J. Fletcher - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 1 — April 1922)

Returning toward Headquarters on a street car, Harbin and Harrison heard an excited hail from the opposite track and recognized Detective Kelso as he swung to the pavement and joined them on the sidewalk.

“They’ve traced the gun,” he announced hurriedly. “It’s Bill Evans’s. June Jennings bought it across the river a month ago. She’s been packin’ it for him. That’s what they’ve got her for — gun moll, sabe? Come on and we’ll get her.”

“Where? Get her where?” demanded Harbin of Kelso, who was already hailing another car.

“Bill Evans’s room,” spluttered Kelso. “Just got a flash she was seen going into the house. Hurry up”; and the three clambered aboard to continue Kelso’s journey.

Kelso had been there before and knew the place. Running noiselessly up the stairs of the rooming house, the three hurled themselves at the door and burst it in at the second shove to confront an astounded young woman who grabbed frantically at her throat. Harrison seized her wrist and, forcing open her clenched fingers, disclosed a diamond brooch she had torn from her waist. Twelve diamonds, set in platinum, it fitted to a T the description of one article of the Garrison loot.

“Great Gosh, this is the plant!” ejaculated Kelso hoarsely. “Search the dump. The other stuff’s here, surer than hell.”

While Harrison clung to June Jennings the other two swiftly and thoroughly searched the room. Almost at once Harbin chuckled in added delight. In a tin of smoking tobacco his fingers encountered something hard and drew forth another one of the Garrison jewels — a ruby-and-diamond ring. But Kelso found nothing and the three turned again to the flame-faced girl.

“Where’s the rest of the stuff?” they demanded. “Where’s the pearl necklace? Where did you get that brooch? Where’s the plant?”

“Leggo my arm,” was the defiant reply. “Howdje get that way? That brooch was given to me by a friend of mine. If it was stolen, I didn’t know it. Prove it was, if you can, and take it. I was wearing it, wasn’t I? You can’t do nothing to me for taking presents from a friend.”

“Who gave it to you?” demanded Kelso. “Bill Evans gave it to you.”

“That skunk? Why he wouldn’t—” the girl began, then stopped and changed her tone. “Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn’t,” she concluded.

“When did you see Bill last?” asked Harbin quietly.

“Not since—” Again the girl stopped her reply — “this morning.”

“Where’s the necklace?” demanded Harrison with a shake of her arm.

“He hasn’t given me that — yet,” the girl replied and laughed in the detective’s face.

With a snort of anger Kelso suddenly dashed across the single cheaply furnished room and seized the knob of a door in the corner. A bare closet was revealed as he flung it open, but fastened to the wall and reaching to a skylight was a narrow ladder, placed there to conform to the fire laws. A scraping noise caused him to look up just in time to see vanishing through a door in the glass one trousered leg that undoubtedly belonged to a man who had lingered perilously long to hear what was going on after the detectives burst into Bill Evans’s room.

“Evans, by—,” he shouted and fired a futile shot through the opening.

Harbin, waiting for no explanations, dashed for the street, but Harrison kept his head and held to the girl.

“Don’t be a fool, Kelso,” he ordered. “Evans hasn’t been sprung this quick. It’s some other guy in the gang. Get up there after him.”

Whoever it was apparently knew the block better than the detectives, because they did not find him on the roof or in the streets roundabout. From the girl they could get nothing but malicious chuckles, and after a half hour spent in tearing the room to pieces, despite the angry protests of the landlady, the three summoned a patrol wagon and locked up June Jennings in a cell at Headquarters.

Disgruntled as they were, they had at least one satisfaction. They had traced two pieces of the loot to Bill Evans’s room.

As for the revolver, June Jennings readily admitted purchasing it, when confronted with the dealer.

“Sure, I bought it,” she says. “Bought it for protection against guys that grab a girl’s presents of jewelry. You didn’t find it on me, did you? Is there a law against buying a gun in another state?”

Somewhat shamefacedly, the three detectives glared at one another after this job was over. Apparently even though they had easily rounded up the men in the case, they still had the women to contend with.

“You know, boys, Jim Anthony’s Nell has got a pretty nasty temper,” said Kelso, by way of contributing to the general gloom.

“Yes,” said Harrison, “and then there’s that Miss Garrison. She ain’t telling a story that’s any straighter than a hound’s hind leg.”

“What do you mean?” said Harbin.

“Why, she told me three different stories in as many minutes this morning about where she was when the robbery was pulled.”

“Excitement — reaction from excitement,” explained Harbin in his best manner.

“Excitement my eye,” came the discouraging answer. “There’s a pair of men’s rubbers in the hall with last night’s mud on them that won’t fit Schmidt and won’t fit Old Man Garrison either. I suppose excitement put them there. No visitors at the house, they say. Now what do you make of that?”

To avoid a direct reply, Harbin turned to Kelso. “What’s Nell Anthony up to?” he demanded.

“Well, you know, I went out to trace those cobbled shoes,” Kelso explained. “I did, all right. They’re Jimmy Anthony’s. No doubt about it. That’s admitted. Didn’t have time to tell you before. But guess where I found ’em.”

Neither Harbin nor Harrison was in a mood to try.

“I found them in the cobbler’s shop where Anthony left them a week ago. But they’ve got mud on the new soles and it’s the same mud that’s in Garrison’s flowerbeds. Now, how the hell and why the hell did they get back there?

“More than that, Jim’s wife and all the neighbors will swear on the original text of the Bible that Jim was in bed all night. And besides that Mrs. Jim has gone out on the trail herself and offered to bet me her savings bank account that we’re dead wrong on the whole proposition. Now, what do you make of that?”

They did not have much time to speculate over what to make of it, as they journeyed down to Headquarters.

Pacing up and down in front of the building they found Jim Anthony’s wife, angry, sarcastic and triumphant in one mingled mood.

Refusing them even time to go inside and report, she dragged the three bewildered detectives six blocks up the street and halted them in front of the cobbler’s shop at which Kelso had located Jim Anthony’s wandering shoes.

“I know you’ve been in there and got Jim’s shoes,” she announced dramatically. “That’s good and proper. But are you going to tell the truth about what the old shoe man says?”

“Yes, lady,” responded Kelso, meekly.

“Well, then, come with me and see that you remember the rest of this straight, you bum Sherlocks.” And the indignant wife of one of the best burglars in the world led the unresisting forces of Law and Order around the corner and through a tiny door in a huge billboard which shut off a vacant lot.

Inside were half a dozen rusting wagons and a couple of disintegrating Fords, ranged around the outskirts of the lot. The main part of it was open to the sun and the mud created by the Spring rain of the night before was plainly undisturbed, save for the prints of three pairs of shoes.

One set had been made by a woman and into the first of these prints Nell Anthony set her foot, which fitted perfectly.