Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist

by John Thomas McIntyre

  CHAPTER XV

  SCANLON STATES HIS POSITION

  It was a fall Sunday, misty and with a fine rain falling; the meanstreet in which Ashton-Kirk's house stood--once the street of the city'saristocracy, but now crowded with the hordes of East Europe--lookedsodden and cheerless. Bat Scanlon, as he mounted the wide stone stepsand rang the bell, looked about and philosophized.

  "Funny how things have their ups and downs--men as well as streets. Andthis is one of my days for being down. Down at the bottom, too,"disconsolately; "at the bottom, with all my vexations piled up on top ofme."

  Stumph, grave of face, and altogether the very model of men-servants,opened the door.

  "Yes, sir," said he, in reply to Scanlon's question. "Mr. Ashton-Kirk isat home. You are to go up, sir."

  Scanlon made his way up the familiar staircase; from the high walls, therows of painted faces looked down on him from their dull gilt frame.

  "A fellow must feel a kind of a pressure on him to have an assortedgang of ancestors looking down on him this way all the time," said thebig man, mentally. "I don't know whether I'd like it or not."

  Stumph knocked at the study door, and when a voice bade them come in, heopened it and stood aside while Scanlon entered. Ashton-Kirk sat upon adeep sofa with his legs wrapped in a steamer-rug, smoking a briar pipe,and going over some closely typed pages.

  "How are you?" greeted he. "Take a comfortable chair, will you? You'llfind things to smoke on the table. And pardon me a moment while I finishthis."

  Scanlon lighted a cigarette and sat down. The criminologist plunged oncemore into the typed sheets, and while he was so engaged, Bat's eyesroved about the room. Through the partly open door at one end he had adetail of the laboratory with its shining retorts and racks of gleamingapparatus; in the study itself were rows of books standing uponeverything that would hold them; cases were stuffed with them; theylittered the tables and stands, some spotless in their fresh newness,others dingy and old, with warping leather backs and yellowed pages.

  Ashton-Kirk put the sheets down at last and sat for a space smoking inthoughtful silence, the singular eyes half closed. Then he threw asidethe rug and arose; pressing a call button he began pacing the room.

  "This little case of ours is gaining in interest," said he. "Its scopeis widening, too. I put one of my men, Burgess, on a detail which Iwanted thoroughly searched, and it led him to New Orleans."

  Scanlon elevated his brows.

  "No!" said he. "Is that a fact?"

  There were a number of newspapers scattered about the floor. Ashton-Kirkkicked one of them out of the way as he turned the table in his pacing.

  "I suppose you've seen the afternoon editions," said he, with a smile atthe corners of his mouth.

  "Not yet," said Scanlon. "It's a bit early."

  "I had Stumph get me some of them," said the investigator, "and it'sjust as I expected it would be. My plan of last night worked perfectly."

  "You mean what you gave Osborne at headquarters."

  "Yes. One of the first things he did was to call in the reporters andtell them of the new clues. He neglected to state, evidently, by whomthey had been found, and the reporters naturally took it for grantedthat he was the person."

  "Of course," criticized Bat, "that's the regular way for 'bulls' towork. They grab off everything they can."

  "Listen to this!" Ashton-Kirk took up one of the newspapers and turnedto the first page. "The head-lines read:

  "'CLUE TO STANWICK PUZZLE A WOMAN FIGURES IN MURDER OF BURTON _Clever Work by City Sleuth_ _He Finds Evidence Overlooked by Others_'"

  "Stuff of that kind is like steam coal to a boiler," spoke Mr. Scanlon."It'll keep the reporters going for days."

  "The body of the article is shot full of fanciful matter," said theinvestigator, as he tossed the paper aside. "It must have been a youthof considerable imagination who wrote it; the casual reader would takefrom his printed remarks that the city authorities have the woman whomade the footprints directly under their eyes--that only an order isnecessary, and she'll be taken into custody."

  Scanlon looked at the graying end of the cigarette with uneasy eyes; heshifted in the big chair and crossed one leg over another.

  "That fellow Osborne'll never find out anything unless some one tellshim," said the big athlete. "And no one's going to do that--not yet,anyway, eh?"

  There came a knock upon the door.

  "Come in," called Ashton-Kirk.

  A short man entered; he had big shoulders and remarkable girth of chest,and he carried a black, hard hat in his hand.

