door, in a tempest of rage; but on the threshold his voice stayed her.
“Wait! Miss Lawton has befriended you, and now, because of a man of whom you know nothing, you desert her cause. Is that loyalty, mademoiselle? We shall not ask you to remain at Dr. Franklin’s any longer; Miss Lawton does not wish unwilling service from anyone. ”

“ Henry Blaine smiled his quiet, slow, illuminating smile, and walking around the table, laid his hand on Morrow’s shoulder. “Why, boy, you haven’t even commenced. Detective work is ‘petty,’ you said? ‘Petty’ because we take every case, no matter how insignificant, if it can right a wrong? You call our profession ‘sordid,’ because we accept pay for the work of our brains and bodies! Why should we not? Are we treacherous, because we meet malefactors, and fight them with their own weapons? ”

“ Franklin has come to tell me. He may be injured, dead! Ah, God would not do that; He would not take him from me, too!”
“Don’t take on so, Miss Anita, dear,” the faithful Ellen murmured, as she deftly smoothed the girl’s hair and rearranged her gown; “the little man acts more as if he had a fine piece of gossip to pass on––fidgeting about like an old woman, he is. Begging your pardon, Miss, I know he is the minister, of course, and I ought to show him more respect, but he forever reminds me of a fat black pigeon.” ”

“ Although he maintains a steadfast silence, his eyes never leave me, and such a sad, hungry expression comes into them sometimes, almost as if he were going away from me forever, as if he were trying to say farewell to me, that I have to turn away to hide my tears from him.”
“Poor little girl! It must make you terribly unhappy.” Morrow paused, and then added, as if in afterthought: “Perhaps when we tell your father that we care for each other, that when I have proved myself you are going to be my wife, he may confide in me––that is, if he is willing to give you to me. ”

“ A d––d lie!” cried Rockamore. “I was not in this room that night! Such a conversation never occurred! Who told you of this? Who dares accuse me?”
“I do!” A clear, flute-like voice, resonant in its firmness, rang out from behind him as he spoke, and he wheeled abruptly, to find Anita standing with her slender form outlined against the dark, rich velvet of the curtains. Her head was thrown back, her eyes blazing; and as she faced him, she slowly raised her arm and pointed a steady finger at the recoiling figure. “I accuse you, Bertrand Rockamore, of the murder of my father! ”

“ You have dared to strike blindly, in your mad thirst for publicity, at a man infinitely beyond your reach. Your insolence ceases to be amusing! If you try to push this ridiculous accusation, I shall ruin you, Henry Blaine!”
“No man is beyond my reach who has broken the 261 law.” The detective’s voice was quietly controlled, yet each word pierced the silence like a sword-thrust. “I have been threatened with ruin, with death, many times by criminals of all classes, from defaulting financiers to petty thieves, but I still live, and my fortunes have not been materially impaired. ”

“ Before he had seen her, had he known that the old forger possessed a daughter, he would have laid his plans to worm himself into the confidence of the little family through the girl, but having once laid eyes upon her face in all its gentle, trusting purity, every manly instinct in him revolted at the thought of making her a tool of her father’s probable downfall. ”

“ Blaine.” Anita motioned toward a chair and sank into another with a little gasp of sheer exhaustion. “You have never failed yet, and you have given me your word that you would bring Ramon back to me. I try to have faith, but with every hour that passes, hope dies within me, and I can feel that my strength, my will to believe, is dying, too. I know that you must be doing your utmost, exerting every effort, and yet I cannot resist the longing to urge you on, to try to express to you the torture of uncertainty and dread which consumes me unceasingly. ”

“ Scandal, notoriety must be averted at all costs! I find that a frightful, a hideous mistake has been made, and I am actually upon the point of being involved in a conspiracy as terrible as that of which my poor friend Pennington Lawton was the victim! And I am as innocent as he! I swear it!”
“You may as well conserve your strength and your strategic ingenuity for the immediate future, Mr. Mallowe. You’ll need both,” Blaine returned, coolly. ”

“ Just as brandy and soda, and peach brandy, are amber-colored, so are Scotch high-balls, which you and Pennington Lawton were drinking. No odor of peaches lingered about the room, for Miss Lawton had lighted a handful of joss-sticks in a vase upon the mantel earlier in the evening, and their pungent 270 perfume filled the air. But the odor of peaches permeated the room when the tiny bottle which you hid in the folds of the chair was uncorked––the odor of peaches rose above the stench of mortifying flesh, when the body of your victim was exhumed late last night for a belated autopsy! ”

“ Morrow, his face wreathed in triumph and smiles; a brown-haired, serene-eyed girl whom Blaine remembered from his memorable interview with her at the Anita Lawton Club; and a tall, grizzled, smooth-shaven man, who held himself proudly erect, as if the weight of years had fallen from his shoulders.
“Yes, sir, I’m Brunell,” the latter announced, when the incidental salutations were over, “––Jimmy Brunell, the forger. I’ve lived straight, and tried to keep the truth from my little girl, for her own sake, but perhaps it is better as it is. ”

