[Illustration: Scenes From the Photo-Drama.]
Devar was unaware of any change in the manner of either of the detectives, because he was watching Lamotte’s livid face with a species of fascinated horror, but Curtis, who had often been compelled to hold similar inquiries into cold-blooded crimes committed by Chinese coolies, found greater interest in observing Clancy. A subtle exultation had suddenly danced into the diminutive Franco-Irishman’s expressive features when Market Street was first mentioned, and his coal-black eyes blazed in their slits at the sound of that name, De Silva.
A queer thought flitted through Curtis’s mind, but he put it aside, because Steingall was speaking again.
“Well, you got rid of your friends. Then what did you do?”
“The rest was simple. I cleaned the car in a hurry with a bit of oily waste, took it to a yard which I have used at times, at an address which I beg you to permit me to forget, changed the number plate, and, at an hour which I deemed discreet, drove uptown in order to dispose of the car by leaving it deserted near the garage from which it came. The owner’s house is on Riverside Drive. His name is Morris; he is absent in Chicago on business, while I learnt that his chauffeur was ill.”
A gasp of uncontrollable excitement from Devar drew all eyes to him.
“Great Jerusalem!” he cried. “Next house to my aunt’s!”
“There’s a mistake somewhere,” broke in Brodie. “I know Mr. Morris’s car, and that isn’t it.”
Lamotte was positively annoyed that his word should appear to be doubted.
“Messieurs,” he said grandiloquently, “I assure you on my honor that I am not misleading you.”
Nor was he. The discrepancy was cleared up next day. The Morris automobile was undergoing repairs, and the motor manufacturers had supplied the gray car for use in the interim.
Steingall swept the matter aside impatiently.
“Go on,” he said to the Frenchman. “You’re taking a note of this?” he added, glancing at police captain Evans.
“Got it,” was the laconic reply.
“There is nothing else,” said Lamotte. “I noticed that I was being followed, and soon discovered that I could not shake off a more powerful car. I was armed, but did not want to get into trouble on my own account, and I knew that I would have to deal with three men. So I decided to throw the car in the river, and trust to my wits for a means of escape. I would have succeeded, too, had I been aware that there was a fourth man in the party. From where I lay hidden beneath the wharf I could only count the number of people who crossed to the barge. I was unable to see them, so I included the chauffeur among the three. I was wrong. Perhaps it is as well, because I meant to get away, and would have fought.… That is all.… Will one of you give me a cigarette?”
Devar produced a case, and in response to Steingall’s nod, offered its contents to the prisoner, who took two cigarettes; nor could he be prevailed on to accept more. Despite his hang-dog looks he had an undoubted air of refinement. Degeneracy had claimed him as its own, yet some streak of a nobler heredity had struggled to exert its influence, only to fail.
Steingall put no more questions, and Lamotte relapsed into silence, smoking nonchalantly while the police captain’s pen was scratching a transcript of the shorthand notes.
Curtis caught Steingall’s eye, and drew him aside.
“That fellow told the truth about the actual murder, I think” he said. “My story coincides with his in every detail.”
“I’m sure you are right,” agreed the detective. “The odd thing is that Clancy should have spotted him from your description telephoned to headquarters. You remember Clancy was looking at a book of photographs when I brought you to the Bureau?”
“Yes.”
“He had found him then. Some time since, during the anarchist troubles in Chicago, the French police sent us a lot of pictures, and this fellow’s was among them.”
“Why didn’t he ask me if I recognized him?”
“That is not pretty Fanny’s way. Clancy never does what any other man would do. He hates to have anyone verify an opinion he has once formed. Had you said the photograph resembled the man you saw outside the hotel Clancy would actually have begun to believe that he might be mistaken.”
“At any rate,” said Curtis, smiling, “you two seem to have made marvelous progress with the inquiry since a set of drunken stokers broke up a harmonious gathering at Morris Siegelman’s.”
“We have done pretty well, but this”—and Steingall glanced at Lamotte—“this goes far beyond anything we hoped for to-night, or this morning, for the new day is growing old.”
Curtis was puzzled. He realized that the capture of the chauffeur was important, but it shrank into insignificance beside the connected history of events which the detective seemed to have at his fingers’ ends.
“I suppose I must not ask questions,” he said with a quizzical look into the extraordinary eyes which had earned the chief of the Detective Bureau the picturesque description coined by an enthusiastic reporter.
