Officer 666 Part 4

--Blessed if I know her any more than you. Wish I did, but whoever she is she's got to be pretty awful horrible nice.

--Have I been drinking? No; but you better have one ready for me. Seen any of the chaps at the club? What's that? You gave it a wide berth.

This is beginning to sound like a detective novel or a breach of promise case.

--You don't tell me. Really, I'd never looked at myself in that light before. Sure, I'm stuck on myself. Head over heels in love with myself. I'm a cla.s.sy little party, I am, and you better make the best of me while I'm here. Where am I going? Nowhere in particular. Just going to merge my individuality, bite a chunk out of an apple and get kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

--Now you're sure I'm piffled. No such luck. Trav--that is, Mr.

Smith--Mr. Thomas Smith! Shall I ask for Smith when I drop up at that little marble palace of yours? No. Oh, Bateato will be there if you happen to be delayed. How is the little son of Nippon? Oh, that's good. Five sharp. Tata, Smitty, old chap. By Jove, he's rung off with a curse----

CHAPTER VI.

OFFICER 666 ON PATROL.

Michael Phelan had been two years on the force and considered himself a very fly young man. He had lost something of his romantic outline during the six months he pounded the Third avenue pave past two breweries and four saloons to a block, and it was at his own request, made through his mother's second cousin, District Leader McNaught, that he had been provided with a saloonless beat on Fifth avenue.

A certain blue-eyed, raven-haired nursemaid, who fed a tiny millionaire with a solid gold spoon and trundled an imported perambulator along the east walk of Central Park, may have had something to do with Patrolman Phelan's choice of beat, but he failed to mention the fact to his mother. He laid it all on the breweries and the temptations they offered.

Humble as was Michael Phelan's station on the force, he was already famous from the wooded wastes of Staten Island to the wilds of the Bronx. Even the graven-featured chief inspector permitted himself to smile when the name of Michael Phelan was mentioned.

He was a fresh, rosy-cheeked, greener-than-gra.s.s probationary cop when fame came to him all in one clap and awoke a thunderous roll of laughter throughout the city.

It was his first detail on the lower east side in the precinct commanded from the Eldridge street station. The time was July and the day was a broiler. He was sitting in the reserve room playing dominoes with the doorman and mopping his forehead with a green bandana when the captain sent for him.

"Phelan," said the captain shortly, "there's a lady dead without a doctor at 311 Ess.e.x street, three flights up, rear. They've told the Coroner's Office, but all the Coroners are busy. The corpse is a lone widow lady with no kin, so you go up and take charge and wait for the Coroner."

Officer 666 tipped his cap with military salute and set out. Turning the corner into Ess.e.x street, he met plain-clothes man Tim Feeney, who stopped him and asked him where he was bound. Michael Phelan explained and then said:

"Tim, if you don't mind, will you give me a tip? What do I do when I get up to that flat, and how long will I have to wait?"

"You'll have to wait, Mike," replied Tim Feeney, "till the Coroner gets good and ready to come. When you get to the flat don't knock; walk right in. Then sit down by the bed and wait. Be sure you keep the door shut and let no soul in till the Coroner arrives."

"It'll be powerful hot and I'm peris.h.i.+ng o' thirst now," said Mike.

"Take off your coat," said Tim, "and send a kid for a can of beer.

When you hear the Coroner comin' slip the can under the bed."

Tim Feeney went on his way with his hand over his mouth.

Patrolman Phelan had missed the twinkle in Tim Feeney's eye and a few minutes later found him sitting beside a bed with his coat off and a foaming can on the floor by his chair. On his way up the steep, narrow staircases he had met a boy and sent him for the liquid refreshment.

He had instructed the lad where to deliver the beer and had gone quietly in to his unpleasant vigil.

The door he opened led directly into the bedroom. He had glanced once at the bed and then looked away with a shudder. Perspiration fairly cascaded down his flaming cheeks as he tiptoed to a chair and placed it beside the bed. He placed his chair at a slight angle away from the bed and then fixed his eyes on the opposite wall. When he heard the tread of the boy in the hall he made a p.u.s.s.y-footed dash for the door, took in the growler, shut the boy out and buried his face in the froth. He was in better heart, but still mighty uneasy when he wiped his mouth on the back of his fist.

Somewhere in the flat a clock ticked dismally. Through two small open windows puffed superheated gusts of air. The m.u.f.fled clamor of many voices in strange tongues sifted through the windows and walls, but served only to increase the awful stillness in the room. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Phelan stole a glance at the bed, then looked away while his heart stopped beating. There was a naked foot where he had seen only a sheet before.

