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LANAGAN


[Illustration: “TWO MORE SHOTS TORE THROUGH AND SPRAYED US WITH
SPLINTERS”]




  LANAGAN

  _AMATEUR DETECTIVE_

  BY
  EDWARD H. HURLBUT

  _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  FREDERIC DORR STEELE_

  New York
  STURGIS & WALTON
  COMPANY
  1913




  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
  STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

  Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1913




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                 PAGE

     I WHITHER THOU GOEST                  3

    II THE PATHS OF JUDGMENT              31

   III THE CONSPIRACY OF ONE              63

    IV WHOM THE GODS DESTROY              93

     V THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN        121

    VI WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH           151

   VII THE PENDELTON LEGACY              181

  VIII AT THE END OF THE LONG NIGHT      209

    IX THE DOMINANT STRAIN               235

     X OUT OF THE DEPTHS                 263




ILLUSTRATIONS

  FROM DRAWINGS BY
  FREDERICK DORR STEELE


  “Two more shots tore through, and sprayed
  us with splinters”                                      _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING PAGE

  “Then Lanagan took his leisurely turn, drawing up an
  easy chair”                                                         96

  “He lit a match”                                                   260

  “On the floor they placed the figure they bore, a stalwart
  figure of a man”                                                   280




LANAGAN

_AMATEUR DETECTIVE_




I

WHITHER THOU GOEST




I

WHITHER THOU GOEST


Jack Lanagan of the San Francisco _Enquirer_ was conceded to have
“arrived” as the premier police reporter of San Francisco. This honour
was his not solely through a series of brilliant newspaper feats in his
especial field, but as well by reason of an entente that permitted him
to call half the patrolmen on the force by their given names; enjoy the
confidences of detective sergeants, a close-mouthed brotherhood; dine
tête-à-tête in private at French restaurants with well-groomed police
captains on canvasback or quail out of season, and sit nonchalantly on
a corner of the chief’s desk and absent-mindedly smoke up the chief’s
two-bit cigars.

It was an intimacy that carried much of the lore of the force with it:
that vital knowledge not of books. Bill Dougherty on the “pawnbroker
detail” knew scarcely more “fences” than did Lanagan; Charley Hartley,
who handled the bunco detail, found himself nettled now and then when
Lanagan would pick him up casually at the ferry building and point out
some “worker” among the incoming rustics whom Hartley had not “made,”
and debonair Harry O’Brien, who spent his time among the banks, was
more than once rudely jarred when Lanagan would slip over on the front
page of the _Enquirer_ a defalcation that had been engaging O’Brien’s
attention for a week.

So it went with Lanagan; from the “bell hops” of big hotels, the bar
boys of clubs, down to the coldest-blooded unpenned felon of the
Barbary Coast who sold impossible whiskey with one hand and wielded a
blackjack with the other, the police sources were his.

Consequently Lanagan, having “arrived,” may be accorded a few more
liberties than the average reporter and permitted to spend a little
more time than they in poker in the back room at Fogarty’s, hard
by the Hall of Justice. Here, when times were dull, he could drift
occasionally to fraternise with a “shyster,” those buzzards of the
police courts and the city prisons who served Fogarty; or with one of
the police court prosecuting attorneys affiliated with the Fogarty
political machine, for Fogarty was popularly credited with having at
least two and possibly three of the police judges in his vest pocket.
Or he could rattle the dice with a police judge himself and get the
“inside” on a closed-door hearing or the latest complaint on the secret
file; and he could keep in touch with the “plain-clothes” men who
dropped in to pass the time of day with Fogarty; or with the patrolmen
coming on and off watch, who reported to Fogarty as regularly as they
donned and doffed their belts and helmets things they thought Fogarty
should know.

In this fashion does the police reporter best serve his paper; for
it is by such unholy contact that he keeps in touch with the circles
within circles of the police department of a great city. Some he
handles by fear, some he wins by favour, some he wheedles. In the end,
if he be a brother post-graduate, the grist of the headquarters’ mill
is his.

Of the shysters there is Horace Lathrop, for instance, who boasts a
Harvard degree when he is drunk--never when he is sober.

Horace is sitting with Lanagan at Fogarty’s rear room table, while
Lanagan sips moodily at his drink.

Larry the Rat, runner for the shysters, pasty of face, flat of forehead
as of chin, with an upper lip whose malformation suggests unpleasantly
the rodent whose name he bears, shuffles in and bespeaks Lathrop at
length. That worthy straightens up, glances at Lanagan, and then
remarks:

“Casey has just brought in a moll,” and arises, with elaborate
unconcern, to leave the room.

