John T. McIntyre

“ The man to whom he spoke sat opposite him in the lounging room of Scanlon's Gymnasium; a pair of puffy white hands were folded over a bloated paunch; he had a sodden air of over-feeding and over-stimulation.
"And a good job, too," spoke this gentleman. "We can get along very well without those fellows."
"I am not sure that I quite agree with that," said Ashton-Kirk. He lighted a cigar and its smoke drifted across the high ceilinged room. "Crimes are growing no fewer; and if we must have crimes I should personally prefer their perpetrators to have some little artistry." ”

“ A half hour later he went away, and with him went what money my mother had saved."
"Bad!" said Bat Scanlon. "Very bad!"
"And now," said the young man, "he's dead. But the evil which his life brought into the world still lives!" Oddly, his mind seemed to cling to this thought; his eyes, looking straight ahead, were filled with apprehension; his fingers picked nervously at the edge of a blanket.
"Evil is fear, and fear can be conquered," said Ashton-Kirk, quietly; "if a man wills it, he can stamp it out."
"Evil is fear!" The prisoner looked at Ashton-Kirk in sudden inquiry. ”

“ Bat surveyed him, valuingly.
"No wonder," said he. "You've got a belt of felt about your waist that only a champion could wear. You must have kept your feet under the table many and many a bitter hour to win it."
"Now, confound it," said the pudgy one, exasperated, "I don't eat so much."
"Maybe not." Scanlon looked his disbelief. "But the pangs of hunger and you are not very intimate. Your most active moments are spent in a limousine or a club window." He winked humorously at Ashton-Kirk. "I'll say nothing against the limousine; it's a fine invention; but legs were made to walk on. ”

“ The blank steel doors with their rows of rivet heads, and the criminal history of the cell's inhabitant hanging beside them on a neat card, oppressed Bat.
"There is a movement on foot to do away with capital punishment," said he, to Ashton-Kirk. "What makes them think life imprisonment isn't as bad?"
The investigator shrugged his shoulders.
"They don't think that," said he. "They merely present the indisputable fact that a legal murder cannot in any way make amends for an illegal one. When that is acted upon, I'm of the opinion that the jailing of men will get more attention." ”

“ Nora Cavanaugh, celebrity, was to be dragged further into the light. Nora Cavanaugh, who had just opened in a successful play—the woman whose pictures were in all the magazines—was the wife of the murdered man! Instantly the police, who would be much better employed seeking a solution of the crime, must hunt out and torment me with their questions; the newspapers must suddenly go mad with a desire to exploit my years of work and my personality as a background for a sordid crime. ”

“ The Burton house, like the others on Duncan Street, sat fairly in the center of a plot of ground perhaps two hundred feet square. Along the division fence between that and the next house was a stretch of smooth sod, with grass, still green. At one place upon this was a sort of rose arbor, the browned, hardy shoots of a perennial twining thickly around it.
"There have been a half dozen policemen walking about here," said Ashton-Kirk, pointing to the soft earth under the window. "And that is fatal to any sort of close work, even had there been anything in the first place." ”

“ Ashton-Kirk filled a finely colored meerschaum from the jar of Greek tobacco on the table; the pipe was a large one; upon the stem was a charging boar, exceptionally well done; and the curving bit was hard, gray bone.
"That combination always struck me as an exciting smoke," observed Bat Scanlon, from the opposite side of the table. "The tobacco, like most things from the Balkans, is a little unsettled; and the wild porker means battle with every bristle." ”

“ An artist in crime is, in his way, well worthy of a certain sort of admiration. Who could drive a knife in a man's back with a braver air of deviltry than Benvenuto Cellini? And yet he could turn himself from the deed and devote himself to the producing of a Perseus, or to playing the flute well enough to attract the attention of a Pope. And his own countrymen, the Borgias, had as pretty a talent for assassination as they had for government."
"Very like," admitted the other. "But ain't we well rid of such bloodthirsty apes?"
Ashton-Kirk smiled. ”

