So once again Darrell began on his strange story just as he had related it to Crosby, and jumping from strand to strand of an astonishing web with which he had literally lived, ate and slept for three days and nights, led his absorbed audience clear up through the steps of his unusual hunt to its climax, his discovery of the unknown point X followed by the unknown point Y. When he stopped, it was amid a tense silence, which was broken only by Feldock.
“Did I understand you to say, Darrell, that this fellow Catherwood Jarndyce is already speeding on his way to New York?”
“Yes — but I have already the details of my interview with him, and a photograph of him which will arrive in plenty of time for press.”
And now that Feldock had broken the silence, comments suddenly came fast and furious, two and three of the men talking at once. But suddenly Notman, looking at his watch, raised his hand. Conversation fell suddenly away.
“We’ll let all speculations go for the present,” was his dictum. He turned to Crosby. “Considering that this Von Tresseler is probably back of the walls of that old sanatorium which Darrell located, I think it’s up to us to strike and strike quick. Yes, the thing to do is to raid that place at once and put everybody we find in it under arrest. Then you boys will be nearer to having your story than if we waste time here discussing it.” He rose, and stepping to Crosby’s phone called a number. When he got it he spoke:
“Tom, this is Notman. Have an auto patrol made ready with twenty men, ready for a quick run. See that every man’s gun is working, and that everyone has extra ammunition. Have my own car brought up to the alley off the Call building, and also the flivver for the newspaper boys. Yes — this is exclusive on the Call. Let no other reporter in on it. All right. We’ll be downstairs in five minutes, and we’ll pick up the auto patrol as we pass headquarters.”
Notman hung up the receiver of the phone. He buttoned his coat together. He turned to Burns and Corrigan.
“Corrigan, you and Burns better handle the pinch on Maxwell and South Halsted — this Doctor Victor Flandrau. I’ll take the Lincoln Road end myself. Bring your man straight here to Mr. Crosby’s offices, and see that the official stenographer over at headquarters comes over here while you’re gone and waits for you.” He turned to Crosby. “Who do you want to send out to cover the news end of this arrest?”
Crosby turned to Feldock.
“Mr. Feldock, I’m going to have you go with Burns and Corrigan on the Flandrau arrest. This man will make a whale of an interview if he confesses, as well as solve a perplexing riddle. Shouldn’t be surprised if a little roughhouse develops.” He turned to Darrell.
“All right, Darrell. You’ve been over the road once; so I’ll send you with Inspector Notman to the old Flandrau sanatorium. Goff, get your camera and accompany Notman. You, too, Elkins, cover the Lincoln Road raid. Both of you will be under orders from Darrell to-night. Heyley, here’s the keys to Napoleon Foy’s laundry. I want pictures of the front and back of that laundry — also one of the old iron stove in which Darrell unearthed the taxi ticket which had been converted into a laundry ticket. Also a full close-up of the ticket, if you please, placed together, both face and back.” He turned to the other men.
“Rodson, you’ll have to be a camera man again for to-night. Get out the old graphlex. The Logan Boulevard house owned by John Cooper Jarndyce for you. Here’s the key. Pictures of that storeroom where he expected to hibernate — but unfortunately didn’t. Farley, Hunter — you two to old man Payne of Whitney, Payne & Company, attorneys, who manage the affairs of Edward Thurston Jarndyce, deceased. Get permission to enter that Jarndyce vault to-night, without divulging any more than you absolutely have to. Then to Greenwood Cemetery, both of you. Darrell seems to have found some way to get a peep in that place, but he doesn’t seem willing to explain. So you’ll have to take the long way ‘round. Don’t come back without a flash-light picture of the interior of that vault — also the actual coffin with the wax shell. Bring it straight to the office here. Don’t forget now — camera flash-light powders, and an old tarpaulin to cover up the coffin with. Go in the Call flivver. No taxis. All of you now, boys, get on the job. Let’s go.”