“No need,” said Steingall. “Unless you are fed up with excitement, I purpose taking you and Mr. Devar down town again, just as soon as Evans has stopped slinging ink. Then you will appreciate the importance of the things said here.”
Curtis remembered that fleeting impression he had garnered while watching Clancy during the Frenchman’s statement, which, however, appeared only to confirm the ample history already in Steingall’s possession. But again his thoughts were diverted from the matter by Steingall’s next words.
“I take it you have not called at the Plaza Hotel since we came away together?” he said. “You certainly could not stop there during the rush after the missing chauffeur, and I suppose McCulloch brought you straight here after the arrest?”
“Yes. We passed the hotel on the outward journey, and I thought I saw a light in—in my wife’s suite, but we returned by a different route.”
He fancied that the detective was about to explain a somewhat peculiar question, but at that instant the police captain summoned Lamotte to his desk.
“I’ll read what I have written,” he said, “and, if it is correct, you will sign it. You need not sign unless you wish, but the statement will be given in court, and, if you attest it now, may count in your favor.”
He recited an exact record of the Frenchman’s words, and Lamotte took the pen and scrawled his name. Then, at a nod from Evans, the roundsman took the prisoner to a cell.
“By Jove! George, or perhaps I ought to say ‘By George, Jove!’ you did that well,” exclaimed Clancy, speaking for the first time since he had entered the station-house, and addressing Steingall.
“I thought I was going to fail, but I stuck to my guns, and it came off,” was the modest if rather cryptic reply.
“We, too, have fought with beasts at Ephegus, so let us into this,” cried Devar. “What came off, and where was the risk of failure? To my mind, you had Lamotte in a double Nelson grip all the time.”
“That’s where you are in error, young man,” said Steingall cheerfully. “Sometimes it pays to pretend a knowledge you don’t possess, and this was one of the occasions. Mr. Clancy and I knew that somewhere in New York were two Hungarians named Gregor Martiny and Ferdinand Rossi. We knew that they were the men who killed Mr. Hunter, but we had no more notion where they were hiding, or how to lay hands on them, than the man in the moon.”
“Great Scott. Haven’t you arrested them?”
“No, sir. That is a pleasure deferred.”
“Do you mean that you wanged that address out of the Frenchman?”
“That’s about the size of it. I might have searched for a week for Martiny and Rossi, but no one in East Broadway would have owned up to seeing or even hearing of them.”
“Still, you had their names pat?”
“Yes,” said the detective, cutting the end off a cigar, “we had their names, and we ascertained why they killed Hunter, or would have killed any other person who tried to balk their scheme, but our information stopped there.”
Steingall, usually so communicative, evidently meant to keep to himself the source of his inspiration, and, in a few minutes, Brodie was driving the four men to the Police Headquarters.
They went to the Detective Bureau, and Steingall telephoned the Clinton Street police station-house.
“You know De Silva’s place in Market Street?” he said. “Well, within ten minutes have half-a-dozen men gather quietly near the door.… Two others should watch the back, and stop anyone making a bolt that way.… Yes, of course, there may be shooting. I’ll turn up in a private auto, and stop off at the corner of East Broadway.… Leave the rest to Clancy and myself.… No, only two, but they’re hot stuff.”
He unlocked a drawer in a desk, and took out a pair of revolvers. After examining them to make sure they were fully loaded, he handed one to Clancy.
“I hope we shall not require them, Eugene, but there’s no telling,” he said.
“I suppose I’m not allowed to shoot anybody, so you might lend me a stick,” suggested Devar.
“You and Mr. Curtis are remaining right here,” said the detective.
“Oh, be a man, Steingall!” cried Devar disgustedly. “Don’t play dog when there’s a chance of a real row. Look how I swung things your way in Morris Siegelman’s!”
“You might let us peep round the corner, at any rate,” smiled Curtis.
Steingall meant to be obdurate, but yielded, and it was well that he allowed his sympathies to sway his judgment, or there might have been an early vacancy in the chief inspectorship.