"Mebbe the wind blew it off," he tried to tell himself, but something inside him rejected the explanation and he felt an icy finger drawn up and down his spine. Again he plunged his head into the capacious can and succeeded in reviving his heart action.

More minutes of dreadful suspense pa.s.sed. A leaden silence had filled the sweltering room. Even the voices of the tenements had died away to a funereal murmur. Battle as he did with all his will, Phelan's eyes were again drawn from their fixed gaze upon the wall, and what he saw this time induced a strangling sensation.

Three toes had distinctly wiggled.

He withdrew his eyes on the instant and his shaking hand reached down for the can. His fingers had barely touched it when an awful shriek rent the air. The shriek came from the bed, and it was followed by a second yell and then by a third.

Michael Phelan did not open the door as he pa.s.sed out. It was not a very strong door and it went down like cardboard before the impact.

The third shriek awoke the echoes just as Officer 666 was coasting down the stairs on the seat of his departmental trousers. His departmental coat and his departmental hat were in no way connected with his precipitate transit. A raging Polish woman brought these details of Michael's uniform to the Eldridge street station a little later. Likewise she prefered charges against Phelan that come under the heading of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."

It was a tremendous trial, in the course of which the Deputy Police Commissioner who sat in judgment barely missed having a serious stroke. It was adduced in evidence that Officer 666 had entered the wrong flat, the Coroner's case being one flight up.

But while the whole town rocked with laughter Michael Phelan failed to see the joke, and his hatred of Precinct Detective Tim Feeney never cooled. That he got off with a light sentence of one day's fine did not in the least improve his humor. He knew he was a marked man from that day, and it was all his mother could do to urge him to stay on the force.

In the course of time, however, the sting had worn off and the young patrolman learned to smile again. His hollow cheeks had filled out amazingly during the period of the brewery beat and on that late autumn day when he stepped into the pages of this narrative he looked mighty good, not only to the raven-haired Rosalind O'Neill but to a host of other pretty nursemaids who were wheeling their aristocratic little charges up and down The Avenue.

Nor was Michael Phelan at all unconscious of this as he sauntered along the broad pavement and gracefully twirled his baton. His chest jutted out like the breast of a pouter pigeon and he wore the solemnly self-conscious expression of a peac.o.c.k on parade.

When he came to the great white square mansion of Travers Gladwin, he paused and studied it shrewdly with his eye. It was one of the most important functions of his patrol to study the fronts of all unoccupied dwellings and see that every window was down and every door was closed. First he looked into the areaway of the Gladwin home and then his eye travelled up the wide bal.u.s.traded stoop to the ornamental bronze doors.

"What's this!" he gasped in astonishment. "Sure, I read in the papers on'y this morning that Travers Gladwin was in Agypt. 'Tis a bold thafe who'll go in the front door in broad day, so here's where Mary Phelan's son makes the grand pinch he's been dreamin' on this six months back and gets his picture in the papers."

CHAPTER VII.

THE LITTLE BROWN j.a.p.

Patrolman Phelan wrapped his sinewy fist about the handle of his club with a vicious grip as he proceeded cautiously up the steps. The heavy bronze door had been left ajar, and he squeezed through without opening it further, then paused in the vestibule and listened. What he heard seemed no more than the tread of a spider, and the thought rushed into his head:

"'Tis one of that felt-soled kind. 'Tis tip-toes for Phelan."

He had noted that even the inside door was open, and he swiftly divined from this that the thief had left it open for his own convenience or for some other purpose connected with the mysteries of burglar alarms. Inch by inch the policeman moved across the vestibule and wriggled through the door into the richly carpeted hallway.

It was with a distinct sense of relief that he felt his heavy boots sink noiselessly into the deep ply of a precious Daghestan rug. One of Phelan's boots had a bad creak in it, and he knew that the master crook who would attempt such a robbery as this would have an acute sense of hearing.

It was dark as a pocket down the stretch of the heavily curtained foyer, save for a meagre shaft of light that came through a slightly parted pair of portieres to the left and not a dozen feet from where he stood. He strained his ear toward this shaft of light until there came an unmistakable swish of sound, whereupon he moved forward in short, gliding steps.

When he reached the break in the portieres and looked in he was astonished to see a short little man with s.h.i.+ny black hair deftly removing the linen covers from chairs and tables and statuary. The little man had his back to Phelan as the policeman stepped inside, but he turned in a flash and confronted the intruder with the peculiar glazed grimness of the j.a.panese.

"Well, what matter?" ripped out the little j.a.p, without moving a muscle.

"That's what I come to find out," retorted Phelan, with accusing severity of tone.

"How you get in here?" retorted the j.a.p in the same sharp, emotionless tones.