“ By noon next day, Bat Scanlon had gotten into communication with Ashton-Kirk; the two had lunch in the quiet depths of a rathskeller, where they ate and talked, and afterward smoked, to the drone of some stringed instruments.
Scanlon told of his experiences of the previous night, and the criminologist listened with the keenest interest.
"So," said he, at length, "our friend, Big Slim, proves to be a person of some parts. I must meet him. And the Swiss!" Here Ashton-Kirk uttered a little clicking sound, expressive of great admiration. "If criminal he be, he is of the superlative sort. ”

“ Scanlon and Nora Cavanaugh were hurrying through the vast waiting-room at the railroad station when the big athlete felt a touch upon his arm.
"Not that way, old chap," said a voice at his side.
It was Ashton-Kirk, smiling and unruffled, and near by stood the broker, Quigley. Nora gave a gasp of despair, and Scanlon felt her cling to him, tremblingly.
"Fenton is outside there," resumed the investigator, nodding his head toward the train shed. "I have a notion that he's on his way to Stanwick. If you go out, he'll see you." ”

“ The sombre, battlemented walls of the jail looked grim and merciless through the gray of the day. To Scanlon they seemed of appalling thickness and hardness; the turrets, which occurred at regular intervals, he knew held men, armed and sleepless, who watched tirelessly. Hundreds and hundreds of dingy souls drooped inside; guilt hung over the whole place like a palpable thing.
"Crime will never be cured by placing criminals in institutions like this," said Ashton-Kirk, as they waited at the gate. "Instead, it breeds here. Prison-keepers are a race of themselves ”

“ This was a little hotel in a huddled section of the city, and had the Swiss coat of arms on a sign at the door.
"I always pick out little islands where I'll be quiet, and where no one comes poking around," said the lank burglar. "The swift places are the kind to pass up."
There was a little sanded office, with prints of the Rhine Castles, of the Alps, of mountain folk with their goats. Old Bohlmier with his bald head and big spectacles sat behind a high desk peering at a much thumbed scrap of music, and blowing the notes upon a flute.
"Friend of mine," announced Big Slim, indicating Scanlon. ”

“ But Bat Scanlon, his mind firmly furnished with a plan of action, slowly moved into the space between Allen and the object of his anger.
"Speaking of knocking heads off," said he, "let me put you up in something that always goes with that little performance." He laid a hand on the broad chest of the pugilist. "Always pick your man," said he, "and for your own sake never let him carry less beef than yourself."
"Get out of the road," growled Push Allen, viciously.
"This fellow," and Bat nodded calmly toward Big Slim, "is a good forty pounds less than you. ”

“ The vast machinery used in gathering the news makes it possible for an event, only an hour or two old, to gain a place in the types and proclaim itself to the public. And only a short time after Frank Burton made his confession of guilt in his cell in the county prison, the newsboys were crying the fact in the street.
Ashton-Kirk and Scanlon had finished with their lunch at Claghorn's; at the cigar counter in the lobby they paused while they selected their favorite brands.
"How are you?" said a familiar voice, and looking up they saw Osborne, big, smiling and serene. ”

“ For answer the criminologist pointed to the ground; sharply indented in the sod were the marks of a small, high heeled shoe; and Scanlon stood staring at them perplexed.
"What do they signify?" asked he. "There are likely to be footprints all over the place—male and female. I'll venture to say that half the residents of the street have been prowling about in this space since the murder was done."
"That is a possibility always to be guarded against," said Ashton-Kirk, quietly. "But there has been a policeman on guard all the time, so, you see, the chances are greatly reduced." ”

“ Scanlon stood in the doorway and watched the angular, stoop-shouldered figure go down the hall; there was something so slinking, so furtively deadly in the burglar's motions that Bat felt a prickly sensation run up and down his spine.
"That's the kind of a fellow that would snuff out your light and never lose an hour's sleep over it," said the big athlete to himself. "A wolf! A prowling wolf! ”