At that middle hour of the night even New York’s prowlers of the dark had retired to their foul rookeries. The streets were almost deserted, and the glare of gas and naphtha had vanished. The houses of the Hungarian quarter were stark and gloomy now, many woe-begone in their semi-dismantled aspect, and all sinister. When the automobile drew up noiselessly at the corner of Market Street, a broad enough thoroughfare, but broken and battered in appearance, the only visible forms were those of three or four patrolmen, who were sauntering aimlessly along the sidewalk. But there were eyes watching through unknown chinks in shutters, or peering through soiled curtains behind dirt-stained windows, and the quiet concentration of the police in one special quarter evidently did not pass unnoticed.
When the battle began, it partook of the vagaries of real warfare by opening unexpectedly.
It was ascertained afterwards that two men darted like shadows out of a passage in Market Street, and separated instantly. One came toward East Broadway, where the detectives and their companions had just alighted from the car, and the other, breaking into a run, dived into Henry Street, with two patrolmen after him. He it was who opened the fray, and the peace of the night was suddenly disrupted by the loud bark of an automatic pistol. Three shots were fired with a quick irregularity, and then came the deeper report of a service revolver.
Steingall and Clancy ran forward, and the fugitive coming their way had actually passed them, with two more patrolmen in pursuit, when Steingall saw him and turned instantly.
“Stop!” he shouted.
The man only increased his pace, and the detective, astonishingly active for one of his bulk, raced along at top speed.
“Stop or I shoot!” he cried again.
By that time the self-confessed outlaw was nearly opposite the car. He checked his pace, half turned, luckily not to the side where Curtis and the others were standing, and leveled a Browning pistol at the detective. He even hesitated an instant to take aim, but before his finger had pressed the trigger, Curtis had sprung at him. There was no time for a blow, but a well placed kick spun the would-be murderer off his feet, and the crash of the shot came an infinitesimal part of a second too late. As it was, the bullet struck a lamp higher up the street, and a line taken subsequently showed that it must have missed Steingall by only a few inches.
The miscreant reeled, and lost his balance. Then Curtis closed with him, caught his right wrist, and threw him heavily, but, such was the man’s frenzied resolve not to be arrested, that he fired twice again before the deadly weapon fell from his grasp. He did no damage, but the uproar brought a motley crowd from the neighboring dwellings. Market Street, which had seemed asleep or dead, proved itself very much alive and awake, but the sight of uniformed police hurrying up from several directions restrained any undue curiosity on the part of its denizens.
The desperado on the ground was handcuffed at once, and, while a policeman was searching his pockets rapidly to ascertain if he carried another pistol, Steingall gripped Curtis by the shoulder.
“I owe you something for that,” he said quietly. “I rather fancy he would have dropped me if it hadn’t been for you.… Oh, I know what I am saying. I shall not forget.… Show a light here,” he added to a patrolman who had run from East Broadway on hearing the shooting. “Now, Mr. Curtis, do you recognize him?”
“Yes,” said Curtis—-whose experiences in New York were revealing an unsuspected side of his character, for in 56th Street, in Morris Siegelman’s, and now again in Market Street, he had proved himself what Allen Breck would have termed “a bonnie fighter”—“yes, that is the man who spoke to me in the Central Hotel. I imagine he is Martiny.”
“Good! Put him in the car!”
The detective rushed off, but soon returned.
“Sorry to trouble you, but will you come this way a minute?” he said.
Curtis went with him. In Henry Street a small group was gathered in the roadway. A policeman had proved himself a better shot than Rossi, and Hunter’s murder was already avenged in part.
The dead man was left to the district police, to be carried to the mortuary in an ambulance. Steingall, with his prisoner, returned to headquarters, while Clancy made a thorough search of the room the pair had occupied in De Silva’s house.
The Hungarian did not deny his name nor his share in the earlier crime.
“It is fate,” he said doggedly in his broken French. “When they tell me we have killed the man I know the police get us.”
He would say no more. His words seemed to imply that neither he nor Rossi meant to do other than maim the journalist whom they regarded as de Courtois’s dangerous helper; but he did not urge the plea. Perhaps he felt that when a Hungarian uses a knife, a trifling error in the matter of direction is pardonable.
“I shall not go home now,” said Steingall, bidding farewell to his allies when Martiny had been formally identified and charged. “I must get this thing thoroughly straightened out before morning, though the inquest and police court proceedings will be mere adjournments. Good-night, Mr. Devar. Good-night, Mr. Curtis. Once more, thank you. And, by the way, if all is not well at the Plaza, ’phone me at once. Remember, won’t you? Good-night!”