Whispering Wires Part 21

"Pretty Poll!" he said.

The magpie darted about the cage like a shaft of blue light. It came to rest with its tail feathers thrust through the bars. It peered with beaded eyes at Drew who had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a bundle of papers and was sorting them.

"Get busy, Delaney, on this a.s.signment!" he said sharply. "Waste no time. Run up to Stockbridge's and get me plaster-paris casts of all the footprints you can find around that junction box. It's stopped snowing," he added, glancing out the window.

"All right, Chief."

"Wait a minute. Stop somewhere on your way up-town and find out the exact temperature changes last night. What I want you to get is a record of every quarter-hour, so as to show when the early, packed snow in Stockbridge's yard froze solid. The under crust!"

"I got that in my head, Chief! That's my idea, exactly. If a tall lad tapped in on the junction box early in the night his footprints will be frozen close to the ground. The whole surface is level now, but there ought to be ice-posts sticking up when I get done thawing."

"That's right! You'll probably find the trouble-hunter's and one other set of prints. The other set is our man's!"

"What size feet did the trouble-hunter have?"

"Small--about six!"

"All right, Chief, I'm off."

"Walt a minute." Drew studied a sheet of paper. "After you get the temperature data, Delaney," he said. "After you get that and the plaster casts of the footprints, go into the house and stay there.

Watch Miss Loris. Don't talk to Fosd.i.c.k's men. Tell her to be careful.

Tell her that she is in grave danger. Remember that the same man who threatened Stockbridge over the wire, also said he was going to get her. Remember that, Delaney!"

"Good-by!"

"Get a shave!" shot Drew out through the closing doorway.

"I'll do that little thing," came echoing back with a hearty chuckle.

"Now, Harrigan," Drew said, shuffling the slips of paper like a deck of cards. "Now, we're closing in on our man or men. See if you can find Frick at the prison. 'Phone from the booth!"

Harrigan was back within three minutes. He leaned over Drew.

"Frick was with the warden," he whispered tersely. "He was easy to get.

He says that Morphy has been trying to telephone----"

"What?"

"Tryin' to telephone, Chief----"

"What has he got to do with the telephone? What right has an inmate of a prison got to phone? Unless--unless the warden thought the case was justified--like in sickness or important business."

"Maybe the warden allowed him, Chief. I didn't ask Frick!"

"Get out there and ask him! Quick!"

Drew waited with every muscle taut. He drummed the table with impatient fingers. He thumbed the sheath of papers he had collected on the Stockbridge case. He wheeled in his chair and stared out through the frosted window with unseeing eyes. The vision came to him of a pompous old man in prison gray, strutting about the front office with silk socks and a Havana cigar. Drew had no sympathy with a certain kind of convict. The misguided safeblower or house prowler might be excused for a great many things. The pickpocket was a professional, who took his chances as they ran. The gentleman bank-wrecker, with his overextended tale of woe and his bid for the world's sympathies, was the one the detective detested with all his soul. Such men, he believed, were beyond the pale. They knew better. Morphy, for instance, had not only gotten away with much of widow's and orphan's money, but he had wrecked a score of homes and dragged down many with him at the final a.s.sizes.

"So he uses the phone!" Drew repeated like an indictment. "Well! Well!

Well!"

Harrigan stepped in through the door. Drew turned away from the window and stared at the a.s.sistant-manager. "What did you find?" he snapped.

"I found enough, Chief! Frick says that Morphy is the whole thing up there. They call him the 'a.s.sistant-Warden,' in jest. The Welfare League won't have anything to do with him. They got him down for a squealing 'rat.'"

"You can't fool the Gray Brotherhood," said Drew. "Their rooms are too close together. What about this telephoning? Who was it to?"

"A telephone booth in the Subway Station at Times Square!"

"Good G.o.d!"

"Frick says it was! He tried to listen but Morphy came out and looked around twice."

The detective rose from his chair and grasped Harrigan's narrow shoulders with fingers of steel.

"Get out there!" he ordered through line-drawn lips. "Get out there and phone from the soundproof booth. Ask my friend--the vice-president of the telephone company--to find out for us whether Morphy or anybody else in the prison telephoned at four minutes past twelve this morning.

Get that?"

"That was when Stockbridge was shot, wasn't it, Chief?"

"It was!" exclaimed Triggy Drew.

CHAPTER TEN

"A WOMAN CALLS"

The business of a modern detective agency is managed in much the same manner as a corporation or a large firm of corporation lawyers. Its tentacles, or operatives, are spread over the globe. Its news and a.s.signments come in via wire. Its telephone and telegraph bills amount to thousands of dollars every year. In no other way can satisfactory results be secured.

Drew had started his agency on a shoestring and ran it into a "tannery," in the parlance of the street. He had made many mistakes. He had once, to his knowledge, sent the wrong man to prison. This mistake had been so costly, he never spoke of it. It was soon after the conviction of the innocent man, that Drew gave up circ.u.mstantial evidence and got down to hard work, wherein the evidence acc.u.mulated was tempered with some degree of fact and common sense.

The first Stockbridge case had been in connection with an absconder.

This man, Drew brought back in person from Adelaide. The work so pleased the millionaire that when Morphy broke under the financial strain and robbed everybody, right and left, Drew was called in to bring the promoter to the bar of justice. It was a long fight, fraught with danger and disappointment. The courts dragged. War broke over the civilized world. Morphy fought fiercely--like a cornered hyena. He was sent away, after dragging down his confederates. He had sworn at the time of conviction that he would get Stockbridge if it took to the longest day of his life. Drew remembered this oath and promise as he waited for Harrigan to appear from the booth.

He turned to the magpie and the cage. He studied both with keen eyes which had been trained in the school of hard facts piled upon each other until they pointed a way. Stockbridge had owned the pet for many years. It was the one domestic trait in his make-up, save Loris. It would be a strange thing, Drew concluded, swinging toward the window, if Morphy and Morphy's confederates were to fall through a remembered couplet dropped by the magpie. It was in the order of events, however.

It was the bright, particular finger which pointed toward the prisoner at Sing Sing. Nothing would be more logical than for the bird to remember the millionaire's last words--or dying words. They would be shrieked aloud and unforgetable.

"More snow," said Drew to himself. "This is a white day if ever there was one. I wonder if Delaney got to the house in time?"

He turned as a "Buurrrr! Burrrr!" sounded at the ringing-box below the desk.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said sharply into the transmitter. "h.e.l.lo! Who's this?"

He waited as some out-of-town connection was made. A thin voice broke in from the silence. The voice rose in timber. "Oh, h.e.l.lo!" exclaimed the detective, recognizing Flynn, one of his operatives. "h.e.l.lo, Flynn," he said. "What's the weather like out at Morristown? Yes! ...

Yes! ... Oh, is that so.... What? ... Too bad! ... Well, you better come in.... Take the first train and jump on the job.... He's in Florida, eh? ... Well, that lets him out.... Good-by, Flynn!"