“ When, by means of the particle of mortar on the bar of the cellar grating at Stanwick, I discovered that the same person who had prowled about the lawn on the night of the murder had scaled the scaffolding outside Miss Cavanaugh's window, you fancied this to be almost positive proof. What you saw at Bohlmier's hotel, and the story told you by Big Slim, made it almost damning.
"If you had waited, as a man more experienced in such things would have done," and the investigator smiled at his friend, "you would have saved yourself a state of mind. ”

“ Bat endeavored to reopen the matter of his finding the investigator in the house they had just left, but Ashton-Kirk did not seem disposed to talk; he sat in one corner of the cab, apparently deep in thought. At length they brought up before the enormous pile in which the police, together with other municipal departments, had their headquarters. Their feet echoed hollowly as they walked through the marble corridor; a drowsy elevator man ran them up to the desired floor, and in a moment more they were in the department devoted to the detective branch of the police. ”

“ Scanlon waved the hand, which the other had neglected to take, toward his friend.
"This is Mr. Ashton-Kirk. You may have heard of him. He's interested in this case."
The young artist made a weary gesture.
"That can be said of a great many people," he said. His face was white and had a harassed look; his eyes shone feverishly. "I have been, to speak frankly, plagued to death by their interest. It isn't a pleasant thing to feel that almost every one is consumed with the desire to place a brand of some sort upon a fellow creature."
Ashton-Kirk regarded him without resentment. ”

“ Maybe," with another grin, "he tried the game himself."
"Sometimes they do," said Bat. "But it's like opening the door of an elevator shaft and walking through."
"He's great pals with a fellow named Fenton," said Big Slim. As he said this, one hand went to his coat pocket in a caressing sort of gesture; and Bat realized, with a ray of comprehension, that this was the pocket into which the burglar had slipped the black, well-oiled automatic. "They're like a couple of brothers." ”

“ But I see it was Stanwick he had in view. He'll take the police, maybe, and arrest Mary Burton."
"Oh, no, no!" Nora was standing wide-eyed before him. "Oh, no! If I had reason to try and protect the brother, I have a double reason for protecting her, for she has suffered even more and is much more helpless." She stood looking at him for an instant and then went on: "Bat, you came here, in spite of your friendship for Ashton-Kirk, to warn me of what you thought a danger; will you go with me to warn Mary Burton of what you know is one?" ”

“ A few hours sometimes dims what otherwise would be hopeful clues; traces which, had they been taken up in time, might have led directly to the criminal, are rendered cold and useless."
"Couldn't something be done out at Stanwick to-night?" asked Bat, anxiously.
But the criminologist shook his head. [Pg 62]
"It would be impossible," said he. "Night always puts any sort of intelligent examination out of the question. But," and he looked at Nora with an alertness of manner which showed how his keen mind was already taking hold, "the time between now and daylight need not be altogether lost." ”

“ Once out of sight of the keen eyes of the investigator, he and the girl could take a taxi and make for Stanwick with all speed.
"Not if we go by motor," said Ashton-Kirk, in answer to his objections. "We can do that and make as good time as the local."
"Taxicabs are so small," said Nora, as they descended a long flight of steps to the street. "Four will crowd one so."
In her mind was the same thought as in that of Bat's. Once let them divide into two parties—she and Scanlon making one—and she was quite sure that their cab would be the first at No. 620 Duncan Street. ”

“ Ashton-Kirk asked a dozen more questions regarding the relationship between the Bounder and Fenton; Hutchinson answered them all hesitatingly and with many qualifications. Finally, the front door swung open and Scanlon, who was watching it, said:
"Here's your man now."
Fenton, frowning and evidently in bad humor, entered the back room. Hutchinson greeted him with:
"Hello, Joe. A couple of people who want to talk to you."
Ashton-Kirk nodded to the broken-nosed man, who looked at him, inquiringly.
"What do you want?" asked he. "It ought to be something bright to rout a man out of bed." ”