“Well,” drawled Lanagan, “what else?”

“Nothing. That’s all I know. Going to try to get the case now, whatever
it is.”

“Is that all you told him, Larry?” asked Lanagan. The Rat mumbled
unintelligibly and shuffled away.

“The Rat’s answered after his breed,” said Lanagan. “He says no, it is
not. Now, Horace--pardon me, Barrister Lathrop--kick through. You know
I’ve got to deliver a story to my paper to-day. Come on.”

Lanagan never wasted words with Lathrop. There were a few trivialities
that he “had” on that individual. But Lathrop balked.

“Look here, Lanagan, all I got’s her name and address. It isn’t square.
She may have a roll as long as your arm. You print this story, the
newspaper men go at her for interviews, tip her off about me, she gets
a regular lawyer, and where do I come off? You fellows are always
crabbing our game. I gave you that shoplifter story a week ago and you
played it for a column. You know you did, Jack; now you know you did.”

Lathrop had been whining. Now he stiffened.

“I ain’t going to,” defiantly; “I’m tired o’ being bullied by you. Aw,
say now, Jack, it’s a big case. And I got a wife and kids to look out
for”--which was a fact--“and here you come taking the bread and butter
out of their mouths. It ain’t square, Jack; you know it ain’t.”

All morals to all men, reflected Lanagan, and laughed lazily, pulling a
copy of the _Enquirer_ across the table.

“See her, Horace? Right on this page--page one, column two, right here,
with your name in big black-face letters--a little story of about
one-third of a column on that $750 touch-off on that Oroville deacon,
who went astray for the first time of his life and was pinched as a
drunk--to be fleeced by you and your precious band. There isn’t any
way of getting his money back, or proving a case against you or the two
cops who cut the roll with you and Fogarty. I didn’t print the story,
but I’ve got the facts pretty straight; and it goes right here--right
in this nice, conspicuous place for the grand jury to see and for that
wife and those ‘kids’ to see also, who, singular as it may sound,
actually don’t know what particular brand of a ‘lawyer’ you are. Get
all that?”

Lathrop “got” it.

Lanagan was then told that the detinue cells held a young woman of
remarkable beauty, Miss Grace Turner, taken from a family rooming house
on O’Farrell Street. Also that through Lathrop word of her arrest was
to be taken to her brother there. Lathrop--or Larry the Rat, both
being cogs in the same machine--had come by the information by the
underground wire that runs from every city prison to the bail-bond
operators and their shysters without.

Fogarty was the bail-bond chief, and possibly one of the plain-clothes
men who just now rested his elbow upon the bar may have passed that
name and address to Larry the Rat.

The “detinue” cases are those on the secret book at headquarters, that
stable police violation of Magna Charta; the detinue cases, therefore,
become the focus of the police reporter’s activity.

“And incidentally, Horace, you stay away from 1153A O’Farrell Street
until I get through,” was Lanagan’s final command.

“But what about Fogarty?” whined the shyster. “He must know by this
time I got the case. You know what he could do to me if he wanted to,
Jack.”

“Yes, and I know what I could do to him if I wanted to, and he knows
it, too,” snapped Lanagan. “Leave him to me.”

“I’m a friend of Miss Turner’s,” he said as the landlady opened the
door at 1153A O’Farrell. “I wish to speak with her brother.”

“He’ll be glad to see you. He has been worrying. You ain’t another one
of them detectives? I didn’t tell him, though. He was asleep and the
doctor said he shouldn’t be worried just now. It might be fatal. What
did they do with the poor, dear girl?”

“Merely holding her for a few hours. What was the trouble?”

“Giving a bad check to the druggist for medicine. She did the same
thing at the grocer’s. It’s a dirty trick, I say, to arrest the poor
thing. Why, the grocer’s bill was only a few dollars. They don’t eat
enough to keep my canary. The man eats mostly almonds. Something wrong
with his stomach, and that seems to be all he can eat. Funny, ain’t it?”

The garrulous woman led Lanagan to a doorway in the rear. He knocked
and, in response to a feeble voice, entered.

Propped up with two pillows was a young man whose wasted features were
bright with a hectic flush; whose arms, hanging loosely from his gown,
were shrunk to the bone and sinews. The eyes were grey, steady, and
assured; so much so that Lan