The Greatest Crime Novels of Frank L. Packard (14 Titles in One Edition). Frank L. Packard
matter, and underworld and police would join hands in the one cause that could ever be common to both, and fight as only two packs of wolves might fight for the prey that only one could have.
It was not a pleasant thought!
He withdrew his hands suddenly from his ragged pockets, and, stooping down, picked up a crumpled newspaper from the gutter, as the flaring red type of a headline caught his eye. He glanced at it, and pitched it away again almost immediately. He had been interested to know if it were a special edition announcing some new development in the case of one Connie Pfeffer, alias the Mole. It did not. It was just re-hash.
He smiled wryly. The Gray Seal, “that depraved and degenerate glutton who feasted and lived like some ghoul upon his foul notoriety, and who, with inhuman boastfulness, left his diamond-shaped gray seal upon the scene of every one of his fiendish crimes,” the usual stand-by of the sensational headliners, had of late been relegated to obscurity by the newspapers. It was a relief! For the time being the crime that held the public attention was that in which this Connie Pfeffer was involved, but this was more, as a matter of fact, because of the opportunity it afforded for a jeer at the police rather than on account of the actual crime itself. For two days the journals had been full of the Levenson Bank robbery, a private bank in the Wall Street district, where a customer, having just drawn out ten thousand dollars in twenty five-hundred-dollar bills, had been held up almost in front of the teller's wicket at the point of a revolver and relieved of his cash. Connie Pfeffer, alias the Mole, who had answered to the description of the robber, had been apprehended within an hour of the crime by the police, released again for lack of evidence against him—and then had promptly disappeared. New evidence establishing the fact that Connie Pfeffer was the man who had entered the bank had almost immediately come to light, but Connie Pfeffer was no longer to be found, and the police——
Jimmie Dale swung sharply around. Some one was plucking at his sleeve—a tattered and stoop-shouldered old man, who had a tray slung around his neck upon which was displayed a pitiful array of cheap collar buttons.
“Hello, Smarly!” The man spoke low, out of the corner of his mouth. “Say, Smarly, I wanter ask youse somethin'.”
For an instant Jimmie Dale surveyed the other. It was Pedler Joe, and Pedler Joe lived just around the corner from the Sanctuary and was therefore in the category of an old acquaintance and neighbour; but his, Jimmie Dale's, business to-night was at Hip Foo's, and he had no time to waste.
“Hello, Joe!” he returned a little ungraciously. “Didn't know you went in for night work. There's a gape-bus back there, and the bunch have gone into Charlie Wong's lay-out. If you stick around when they come you may get away with something.”
“I ain't out for business—not dat kind,” the man whispered—and still holding Jimmie Dale's coat sleeve, edged out to the curb and halted. “I'm lookin' for some one. Everybody says youse're on de level, Smarly. Youse bats around a lot in places dey won't let me into, so hand it to me straight. Have youse seen Connie anywhere, youse knows who I mean, de Mole?”
Jimmie Dale stared. It was rather curious, rather much of a coincidence! He had been thinking of Connie Pfeffer, alias the Mole, at the moment Pedler Joe had accosted him. And coincidences in the Bad Lands were not always—coincidences!
It was Smarlinghue of the underworld, not Jimmie Dale the millionaire clubman, who spoke.
“What's the lay?” His tones pointed the inquiry with almost exaggerated suspicion.
“Aw, it's straight!” the old man answered. “I'm askin' youse just dat. Have youse seen him, or heard anythin' about him?”
Jimmie Dale still parried the question.
“Sounds like you'd shoved your stake in with the bulls,” he scowled. “Did they give you a badge to pin inside your vest? What have you got to do with Connie?”
The old man's face was haggard; he evidently had not shaved for several days, and the short white bristles seemed to accentuate a general woe-begone aspect and feebleness that age and the thin, stooped shoulders already proclaimed loudly enough.
“I got a lot to do wid him,” the old man said hoarsely. “He's like my own kid, dat's wot he is. I ain't done much for him mabbe, but I done wot I could to keep him straight, an'——”
“You!” Jimmie Dale laughed outright. Pedler Joe's life history was written on the police blotters! The man had served at least a half dozen sentences in prison. True, Pedler Joe in his declining years—he must be verging on the seventies now—had, outwardly at least, reformed to the extent of earning his living as a legalised mendicant, as witness the collar buttons. But as a guardian and sponsor for young morals—Jimmie Dale, as Smarlinghue, grinned viciously. “Say, it's no wonder he pulled that bank job! He comes by it honestly! Say, what's the——”
Jimmie Dale's grin had died away. Something was wrong here; there was something deeper than appeared on the surface, something that he did not understand. The tears had come suddenly into the faded old eyes, and were trickling now down the wrinkled cheeks.
“Forget it, Joe!” Jimmie Dale laid his hand in quick sympathy on the other's shoulder. “I didn't mean to hand you nothing. Spill the story, Joe—only hurry, 'cause I got a date.”
“I picked him outer de gutter w'en he could hardly walk,” said Pedler Joe. “An' w'en I wasn't doin' spaces up de river, I kept my eye on him. Sounds like hell from an old lag, don't it? But it's true, Smarly, so help me Gawd, it's true! I wasn't runnin' straight myself, but wot chance I got I tried to show de kid my line wasn't any good. Only I was away a lot, an' I let him down, so it ain't all his fault. Dere wasn't no one to keep him from goin' wild w'en I was doin' time—see? He ain't lived wid me for years, but dat didn't keep him from comin' frequent to see me, I'll say dat for him. An' den dis bank job happened. If youse read de papers youse know he was pinched in my place dat afternoon. He blew in to get a little stake from me, an'——”
“From you!” Jimmie Dale interrupted. “I didn't know you had loose change to——”
“Some days,” said the old man simply, “I pick up more'n youse'd t'ink. But dat ain't nothin' to do wid it. Dere was always a few dollars for Connie w'en he was on his uppers. Well, youse know dey didn't have anythin' on him to hold him for de job, an' dey let him go.”
“And he beat it, and he ain't been seen since,” commented Jimmie Dale judicially in his rôle of Smarlinghue. “And now some one else comes along and swears too it was him at the bank. It's open and shut now that he pulled the job all right, and ducked with the cash. That's why they're laughing at the police. You're wasting your time looking for him. He's gone.”
“Yes,” said Pedler Joe; “he's gone—dat's wot's de matter.” He glanced furtively about him. “But he ain't gone de way youse t'ink. I don't say now he didn't pull de job, though I didn't t'ink so until last night; an' I was handin' de police straight goods w'en dey was puttin' me through down at de Chief's de afternoon dey put de nippers on Connie at my place. He's gone—but he ain't gone de way youse t'ink. Dere's somethin' else bein' pulled besides dat. Take a look at dis!”
Jimmie Dale leaned forward. Pedler Joe had loosened his collar. The man's neck and throat were a mass of ugly bruises, discolored, swollen, finger-printed in angry, purplish blotches.
“Good God!” muttered Jimmie Dale. “How'd you get that?”
“It was last night”—Pedler Joe again glanced furtively around him, as he rearranged his collar—“dey nearly bumped me off before dey was satisfied dat I didn't know any more'n wot I'd told de police. Dey wanted to know where de cash was, de ten t'ousand bucks dat Connie stole. Dat's wot dey did to me, an' dat's why I'm askin' youse if youse have seen or heard anythin' of Connie.”
Jimmie Dale's lips had tightened.
“You think,” he said slowly, “they had tried the same game with Connie, and that's why he's—disappeared? You mean you've doped it out that they hadn't been able to make him talk up to last night, and that they tried you then on a chance?”