Hardly had Darrell, in company with Notman, Goff and Elkins reached the alley entrance of the Call, surmounted by its lone electric bulb, than Notman’s trim car shot up to the doorway, and they all piled in. From here they were shot swiftly by the sphinxlike driver to detective headquarters, where, in the alley by that ancient building, a blue auto patrol with lights shining was drawn up. Faces of a score of policemen were visible in the space back of the driver’s seat. A small runabout with a lone driver stood in back of the auto patrol. Notman leaned out. “Fall in back of the car, Tim,” he directed. And a second later a veritable procession of three vehicles, all unlike, were rolling out on the beginning of a strange journey.
Across the dark river they glided, the murky waters below carrying myriads of green and red reflections from lanterns on vessels moored to the docks, thence into a cheap rooming-house district, from which they soon emerged. It was slightly less than a half hour when they reached the end of the Lincoln Avenue car line, and now they bowled silently along Lincoln Road until finally at a sign from Darrell the machine came to a grating stop at the old signpost which marked the intersection with the narrow, rutty, rocky, impassable road on which lay the house with the brick wall. A fraction of a minute, and the two other vehicles drew up to a stop behind them.
“All out,” ordered Notman, while he clambered to the ground followed by the newspaper men.
With the completion of the exodus of grim-jawed, blue-clad figures, who drew up in a silent semi-circle about Notman, the inspector spoke.
“Now, men, we’re going to raid an old deserted sanatorium up this road about a quarter of a mile or more. There’s a wall around it; so there’s no excuse for anyone inside that wall to elude arrest. Carl von Tresseler, the murderer about whom all of you have read, is hiding in that place, and I want to say this now: If that man escapes over that wall into the darkness, every man jack of you takes a vacation of two months without pay. Remember that, please. You’re to take him, dead or alive — but you’re to take him!” He gazed about the semi-circle.
“Tooker, Brill, Douglas, McGuirk — you four take the rear of the place. Keep your guns drawn and drill the first head that appears above that wall. Penbroke, Fielding, Clarefield, O’Brien, you four to the east wall. Kann, Comer, Brennen, and Parks — you cover the west wall as you never covered anything in your life. The rest of us in front. I’ll make the arrest myself, aided by Clancy here and Mullins. Tim, you hold the auto patrol here. Same with you and my car, Dick; Peter, hold the flivver here to take any of these newspaper men back to their paper. All right. Let’s go.”
Off into the gloomy but smaller roadway the entire group tramped. Not a man spoke. Here and there a revolver was silently inspected, then thrust back into a pocket holster. The tramp of feet, with an occasional curse as an unfortunate policeman’s brogan collided with a huge bowlder, were the only sounds to be heard. Goff, with his camera, tramped along at one side of Notman, Elkins and Darrell at the other.
Presently they came in sight, visibly by the low moon in the sky, of the great, silent structure Darrell had described, surrounded by its ominous brick wall. Not a light was to be seen in the visible stories of the house. Rapidly now the men dispersed, the dark forms melting away into the shadows of the grove as by magic. Only the occasional breaking of a dead limb was heard, almost drowned in the chirp of thousands of crickets. Notman proceeded boldly up to the great sheet-iron doors, and after a pause as though to assure himself that every one of the raiding party was in place, pounded on it with a rock which he picked up at his feet. The newspaper men stood in silence next the gate. Notman stooped and peered through the keyhole of the gateway.
“There’s a couple of rooms down below that are lighted,” he announced. “In fact, I can make out a coal-oil lamp. But the light could never be seen
from the roadway.”
He pounded again with all his might. The newspaper men waited, shifting from one foot to the other. Suddenly there came the sound as of the rattle of keys, and a voice from the other side of the sheet-iron doors.
“W’at you-all wants out dar?” Darrell recognized the voice immediately as that of the Negro Hercules.
“Want you to open up this door and be quick about it,” shouted Notman. “This is Inspector Notman of the Chicago detective bureau. This entire house is surrounded. Any man attempting to escape will be instantly shot dead. Open up in the name of the law. We want that man you have hidden there.”
A pregnant silence followed. Then slowly, reluctantly, the sound of a key grating in the lock, the great iron doors swung open. The giant Negro with a lantern in his hand stood blinking there.
“Boss, Ah ain’ don nuffin’. Ah don’ wants to get shot. If’n you’s lookin’ fo’ de poor crazy gemmun, he’s in dar in de li’l’ room offen de fust flo’. Ah’s all alone heah, Ah tells you.”
