Джон Данн - Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929

“Fast work!” grunted Fitzpatrick.

“Under our noses, Fitz! I’ve a blamed good mind to resign overnight. Lord, what a kidding we are in for all around — newspapers, headquarters—”

“Lay off the wailing! We’re not dead yet. Back to New York for us as fast as the car can take us. They’ll head for New York sure. I’ll bet if we work fast enough we can hop back to New York and pick Liverpool Jack out of the hay in his West Side flat!”

“There’s a chance,” put in Flaherty. “Let’s get a move on!”

It was something after five o’clock in the morning when the police car slid up in front of the apartment house where Liverpool Jack with his wife and small son had been making his home.

The first move there would be to awaken the superintendent or janitor for admission quietly to the apartment of Liverpool Jack. Flaherty meanwhile was despatched to the street in the rear of the apartment to gain entrance to the backyards there and guard the fire escapes of the Liverpool Jack apartment house.

But the detectives did not have to awaken the superintendent. On the first touch of the bell, he was at the door, eyes glaring with anger, hair mussed, suspenders of his trousers drawn over his pyjama jacket.

“Say, what the hell’s the matter with people to-night?” he demanded. “I just manage to get back to bed when along comes somebody else and—”

The glint of the hall lights on two gold police badges choked off further utterance of indignation.

“What’s happened that’s got you all worked up?” asked Burgess.

“The darnedest thing ever happened since I’ve had anything to do with apartments! Of course, I could hardly say nothing against it. He had always been a good tenant, always paid his rent regular, always been a darned fine sort of a man to have in the house. His little kid and my kid were good friends and his kid was a dandy kid — used to let my kid play with the things he had that I couldn’t afford to buy my kid. But, goshall gee, starting to move out at four o’clock in the morning, waking up everybody in the house — not but what he made the movers work as quiet as he’ could — but, say, that’s not the sort of thing to do, is it?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Mr. Lawrence Preston — an Englishman, a limey, but a mighty nice fellow exceptin’ for what he pulled about an hour ago.”

“And he shows up to move out at five o’clock in the morning?”

“Yeh? Can you beat it?”

“What’s his hurry — did he explain that to you?”

“Yes, he did. But I’m pretty dopey with sleep. I only got a hazy notion of what he was talking about. It was something about getting a hurry call from the old country that his father’s dying and he’s got to make a boat in the morning and can’t leave his wife and kid behind and has got to get his furniture out and put in storage, and he has only got a blamed little time left to do a whole lot of things. I’m sore as a boil. But he slips me a fiver at that. And, like I say, he’s always been an all right tenant.”

“How about the van that came to get his things? Did you see it? See the name on it? See where it came from?”

“I just seen it from the window — that’s all. There were two of them. But not like regular moving vans. They was open top. Like them big lorries you see going around down at the water front loading off ships. I figured he must have gone down to the ship line dock and scared ’em up somehow.”

“Borrowed from the Silk Loft gang,” opined Burgess to Fitzpatrick.

“Sure.”

“What about the dog — the kid’s collie? Leave him with you?”

“Lord, no! That kid of theirs would have died of a broken heart if they ever took that collie away from him. The dog goes with him and his wife and kid into a car.”

“A taxi?”

“Not from where I was lookin’ it didn’t seem to be a taxi. A private car — a big touring car.”

“Lawrence Preston — that was his name, hey?”

“Yes.”

“Well, of course, after to-night he got wise we have been spotting him here and he’s come straight back from the job and bolted,” said Burgess.

The discomfited detectives went in the rear to call Flaherty off, and the three were once again in the car and the chauffeur had just started the engine whirring when Burgess suddenly commanded, “Stop!”

He jumped out and called the superintendent, who had turned to go back indoors.

“Just a minute,” he shouted. “What was the name of Preston’s kid — the first name?”

“Jack.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, what?” demanded Fitzpatrick when Burgess got back into the car.

“You mean asking the kid’s name, I suppose?”

“Sure.”

“Can’t you get it?”

“No.”

Burgess whispered into Fitzpatrick’s ear.

The older detective clapped him on the shoulder.

“The bean is working,” he said in a congratulatory manner.

When they returned to the branch bureau there was a report on the desk of the senior detective, Fitzpatrick. When he read it he grimaced sourly.

“Some lucky breaks we are getting on this job!” said he to Burgess, handing him the paper.

The report came from Police Headquarters, Jersey City. It conveyed the information that a few hours before Connecticut Blackie and Bugs Reilly had actually been in the hands of the State police somewhere in the vicinity of Newark, and had slipped out of them!

By what method, in what other automobile Liverpool Jack made his get-away from Lakewood that night was never found out. But the evidence was plain he had parted from his accomplices, and that Blackie and Bugs, driven by the ferret-faced marvel, returned to New York in the car in which Blackie, Liverpool and the tricky chauffeur had traveled to Lakewood.

On the return the car was overhauled by a State Road Inspector. The trio in it were probably on the point of throwing up their hands or — drawing their pistols. But the inspector’s words were merely:

“What about your tail-lights there and what’s the matter with headlights — only one going? That don’t go around these parts, New York.”

Blackie, probably with the thirty thousand dollar post office loot under his legs in the tonneau as he spoke, talked fast and well. He emitted apologies in the most polite manner. He asked the inspector to believe that it wasn’t neglect or scorn of the laws of motor travel in so intelligent a State as New Jersey that had caused them to offend. The matter of the lights had been an unavoidable misfortune of motor travel. The bulbs had failed back and front. There hadn’t been sufficient extras to fix things up properly and they had been anxiously on the lookout for an all-night oil station or garage in which to repair the deficiency. Blackie got by. The inspector told the crooks the situation of the nearest oil station and had waved them on their way.

“Ed,” said Fitzpatrick, “if that kid hunch of yours doesn’t pan out, we’re licked.”

“If Liverpool Jack sticks to New York I’m thinking it’s bound to work out. We’ll have to wait, say, four or five days. I figure the Silk Loft crowd stored Jack’s stuff for him for a day or two till he could rent another apartment, then give him and his family two to four days more to get settled in their new home, and then we’ll try the scheme out.”

As a matter of fact, Burgess bided his time for a week. Then he went to the public school little Jack “Preston” had attended in the Riverside section and consulted the principal.

“Have you transferred any pupils from your school to the others in the city recently — within a week?”

“Three,” said the principal. “I’ll get the registry book.”

Of the three entries was one stating that Master John Preston had been transferred to a school in West One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Street. It recorded the change of address of the boy, and the new one led the detectives to an apartment directly opposite the schoolhouse which Master John Preston was marked to attend in the future. The name “Preston,” necessarily retained by the fugitive criminal in order to effect the school transfer, appeared in the hallway letter box. The apartment was on the top floor.