  "Sit down, Burgess," requested the investigator. The man with thebulging chest nodded to Scanlon and took a seat upon the edge of thesofa. "I've just been going over that report of yours," went onAshton-Kirk. "You have done very well. And I thank you."

  Burgess fingered the rim of the black hat, and seemed gratified.

  "I never saw a job develop so," said he. "Didn't look like much atfirst; but it was all over the place in a day or two. I had to jumpclean to Cleveland almost at once. I guess Fuller told you." And as theinvestigator nodded, the big-chested man proceeded: "I squeezedCleveland dry, and followed the lead to Milwaukee, then to Nashville,and finally to New Orleans. I got most of my leads in Cleveland; she wasmarried there and quite a lot of people knew her."

  Ashton-Kirk picked up the typed sheets and glanced through them asthough to refresh his memory.

  "They seem to speak very highly of her," said he.

  "Couldn't be better," replied Burgess. "But there was one littledrawback. There wasn't any of them that knew her very well--exceptprofessionally. And to know a person only professionally is noguarantee that you know the facts about her."

  "Very true," said Ashton-Kirk. His eyes were still going over thesheets. "You say here that Parslow was rather negative concerning her."

  "Yes. You see, she was with him for some time; and once, when hecouldn't do very well without her, she told him she'd have to have moremoney. A thing like that," and Burgess smiled and nodded, "sometimesmakes them shy of the good word." The man nursed his knee, the hard hatstill in his hands. "I went to see Parslow at his office. He's beenmanager of that theatre for fifteen years and made it pay, after everyone else had failed. Kind of a tight old wax, I'd say. I couldn't getmuch out of him at first; but later he talked plenty. He wouldn't sayanything against her, but he didn't praise her much."

  "At Nashville you had more success?"

  "Oh, yes; a good bit more. She'd been there a season, after leavingCleveland. There is a Mrs. Thatcher, who keeps a boarding-house, who letme in on some inside stuff. You've seen it all in the report, I suppose.The lead that took me to New Orleans was a promising one, but it didn'tturn out as well as I expected. But I got some information, at that."

  Ashton-Kirk once more pressed one of his call bells; and then turning toBurgess, he said:

  "What you have learned will be of real service. It's always well, Ithink, to have a background for a case like this; the bare factsconcerning the crime itself are not always quite satisfactory."

  Here Stumph entered the study, and the investigator spoke to him.

  "Bring me Volume IV, and at once, please."

  After the grave-faced servant had left the room, Ashton-Kirk went onwith his remarks to Burgess. Bat Scanlon sat quietly listening; therewas something forlorn and sunken in the way his big frame rested in thepadded chair, and the expression on his face was one of almost despair.

  In a few moments Stumph appeared bearing a huge canvas-covered book;this he laid upon the table, and Ashton-Kirk at once began to turn thepages, filled with writing in a copper plate hand and ruled with greatprecision.

  "I had intended to put Fuller on this," said he, as he scanned theentries, "but he's still deep in something else."

  Burgess half arose and looked at the open pages. And as he settled backon the sofa, he nodded.

  "Yes, he's clever at that. But I guess we can go through with it, andnot bother him."

/>   "Put down these names," said Ashton-Kirk. Burgess at once produced anote-book and a pencil. "Cato Jones," read the investigator.

  "I know him," said Burgess as he jotted down the name. "A mulatto whokeeps an antique shop in Farson Street."

  "Judah Rosen."

  "He's likely," commented Burgess. "I saw a record of him once as writtenup by the Manchester police. They made it so hot for him in England hehad to jump out."

  The criminologist read out a number of additional names; then Burgessclosed his note-book and put it in his pocket. Ashton-Kirk took a foldedpaper from a drawer and handed it to him.

  "Here are your instructions. Work carefully, and whatever you do, don'tlet any inkling of what you are after get out."

  Burgess glanced at the document's contents, and at one point his mouthpuckered up as though he were going to whistle.

  "All right," said he, as he refolded the paper and put it, also, in hispocket. "Anything more?"

  "Not now. But keep in touch."

  Burgess promised to do so; and with a nod to Ashton-Kirk, and one to Mr.Scanlon, he left the room.

  "Burgess hasn't the natural tact of Fuller," said Ashton-Kirk as hethrew himself once more upon the sofa and began recharging the briarpipe. "But he has done amazingly well at times. He has a pushing wayabout him and seems to do things by sheer pressure in which a morepointed intelligence would fail."

