Her voice was soft, almost devoid of expression.
“You wanted him to help you in the opening of safes? Or did you want him to work in with a gang and split the loot?”
They denied this in unison again. It would never do for them to admit their plans to Helen Chadwick.
She listened to their almost hysterical denials, and then laughed, a harsh, grating, metallic laugh.
“I’m sorry that I was so simple as to walk into your trap,” she said, “but it grieves me to see how simple you really think I am. Perhaps you can send me to the penitentiary, perhaps not, but I’d sooner cut off my right hand and go to jail for life than to sign a paper that would put Ed Jenkins back into criminal life. I’ve been working to get his record straightened out, to show the governors of the other states where he is wanted that he wasn’t guilty of the crimes that were laid to his door, that whatever he actually did was the result of the circumstances in which he found himself placed.”
Boardman wanted to argue still.
“Think of yourself, of your mother. I’m a hard man to cross. I’m loyal to my friends and bitter to my enemies. You have invaded the privacy of my study with felonious intentions. Your own admission shows that you came after certain private political papers, and the flashlight photograph shows that you were actually removing certain contents from my safe.
“You were up here this afternoon with my wife, and you particularly noticed the location of the safe so that you might be able to come back again tonight and remove the papers in the dark. You were afraid to use a light, and you thought you could get the proper paper in the dark. The party who told you of it told you it was in a small, flat, tin box. The photograph will show you actually touching that box, and the box will bear the imprint of your fingers.
“There will be no question of what any jury will do. Think of the horror of being confined within the cold, gray walls of San Quentin. Think of the shock to your mother...”
She interrupted him and every word snapped and stung like the lash of a whip.
“So you had it all framed, you cur. You capitalized on my desire to see Ed Jenkins rehabilitated. It was all a frame-up from the first. Do you think you can get away with that? Why Ed Jenkins would kill you. The city isn’t big enough for you to escape him. And don’t forget that I’m no common crook to be framed and bluffed. I can and will fight. Don’t think I didn’t have the woman shadowed who gave me the fake tip about these papers. My detectives can locate her at will, and she’ll have something to say when she gets on the witness stand, or before the grand jury.
“It’s a good thing for you that Ed Jenkins doesn’t know what’s going on here tonight — and he probably never will know unless you press things. But God help you if he does!”
Her words disconcerted them. Perhaps it was a bluff about having their tool shadowed. Perhaps she had been shrewd enough to do it. And there was truth in what she said about her ability to fight the case. They had counted upon a woman who would go into hysterics, who would lose her head, beg, plead. Hence the written confession. They would stampede her into signing that first, and then anything she could say afterward would sound like an alibi thought out by a desperate criminal lawyer.
Bob Garret lost his head and rushed forward, grabbing her by the arm.
“Sign, you fool! Sign! Hear the police on the stairs?”
And he was right. He had evidently given some signal and now there sounded the shuffling of heavy feet on the stairs. The police were to enter and catch her before the safe.
But I had not been idle while they were talking.
The beam from the pocket flash lamp showed me other things besides the face of Helen Chadwick. There was the camera, the flashlight stand, a bottle of flash powder setting near to it. The photograph was still on the plate in the camera, and it was their most clinching piece of evidence. With that gone, they would hardly dare to prosecute. Paul Boardman had influence with the city government. He controlled judges by the dozen. The district attorney did as Boardman bade, but there was such a thing as going too far. If they should run into just the right sort of a fight before a jury the whole political house of cards would collapse.
It was a double plate-holder, and I worked with noiseless rapidity. The camera had been set in the bathroom to give the lense a wider field. The shutter was automatic, and the camera focused upon the safe.
I had slipped the slide in the exposed plate, turned the plate-holder, removed the slide, slipped a fresh charge of flash powder into the “gun.” All of this I had done while they had been talking.
As there sounded a heavy knock at the door of the study, as the two men pushed against Helen Chadwick, threatening — holding out to her paper and pen, showing by their every attitude, their facial expressions, their gestures, that they were trying to force her to sign this paper against her will, I tripped the shutter and pulled the cord of the flash gun.
The explosion burnt the eyelashes from my face, singed my hair. It was too close quarters for accurate work, and I was hurried.
That second glare of light caught them as much by surprise as the first had caught Helen. They stopped in their tracks. Their faces blanched, and Garret dropped his hand-lamp to reach for his gun.
I slipped the slide back into the plate-holder, removed it from the camera, stuck the holder containing both exposed plates under my arm, and was on my way.
Even as I dashed from the bathroom door into the hallway, I had the nucleus of an idea in the back of my mind. In the old days when I had earned my title of “The Phantom Crook” I had always worked on the theory that the police are methodical but not brilliant. They are slow, sure plodders. Given a situation which has become standard, they operate with remarkable efficiency. Place them up against new conditions, however, conditions which change with the speed of thought, and they are hopelessly outclassed. It was up to me to do the unexpected and watch for the breaks.
There were some four or five policemen in the corridor, and all of them were massed about the door which went directly into the study. They had evidently been carefully instructed in the parts they were to play. They were prepared to walk into the room, representing the stem majesty of the law, and bully a helpless girl.
They looked at my back in dazed amazement during that short, split-fraction of a second that it took me to negotiate the distance between the bathroom door and the head of the stairs.
Then the other door jerked open and Boardman and Garret made a leap into the hall, only to become entangled with the waiting officers. There was the usual snarl of arms and legs, the usual commotion of shouted commands, explanations, impatient orders. I didn’t wait to see it, but I could hear it, and I knew from past experiences what was taking place. The police had watched me as I dashed down the stairs, their minds functioning slowly. By the time Boardman and Garret had started in pursuit the officers had half a mind that they should have tried to stop me. As a result they automatically stopped my pursuers. Then there were recriminations, orders, confusion, noise, and all of the time the minds of the cops were attempting to adjust themselves to the new developments.
Finally they all wound up by pounding in pursuit, their steps banging in haste down the stairs while the servants and guests ran and screamed. This was exactly the break I had been counting upon. I made but little noise as I ran, and attracted almost no attention compared to the sounds of the stampede from the hallway above.
I ducked back of a curtain while the guests scuttled for cover and the servants rushed hither and thither trying to find out what it was all about. When the servants had vacated the little hallway at the foot of the back stairs, I slipped out from behind my curtain, took the back stairs two at a time in a swift series of noiseless, springing strides, and found the upper corridor deserted, just as I had figured it would be.