“You got my telephone message straight?” I asked.
“Your message?” asked the man in uniform.
I looked at him vacantly.
“Of course; who did you think did the telephoning?”
“The desk sergeant told me it was a man who declined to give his name who said he had an apartment here, and that there had been a commotion in the apartment above.”
I nodded. The thing had worked out as I had anticipated.
“I didn’t give my name because I was afraid of police skepticism. I am having an increasingly hard time trying to make you fellows believe that I am on the square. There was a racket in the apartment above, and I am sure I heard a man fall to the floor. After that there were running feet, and then silence. I telephoned to the desk sergeant at once.”
The officer scratched his head.
“The man who telephoned said that the apartment above was occupied by Ed Jenkins, the famous Phantom Crook.”
I laughed at that.
“That was all twisted up. The sergeant asked who to see if they needed more information and I finally told him to have his men come to the apartment of Ed Jenkins. That’s how he got things balled up. I really wish you’d take a look upstairs at the apartment over mine, officer. You know with my record the fact that I’ve reformed doesn’t protect me a bit. If anything should go wrong within a mile of me there’d always be those to say I was responsible. That’s why I always notify the police.”
He stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, his forehead puckered in what passes for thought with the average flatfoot.
“I’ll go up there, all right,” he said at length, “but before I do, I’m goin’ through this here apartment, an’ I’m going through it right now.”
With that he lowered his head, dropped his right hand to his pocket, and came boring on into the apartment.
“Pray come in, gentlemen,” I said. “I regret that a certain organized bloc of voters have made it impossible for me to provide you with what was once considered the first essential in the way of hospitality, but a constitutional amendment is, of course, binding on crooks, if not on police officers and legislators. Pray, come in.”
It took them a moment to figure out that speech, and when they did, they didn’t know much more than they had before. They came in with a belligerent attitude, and they prowled around the apartment, looking things over.
“Of course you’ll understand headquarters looks the place over every two or three weeks,” I remarked smoothly. “If there’s anything I can do, or any way I can be of assistance, just let me know.”
The main squeeze disregarded the comment, and they all flatfooted around the apartment until they had convinced themselves there was nothing concealed within the walls of the small place, and then it occurred to the head of the gang that he’d better take a look at that upper apartment. I begged him not to do so.
“If I was mistaken you’ll simply be unnecessarily arousing the people upstairs, and if I was right in my hunch and there has been any crime committed up there they’ll now have had sufficient warning to have concealed all of the evidence. Pray let them alone.”
The flatfoot looked at me moodily and then led his men up the stairs to the apartment above. There was a chorus of sleepy grunts, rather an explosion of verbal threats as the other sensed what the men were doing there, and then some angry words on both sides. I rather gathered that I would not be a welcome neighbor in that apartment, and that I had better plan on moving in the very near future.
The man above made the mistake of making too many threats, of telling what he would do in the line of gathering in the official scalps of the various members of the squad, and they searched his apartment. I could hear their heavy feet tramping through the place. They found some booze. How much I don’t know, but enough to enable them to save their official faces, and they came down the elevator, bringing the man from the apartment above and several cases of “evidence.” I hadn’t known he was a bootlegger, and for once fortune was playing right square in my hands. Otherwise they’d have probably come back for another interview or argument with me.
As it was, I gave them a bare minute to get started, and then lowered myself out of the window, shook loose the rope, and found the still, black bundle of lifeless flesh below. It was an effort to get it into my roadster, and slip out of the garage into the still shadows of the noiseless street, but it was only a matter of minutes.
I had taken the precaution to ascertain where Ogden Sly lived, and when I parked my machine a block or two away in a dark alley and slipped into his garage and stole his machine, I took the trouble to make a scientific job of it. I opened the padlock carefully, taking the greatest care to leave no fingerprints, slipped the car in neutral and backed it by hand well out into the street. I short circuited the ignition wires back of the switch because I had no key that would fit the ignition lock, and then drove up to where I had left my car. I slipped the body over into Sly’s car, got in, heaved a sigh of relief, and drove for the river road. Once there I removed the knife from the man’s chest and threw it far out into the waters. The rug I concealed beneath some shrubbery where I would have a chance to bury it later. Then I sat the body in the seat, started the car toward one of the steep curves, threw on the gas, stood on the running board until it had plenty of momentum, and then slipped to the ground and watched the expensive machine hurtle into the air, waited until I heard the crash, and then started walking back.
At any rate Ogden Sly was out an expensive machine, and if he had been mixed up in the attempt to frame the murder on me, he would probably have some embarrassing explanations to make at a later date.
It was nearing day when I got my own machine back in my garage and rolled in for a few hours’ sleep. I saw that my legal vacation was nearing an end. I’d have to start once more wearing disguises, keeping three and four apartments rented at a time, all in widely separated sections of the city, and take the trouble to build up a different character in each apartment. In my heart I cursed the man with the reddish eyes, the parrot mouth and the octopus arms. I could not help but feel that he was responsible for my present position.
The story broke that forenoon. Fortunately, the police had found and identified the wrecked car before Ogden Sly awoke to the fact that someone had borrowed his machine. After that the facts broke rapidly. It seemed the body was that of Andrew Caruthers, known about the younger set as “Wild Andy.” He was of good family, and had social standing. Recently he had been blackmailed steadily and consistently. Two or three of his more intimate friends knew of the payments he was being forced to make, and had also heard him threaten to resort to desperate measures unless the demands were lightened. No one heard or knew the name of the person who was making the demands, but it was known that they were heavy and regular.
Wild Andy had started out with some unknown companion that fatal night, and had not stated where he was going other than that he had telephoned the steward at his club and said that if anything happened to him to be sure and demand an explanation of a man with a bandaged arm, broken nose, cauliflower ear and three gold teeth, a man who went by the name of Bert Strong and who lived at a cheap hotel on First Street between Pine and Hemlock.
From this description the police were able to identify one Bill Peavey who had a criminal record as long as his bandaged arm. He was living at the place mentioned, and under the name of Bert Strong, but he had an ironclad alibi that could not be shaken. At that he was puzzled and frightened. Very apparently Wild Andy had not been as green as he looked and had managed to shadow the tool to whom he made his payments.