“ Lawton as corespondent.”
“Oh, how could he!” Anita cried, indignantly. “The man must have been mad! My father was the soul of honor. Every one––the whole world––knows that! Besides, his heart was buried, all that he did not give to me, deep, deep in the sea where Mother and my little brother and sister are lying! He never even looked at another woman, save perhaps in kindness, to help and comfort those who were in trouble. But when did you come into the case, Mr. Blaine? That man whose voice I heard to-day must have been Herbert Armstrong himself, of course. ”

“ The young man, as he made his way down the crowded avenue, was turning over in his mind the extraordinary story which the girl he loved had told him.
“What could it mean? Who could the man have been? Surely not Herbert himself, and yet––oh! why will they not let sleeping dogs lie; why must that old scandal, that one stain on Pennington Lawton’s past have been brought again to light, and at such a time? I pray God that Anita never mentions it to anyone else, never learns the truth. ”

“ Be that as it may, Morrow, the dapper young bank-clerk, found in the Pennold household a grizzled, middle-aged man, with shifty, suspicious eyes and a moist hand-clasp; behind him appeared a shrewish, thin-haired wife who eyed the intruder from the first with ill-concealed animosity.
He smiled––that frank, winning smile which had helped to land more men behind the bars than the astuteness of many of his seniors––and said: “I’m a clerk in the Brooklyn & Queens Bank, Mr. Pennold, and we have a box of securities there evidently belonging to one Jimmy Brunell. ”

“ In view of your magnanimity to-night, I feel that this explanation––call it a confession, if you will––is your due. If you consider it your duty to give it to the world at large, you must do so, but for God’s sake be as merciful as you can to those at home, who will suffer enough, in all conscience, as the affair now stands.
Your accusation was justified. I killed Pennington Lawton in the manner and for the reason which you alleged. I made an appointment by telephone just after dinner, to call upon him late that night. ”

“ One afternoon in the early November twilight, as Morrow was returning to his own door after shadowing Brunell on an aimless and chilly walk, he saw the kitten lying curled up just outside its own gate, and an inspiration sprang to his ingenious mind. He seated himself upon the steps of Mrs. Quinlan’s front porch and waited until the darkness had deepened sufficiently to cloak his nefarious scheme. Then, with soft beguiling tone––and a few sotto voce remarks, for he hated cats––Morrow began a deliberate attempt to entice the kitten across to him. ”

“ It was as if he held within his hands the kernel of the mystery, yet surrounded still by an invulnerable shield of cunning and duplicity with which the master criminals had so carefully safe-guarded their conspiracy. He held it within his hands, and yet he could not break the shell of the mystery and expose the kernel of truth to justice. There seemed to be no interstice, no crevice into which he might insert the keen probe of his marvelous deductive power. And yet his experience told him 205 that there must be some rift, some hiatus in the scheme. ”

“ I am amazed that a man of your perception and experience should for a moment entertain the idea that he could make out a case of capital crime against a person of my standing, solely upon the hysterical pseudo-testimony of a girl whose brain is overwrought. This midnight conference, which you so glibly quote, is a figment of her distraught mind––or, if it actually occurred (a fact of which you have no proof) , Miss Lawton admits, by the words she has just uttered, that she did not see the mysterious visitor, but is attempting to identify me as that person merely by the tones of my voice. ”

“ The detective nodded shortly, without speaking, and leaning forward, stared fixedly out of the window. A long, low-bodied limousine appeared, creeping slowly up, inch by inch, until it was fairly abreast of them. The curtain at the window was lowered, and the chauffeur sat immovable, with his face turned from them, as the two cars whirled side by side along the hard, glistening road. Blaine leaned forward, and pressed the electric bell rapidly twice, and there began a curious game. The other car put on extra speed and darted ahead––their own shot forward and kept abreast of it. ”

“ The minister’s evidently eager desire to be present at an interview with the great men and to place himself on a more familiar footing with them was so obvious that Anita’s gesture of dissent held also something of repugnance.
“I could not, Dr. Franklin. Perhaps later, when the first shock has passed, but not yet. You understand that I like them both most cordially. Those whom father trusted must be men of sterling worth, but just now I feel as must an animal which has been beaten. I want to creep off into a dark and silent place until my misery dulls a little.” ”

“ The detective breathed more freely. Evidently Ramon Hamilton had had the good sense to keep from her his recent danger.
“You can be sure of nothing, Miss Lawton, save the fact that Mr. Hamilton is not dead,” Henry Blaine said earnestly. “You do not realize, perhaps, the one salient fact that criminal experts who deal with cases of disappearance have long since recognized––the most difficult of all things to conceal or do away with in a large city is a dead body.” ”