Notman made a motion with his hand. Two of the officers in the roadway stepped to his side. The newspaper men fell in, and at once the group pursued their way, led by the Negro with his lantern, up the main steps of the old sanatorium which creaked and swayed under their combined weight, and up into a central hallway which was covered with dust. Notman’s brilliant electric bull’s-eye light shining down the hallway showed only a long passage, with hardwood floors which had not been waxed for decades, with tiny cubbyholes of rooms off either side, each room cut off, not by a wooden door, but by a hideous swinging screen whose powerful strands were a quarter of an inch thick. One look down that grim hallway was sufficient to mark the status of this old structure: one of the typical private hell holes of the sixties for the mentally deranged. Everywhere was rust, everywhere was dust, everywhere were cobwebs — and everywhere were evidences of days of cruel attendants and more cruel straight-jackets — of days of medical ignorance when psycho-analysis had not come to supersede the padded cell.
Down a little stairway the Negro conducted them, and into a large room fitted with an enormous ten-hole, wood-burning range, thick with rust. That it had once been a great kitchen used to prepare the meals for doctors, attendants, and patients, was evident; but now only a little three-hole, bright-red gasoline stove stood over in one corner, above it a small cabinet of dishes, and, strange to relate, a woman’s white cooking apron hanging from a rusty nail.
The Negro conducted them from this room down a dark little hall. A coal-oil lamp was turned low in an empty room, whose door was open; and Darrell, gazing in it as he passed, saw that it had been swept and scrubbed, that it was furnished with a mirror, a wash-stand, and two cots bearing clean sheets. A number of pink prints from the Police Gazette were fastened to the walls by pins, and a man’s clothing hung on nails on one wall. The plaster walls, however, were badly broken, in many places the lathing beneath showing up like skeleton ribs. The Negro reached up to a key which hung on a nail near the stout door of a room adjoining this occupied one, and inserting it in the keyhole swung open the portal.
The sight that greeted the little group of policemen and reporters was one that was to make in itself a powerful human-interest story, for the flash light of Goff’s camera, Goff himself standing upon a wooden box at the opposite side of the hall, revealed for the hundredth of a second as it flared into being at the instant the Negro swung open the door, a young man, seated on a rickety wooden cot provided with only a pair of faded cotton blankets, and with a cheap table near by.
The young man’s face was covered with a ten days’ or two weeks’ growth of beard. Reddish-brown beard it was, too. His tie was missing; likewise his collar. His once natty silk shirt was dirty from wiping his mouth upon it, and his eyes blinked at the lights. The coal-oil lamp, in the hands of one of the policemen, added its illumination almost immediately to the lantern held by the Negro, and within three seconds the young man was on his feet, pumping the hands of his rescuers.
“Jumping mackerel,” were his surprising words, uttered with a winning drawl. “It’s certainly about time you people got here. Where in the devil has that Chinaman been keeping himself, I’d like to know?”
Darrell stepped forward and spoke.
“You are Mr. John Cooper Jarndyce, of course. My name is Darrell — Jeffrey Darrell of the Call. This is Inspector Notman of Chicago detective headquarters. I’m sorry we didn’t get to you quicker.”
“Mighty glad to meet you, Jeffrey Darrell,” said the other. “And the same to you, Inspector.” He stretched himself. “Got everybody connected with this damnable conspiracy against me? Particularly that rascally cousin of mine — Catherwood Jarndyce?”
Darrell smiled.
“I’ll have to confess we haven’t — and I’m afraid we’ve got to ask you many questions at newspaper headquarters where we’re going to hold a quiz to-night.” He looked about him at the dilapidated room with its broken plaster and sparse furnishings. “A tough sort of a place to keep a man locked up in day and night,” he commented. “Who else besides this Negro here have been mixed up in this game?”
“A man and a woman,” said John Cooper Jarndyce promptly. “Haven’t you nabbed ‘em yet?”
The big Negro spoke up regretfully.
“Dey’s comin’ back in ‘bout a half-hour. Dey gone down to de ribber to stretch dere laigs. You jes’ hol’ dis here lantern, Mistah Policeman, an’ I go fotch ‘em both back.”
