“You lie like a dog,” shouted Shanks furiously, rising from his chair with clenched fists. “Eaves — Eaves did this to get ‘e! Why do you leave Eaves out of this, you four-flusher? Why — ”
“For the reason,” pronounced Folwell coolly, “that Eaves would never have written a letter to one Nathan Shanks at 9.45 p.m. asking merely for such a trivial thing as the number of a certain stock certificate, when at seven-thirty the same evening he called by long distance and got a so-called party-to-party connection with one Nathan Shanks, 366 Eleventh Avenue, Gary, Indiana.” He pointed his finger directly at the rage-contorted face of Shanks. “Come, Shanks. Admit it. Eaves called you down to Chicago Monday night on the inter-urban electric road to order you to quit-claim on those 5,000 shares for a small sum, or else have them attached by law for his debt. He refused to extend the loan, and showed you that alleged confession of mine. And you wound up by killing him. As for those letters, Shanks, you wrote them — and you know you wrote them — to appear as legal evidence that he had extended that loan, and you incorporated my name and the facts of that confession paper into one of them to make certain of their authenticity. Shanks, you didn’t dare to give Jeng’s address in that first letter, other than ‘Hold till called for’ because there isn’t to-day, never was and never will be a John J. Jeng of New York City.” Folwell turned to McIlroy. “There’s your man all right, inspector. And there’s your full case against him. Now see if his finger-prints don’t correspond with fingerprint patterns you are sure to find on the framework of the machine, on the starting lever, on the winding key. Oh, you’ll find them. See if — ”
The sound of the door opening behind them broke his words. Into the opening came Delamater, piloting in front of him an old woman with mild grey eyes and a shawl over her head. She stopped dead a few feet from the threshold and into the mild grey eyes which Folwell was watching came a startling look of recognition. Her gaze was riveted in the direction of Shanks.
“Hit’s ‘im,” she cried suddenly, tremulously. “ ‘Im as wore the rynecoat. ‘Im yer was arskin’ about. There, sirs, ‘s ‘im as I was tellin’ you about, the werry syme bloke. ‘E crossed — ”
Crash!
Her words were drowned by the sound of glass shivering into a thousand fragments. A half-dozen heads, the attention of whose owners had been temporarily drawn to Apple Mary’s excited ejacualtions on her entrance, now turned as one toward the big window which led out on to the neighbouring roofs.
“Catch him!” shouted McIlroy, springing from his chair which went spinning from beneath him.
Shanks’s own chair was empty. Like a lightning flash he had crossed the room, leaped to the wooden table and with one powerful kick of his foot utterly demolished the huge pane of glass which separated him from the adjoining roof. Stooping, his head and broad shoulders were already through the opening. Five seconds more and he would have leaped to freedom. But too late. His legs were seized in a grip of steel almost at the same instant by Lyon, Delamater, and Kelsey, who dragged him back through the opening, hurled him down off the table and stood him up in the centre of the room where he swayed back and forth, a low, animal-like growl coming from his throat, his eyes snapping like fury, his yellow teeth gleaming under the defective lip that could not pronounce its labials.
McIlroy strode forward. He grasped Shanks’s hairy wrists in his own gnarled red hands. He fastened his gaze on the prisoner. “Shanks,” he demanded, “will your fingerprints come clean on every fingerprint we can get from those glazed keys and those polished levers of that Dictatograph?”
“No, da’n you, they won’t,” snarled the stocky man in the green cotton suit, his words tumbling pell-mell over each other. “I killed the dirty crook all right, and I’ll take ‘y chances with any jury in Cook County. I killed the fat grafter ‘ecause he was trying to attach those 5,000 shares I owned. Trying to shake down a fortune out of that Dictatograph, he was. Trying to do ‘e out of ‘y share of that invention of dear, dead Phineas, God rest his soul.” His voice broke into a snivelling, pious whine.
“I’m thinking,” said McIlroy grimly, “that the brother of poor dead Phineas who stole his invention for the princely sum of ten dollars is going to get a good long rest in Joliet penitentiary now, if he’s trusting to any Cook County jury and that line of sob stuff.” He released his grip and turned his eyes on young Parkley, whose pencil had been flying over his note-book. “Got Shanks’s words all down, boy? Good for you. Rest of you all heard them, eh? All right. Take him downstairs and lock him up. Thanks to Folwell here, the Eaves mystery is solved. Open the door and let the reporters in.”
Outside a whistle began to blow, marking the hour of five minutes to noon. It was taken up from every quarter. The roar of Chicago, London of the West, began to fall away as if by magic. And Folwell, his gaze fastened on the broad back of Shanks, who was being bundled unceremoniously through the door that led to the iron-barred cells below, realized for the first time that the Eaves mystery was indeed solved at last. But for him a more fascinating mystery was about to begin — the mystery of two souls, two personalities, that henceforth must live as one. And as some one flung open the outer doors and the hungry hoard of news-seekers, armed with their cameras and note-books, swarmed in, he drew his hat on his head and threaded his own way unnoticed through them all. For nine short blocks away, a girl with great dark eyes and ringlets of jet black hair was waiting at the grating of a tiny window on the fifth floor of the city hall And this, now, was the all-important thing!
THE END
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Find the Clock
The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri
The Washington Square Enigma
The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro
The Amazing Web
Sing Sing Nights
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Copyright © 1930 by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4571-5
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4571-9
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4421-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4421-7
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