  He lit the pipe and rearranged the rugs comfortably about his legs. Thenwith a contented sigh, he lay back and looked at Scanlon.

  "Well, we seem to be doing fairly, eh?" said he. "I rather think thatbefore long we'll make an end of this affair."

  Bat crushed the fire from the end of his third cigarette against theside of a pewter bowl upon the table. Then leaning toward theinvestigator, his hands upon his knees, he said:

  "I want to let you in on something I think you ought to know. This wholematter has come to a point where it's best for me to declare myintentions. Before very long I can see myself taking a stand; and when Ido, I don't want you to be surprised."

  Ashton-Kirk looked at him, inquiringly, but said nothing.

  "And to explain just what is behind this possible stand," proceededScanlon, "I'll have to tell you something I've never told a soulbefore." There was a direct bluntness in the voice and the manner of thebig athlete which men who are naturally diffident assume when theyapproach certain subjects.

  "About eight years ago," went on Bat, "I went broke on a wrestlingtournament in 'Frisco; and right away I had to look around for somethingto run the wolf off the property. In Oakland there was a theatricalmanager who had nerve enough to do Shakespeare, and he was rehearsing'As You Like It.' A friend of mine tipped me off that there was a week'swork for me if I went after it; and go after it I did. Acting was new tome, and it had my nerve a little; but the director told me not tobother, for I could leave that all to the regular company; my work wasto rehearse the leading man in a little wrestling bout, and then gothrough it with him in the show."

  Ashton-Kirk laughed.

  "And so," said he, "you are another of the many who have sweated theirway through the role of 'Charles, the Wrestler.'"

  "That was me," replied Bat. "But I didn't sweat much. The leading manwas a kind of a drawing-room actor, and I had to keep at low pressureall the time so as not to wear him out. But what I did as an actor ain'tgot much to do with what I want to tell you. The big thing is that theRosalind of that production was Nora Cavanaugh; and it was the firsttime I ever saw her."

  "Ah!" said Ashton-Kirk. "You knew her as far back as that, did you?That's interesting."

  "She was the finest thing I ever looked at," said Bat Scanlon. "And notonly that, but she rang with the right sound. I was never what you wouldcall a woman's man, and so I never got to knowing much about them. Butin the week I was in that Oakland theatre I took a new course, and,though she never knew it, Nora was the teacher."

  "You didn't fall in love with her!" said the investigator, through ahaze of pipe smoke.

  "I did," replied the big athlete. "I fell for her as a man falls off asteeple--there was never a chance for me--even if I'd looked forone--which I never did."

  "That's a novelty," said Ashton-Kirk. "I'd never have thought of you inthat way, Bat."

  "I'd never have thought it of myself, only it was kept pretty bright inmy mind," said Scanlon. "We got to be good friends--but I had to jumpaway south. When I got back, Nora was in Denver playing a season. Ididn't see her for a year; and by that time she'd got her head full ofbeing a big star in the east, and so as I had nothing of value to dimthis idea, why, I pulled out without her ever knowing just how I wasfeeling. In another year she was married--to Burton; and I was down forthe full count."

  "Too bad!" said Ashton-Kirk, rather more absently than should have beenthe case. "Too bad!"

  "And that's what I mean," said Bat Scanlon, "when I say that I maydeclare myself before long. I won't if I can help it; but if certainthings come to pass--well, there's nothing else to be expected."

  "Of course not!" said the investigator. "You are quite right. But let ushope that everything will come out all right." He looked at his watch,and then arose briskly from the sofa. "I'd almost forgotten," he said."My plan was to visit young Burton to-day. Will you come along?"

  The idea appealed to Scanlon. He had seen the young artist only once,and that once had left its impress on his mind.

  "Sure," said he; "there's nothing I'd like better than a chance to hearand see that young fellow again."

  Ashton-Kirk summoned Stumph and said:

  "Tell Dixon to bring around the car at once."

  Ten minutes later, attired in a long, closely-fitting coat, he walked atScanlon's side down the steps to the waiting car.

  "Perhaps," said the investigator, "it would have been a trifle better ifI had made this visit a day or two ago, as I had intended. But I had areason for not doing so." The door of the car closed upon them and asthey whirled away through the fine rain Ashton-Kirk went on: "Last nightI told you I was trying a little experiment. Well, to-day," and therewas a look of eagerness in the keen eyes, "I hope to get a result."

  "What sort of a result?" asked Scanlon.

  "Oh, that I don't know. Wait, and we shall see."