Jackson Gregory

“ Having one of the biggest bodies I ever saw, King Reagan certainly had the largest hands. And they, like the rest of the man's physique, were nothing short of beautiful. They gave you, just as his eyes did, a sense of power. And after seeing his eyes and his hands I was not surprised that the man loved music and played the violin like a virtuoso. Well, be he whatever else you please, King Reagan is a man. And a man is many-sided.
“Why are you so certain that I am going to San Francisco?” ”

“ NEVER did a case shape up for me so beautifully, so swiftly until the very crisis. It was like putting together bits of a puzzle with the right block always just at your hand when you reached out for it. And then the finale staged by a master of his technique. Perhaps I should have foreseen what the curtain would be. But after all my business is not that of a fortune teller.
As Reagan had arranged, I saw Johnnie Margrave before I left New York. ”

“ Reagan continued, “I did you the honor to ask you to come in with me. In many things, in most things, you are a wise man; in that matter you were an arrogant fool. You had always been master; you could not see when a bigger man than yourself came. I might have let you go your own way; I don't know. But then you dared take this bank case into your own hands, you dared use the same method you knew I was using with other banks! Because the police thought you dead you thought that I would believe it, too. ”

“ I spent a good part of the morning with Ferguson. I was on the verge of leaving the office when the telephone at the chief's elbow rang.
“Mr. Steele?” demanded Ferguson of the mouthpiece. “He's right here.”
I took the instrument, and as a deep, richly musical voice asked, “Mr. Steele?” I knew who it was.
“Before you start for San Francisco,” Reagan was saying over the wire, “I'd like to talk with you. Run in for lunch, will you? I can give you a letter to a man in San Francisco who will be of use to you in the Merchants' National case.” ”

“ Forster went out. My eyes and Waldron's went to Reagan's face. And I think there was equal perplexity in our minds,
“Tony Waldron,” said King Reagan, and his tones were the stern tones of a judge, “you have played your hand your way, and you have lost. There lies the money you worked a year for, and it is condemning you now that you have got it. Outside are Jimmie Quick, Tom, Sharkey, Gaudy Kelley, Malley, Forster, ready to go up to the witness stand. Any one of them can hang you now. It won't be hard to do, especially when the police dig up Klondike Jim's record.” ”

“ There was something emanating from the man which you felt rather than saw, which defied analysis, which was like nothing else than an electrical force that gave him his personality. It is possible to look at his picture and fail to understand in a flash why men should call him King Reagan. It is not possible to be in his presence two seconds and fail to understand. ”

“ Good night, Jimmie.”
Jimmie went out and Reagan turned to Waldron,
“We've got the drop on you this time, Tony,” he said as gently as he had spoken to the sick man. “But while there's life there's a gambling chance, you know. I'll have to trouble you to move your chair back against the wall there. Thank you. Now, Steele, will you rip up that board, the fifth from the wall?”
For a moment I hesitated, seeing my way confused before me. And then, knowing Tom Reagan, having sense enough to know that he had a death grip on the situation, I did as he said. ”

“ And yet neither Graydon nor Anderson ever fully appreciated King Reagan.
I have never seen a handsomer man. I have seen him stripped in his little gymnasium. I knew that he was one of the biggest men I had ever seen. A sight of his naked body, the muscles that slipped like Damascus steel under satin skin, made me gasp. I had seen many beautifully built men in old college training quarters, but I had never seen a man like this one. ”

“ Steele wants to know,” said Reagan easily, “if you ever saw that man before?”
Malley turned his eyes upon Reagan, then obediently upon Tony Waldron.
“I don't think——” he began slowly. And then with a start: “Yes! He is the man I saw not a month before the robbery! In the basement one day when I went down for an empty packing case I had seen there. He had dirt on his hands——”
“That will do for the the present,” smiled Reagan. “Mr. Steele wants to see Mr. Forster. Has he come yet?” ”

“ You are a bigger man than I am, Reagan,” he said simply. “I'll come in.”
Reagan put out his hand. I saw Waldron take it gravely, I saw the grip harden as the relationship of king and lieutenant was formed. I knew that I had a chance of covering both men and taking them, but I knew to what it would lead. My case had fallen to pieces; Reagan had played his gambit and it had won.
“I'll see you in the morning, Tony,” said Reagan, turning away from his new lieutenant. “Mr. Steele and I have some planning to do. This money must go back to the bank. At least you have accomplished that much, Steele. ”

“ He felt that Ned Havens wanted to talk and was afraid to. I told him of Reagan's casual mention of the scar on Haven's hand, and so Margrave got more from me than I from him. So much for that.
In San Francisco I went immediately to the Merchants' National Bank and was shown into Mr. Merivale's private office. I found him what one expects to find in the personality of a bank president, an astute man disciplined and seasoned in his business, anxious to give what aid he could, and equally anxious not to insist upon forcing his ideas and plans upon me. ”