“Like hell you will!” snapped Notman. He turned to the man nearest him. “Mullins, get out in front, warn all the men along the front road to lie low in the weeds, and nab this woman and man the minute they appear. I guess we’ve got the gang — the working end of it — now.”
Darrell looked at his watch. Its hands pointed to a quarter after ten. The conviction was upon him that much in the way of explanation was to come from Doctor Victor Flandrau, and badly as he wanted to stay and see what might be a highly exciting termination to this raid he realized that if he was to marshal all the strands of this story into one big, coherent narrative for the public to read, he must delegate some of those strands to his helpers for the night. Reluctantly he turned to Notman.
“Well, Inspector, if I’m to handle this yarn the way I want to handle it, I’ll have to make a flying trip back to the Call now. I shan’t be able to see it out with the rest of you. But I suppose I’ll see you in Crosby’s office within an hour or so after I reach there.” He turned to John Cooper Jarndyce.
“Mr. Jarndyce, you’d better wash up and straighten yourself out a bit. Inspector Notman will bring you down to the Call offices, where we’ll attempt to get the ins and outs of this affair.” He turned to Goff. “Goff, get photographs of this whole place, entrance, hallway, the outer wall, the house itself, the roadway and also the intersection of that roadway with Lincoln Road. Better snap this Negro and Mr. Jarndyce, too, before they brush up to go to headquarters. I’m glad you got that flash light of the rescue just as we opened up. It’ll make a pippin of a picture.” He turned to Elkins.
“You, Elkins, dig around this place and get notes on everything that will be of interest. I’ll delegate you to write the full story of the raid, and this story will be run within my story, exactly as you write it. The entire yarn, as you know, goes into print under Feldock’s name; so I’m not taking any laurels away from you. Be on the roadway in case any dramatic roughhouse starts in on the capture of those two people. Get all you can — as quick as you can. Then return to the office and start in at once writing up the story of tonight’s work out here in the weeds.” Darrell looked uneasily at his watch again. “All right, gentlemen. I guess we’re all set. I’m going to fly. Minutes are getting precious now.”
And with a friendly, but businesslike nod to the unshaven young man who only ten minutes or less ago had been a prisoner in a mysterious swindling conspiracy, Darrell turned on his heel, hurried upstairs, passed out the main gate with a low greeting to the men who lay conce
aled in the shrubbery across the roadway, and turned up the road in the direction of the runabout which stood waiting in company with the patrol.
He reached it within ten minutes by pushing forward at a high speed, and gave his orders to the driver. “Call office — main entrance. Inspector Notman is staying back to land a couple more people.”
When he reached the Call office, he ran lightly up the steps and strode into the city room. A glance in the direction of Crosby’s office showed many shadows silhouetted on the glazed glass panels of the door. A boy with wizened face pressed a crumpled sheet of paper into Darrell’s hand. The reporter glanced downward. It was Benny Taylor — Benny Taylor of the patched coat and frayed knee pants. He made a brief inspection of the paper. Then he smiled.
“All right, Benny. Good for you, my boy.” And he turned to enter Crosby’s office.
But this progress toward that important destination was again delayed, this time by young Dunbar, the cub to whom he had entrusted a strange message to Benny Taylor from whom he had just received a reply in an equally strange manner. Young Dunbar waved a yellow envelope at him.
“Just a minute, Darrell,” he said. “Telegram for you. Personal. Came while you were gone. I signed for it.”
“Thanks,” was Darrell’s reply. He tore off the end of the envelope and glanced at the square yellow sheet within. Then without further ado he stuffed it into his pocket alongside the sheet handed him by Benny Taylor. Now he was free to complete his journey across the city room. At the door of Crosby’s office he tapped. “It’s Darrell,” he called.
A minute, then the door swung open. He entered. The door closed again behind him. Many extra chairs had been put in the room. Crosby’s desk had been drawn over to one side. From the open window which looked out upon the dark alley, clouds of cigar smoke were rolling. Two male stenographers, a strange one evidently from detective headquarters, and one belonging to the Call, held their open notebooks on their knees. Corrigan and Burns, each with a black cigar in his lips, and Feldock, smoking his inevitable pipe, all sat astraddle chairs, their elbows resting on the backs.
Find the Clock Page 23