“ So I suppose I have aunt Harriet as well as my blood to thank for the fact that I hammered away until I reached the campus on the other side of the bay. Here I learned three things that counted: to study, to play poker, and to do the hundred-yard dash in a shadow less than ten flat. The lessons I had learned from poker helped me with the bar exams, and, like many another misguided youth before me, I displayed a gaudy shingle for a brief twelve months upon Market Street. I am glad that I did it; it was such a source of delight to aunt Harriet. ”

“ Reagan again nodded thoughtfully. Then, “You are the only man I know of your profession, Steele, that I can ever get any satisfaction out of. You were heart-set on your vacation and now you figure that I have spoiled it. I am sorry, sincerely sorry, that this thing couldn't have been arranged to happen four weeks later.” His eyes met mine kindly, and I believe that his words and the next were sincere. “You have been working too hard, and it shows on you. ”

“ Later I attended night school at the old Court House School, where I learned that it is vastly surer, though less spectacular, to strike for the point of the jaw than for the nose. I matched nickels with Mike, the dago, down in the bad lands South of Market one day and stood awestruck and breathless the very next week listening to old Judge Hackett sentence him to the reform school up at Waterman. ”

“ Now, Steele, did you tell Tony what Sharkey and Tom and Kelley had to say?”
“Yes.”
“Looks bad, eh, Tony? Well, it's worse than it looks. Steele, open the door. There's a man outside.”
I opened the door and Malley, of Malley & Forster's real-estate and insurance company, came in. He gave no sign of recognizing either Reagan or Waldron. ”

“ It was obvious that the men who had driven the tunnel to its golden goal might have entered from Miss Henderson's room, or from Mr. Malley's, or from the basement and through the hallway. If the latter case—so far opinions differed—it was quite possible that the real-estate and insurance firm had had no knowledge of it. ”

“ But certain I am that his face and Reagan's showed less emotion than mine must have done.
“Excepting for me,” went on Reagan with the bold frankness that was characteristic of him, “there is not a stronger man in the world than you, Waldron. ”

“ From start to finish, through all of its details, the job had been engineered by men who knew their business. Many months before, upon the twelfth of December, to be exact, they had made their beginning. That is an old story, and the papers have pretty well worn it out. Suffice to say here that upon the twelfth of December a man had signed a year's lease for a first-floor suite of rooms in the big office building adjoining the Merchant's National Bank. These rooms had been fitted up as real-estate and insurance offices. ”

“ I had sold newspapers in the shadow of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street when I should have been putting red and green and yellow sticks together in a nice, clean kindergarten with an adored but not necessarily adorable lady teacher endeavoring beautifully to keep my young mind the pure vacuum, which God made it but did not intend it to remain. ”

“ He even went so far,” and Ferguson's eyes twinkled, “as to suggest that the man who sent 'Brooklyn Dave' up the river be given the assignment. Yes, Billy, he mentioned Mr. William Steele. That's one thing, Billy. Another is that I'd like to have you postpone your trip to Canada a little while and take a spin out to San Francisco. Think of the old friends there you haven't laid eyes on for ten years. And then,” as though this were a mere trifle, carelessly spoken, “I really do believe that Reagan has paid out pretty nearly enough rope to hang himself.” ”

“ Yes, it was better, aunt Harriet said, but I could see that the dear lady had difficulty in drawing the line between men of my class and the class we hunted.
In the evening I determined to do a very wise or foolish thing. Only the results would show. I was going to Harrigan's bar, way out on Broadway near the shadowy parts of Kearney, and ask for Jimmie Quick. At the last minute King Reagan had told me to do that if I cared to find the man to whom he had given me his letter of introduction. ”

“ Steele will no doubt learn from Margrave before he buys his tickets for San Francisco. I wonder if you would still maintain that there was nothing of importance said?”
Well, after all Havens was merely almost the man Reagan was, and as the old copybeoks have it, “Almost is but to fail.” The man was frightened and couldn't hide the fact. ”

“ I demanded. “You know that at police headquarters it is thought——”
“That he has been dead six months. A dead body in the river, a bit of careful work on Waldron's part, a bit of blind stupidity on the part of a police officer, and there you are. Yes, he's alive, Steele. So very much alive that I suggest that you have him covered before you present my little note. He's a fine fellow, is Tony Waldron, but given upon occasions to fairly ungovernable flashes of anger.”
I opened the envelope and read the note within. It was a jewel of brevity:
My Dear Mr. ”

“ For down in the gloomy basement, in a far corner where boxes and packing cases had accumulated during the years, there was a window which opened to the narrow passageway between this building and another, and a man might have come in through this window, up the steps to the hallway above, and from that into the locked room. On the other hand, it was equally obvious that the whole real-estate firm could have been a blind, and that both Mr. Malley and his partner, Mr. ”