Flaming Hate

CHAPTER I. Violent Death

JIM MERKER, member of the city detective force, stretched himself in his chair so that he could rest his feet on the bench before him, and puffed at his freshly lighted cigar. He was the only man in the detectives' room at headquarters save the desk sergeant, who was busy with his reports.

“I said it,” Jim Merker grumbled. “A man of genius, such as your humble servant, is liable to go stale around this place. What have I been doing the past six weeks? Gathering reports from pawn shops and second-hand stores, investigating neighborhood rows, and pinching men for putting boxes on the sidewalks.”

“We can't have a murder sensation every week just to please you fly cops,” the sergeant observed.

“Tell me what's the use of being on the homicide squad then?” Merker demanded. “I might as well be pounding a beat.”

“Want to get your name in the papers?”

Jim Merker's feet hit the floor with a threatening thud, and the desk sergeant looked up quickly and grinned. He knew that he had touched the popular detective on a sore spot.

“I care a lot about getting my name in the papers, and you know it,” Jim Merker declared forcefully. “But I do like a tough case to work on. I like to make wild guesses and then find that they are correct. I like to have rogues try to fool me, and get the better of them. I like the game—confound it!”

“Be that as it may,” the desk sergeant observed, “seems to me we ought to be having a sensation of some sort.”

“It's long overdue,” Detective Jim Merker complained. “I'm getting rusty. If something doesn't happen before long I'll2”

He swung around in his chair and looked through the window at the street seething with humanity. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and it was a warm spring day.

“Can't even go to a baseball game and nab a pickpocket,” Merker said. “Season doesn't open for a week yet.”

“And when it does open you won't be so eager for cases to work on,” the knowing desk sergeant replied, grinning at the detective again.

A buzzer sounded, and the sergeant spoke into the telephone in front of him. He whirled around and faced Merker.

“Captain's office—you!” was all he said.

Merker groaned as he got out of his chair and adjusted his belt. Also, he made a wry face as he stalked toward the door.

“Lost kid, probably,” he remarked. “Or maybe the wife of some estimable citizen wants me to get a pet cat down out of a high tree. Homicide squad—huh!”

A moment later he stood beside his captain's desk and looked down at him expectantly.

“Dead man—shot—may be murder—possibly suicide—here's the address!”

As he took the little slip of paper hope flamed into Detective Merker's heart. The address, he found, was in a street in that section of the city where, it might be said, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat mingled. Anything was possible in that district of small shops with private apartments on the second and third floors. Merker did not hope that some person had met a violent death, but, if some person had, he was glad to be assigned to the case.

He hurried from headquarters, caught a car, and rode downtown. He had two squares to walk after he left the car, and he made them quickly. Half a block from the address he saw that a crowd had gathered. Merker thrust his way through it, to find a patrolman on guard before the entrance to a stairway.

“What is it?” Merker asked.

“Looks like homicide,” the patrolman answered, “I guess it is in your line, all right. Little apartment up one flight. I've kept the crowd out. Janitor found the body—here he is.”

“Who is it?” Merker asked the janitor.

“I'm not quite sure, sir. When he rented the apartment about a month ago he said that his name was Jones. He was middle-aged, and a distinguished-looking man, sir.”

“What happened?” Merker snappily questioned.

“I didn't hear any shot, sir, though I was sittin' here by the door, like I always do in the afternoons when the weather is nice. I just happened to go up and along the hall to get a broom out of my closet. The door of the apartment was half open, sir, and I glanced inside and saw a man on the floor. I went in, of course, thinking he might be sick, or somethin' like that. He was sprawled there dead, with a revolver on the floor beside him. I shut the door and hurried down the stairs, and the policeman was just passing along2”

“I hurried up and took a look and then telephoned headquarters,” the patrolman told Merker. “I've been keeping out the crowd since then.”

Merker nodded and started up the stairs. He didn't think much of the case so far. His experience told him that probably some man had been wrecked in business, had moved to this cheap apartment, had been unable to get upon his financial feet again, and had ended everything with a shot from a revolver.

He came to the top of the stairs and opened the door. An instant later he was in the room. He stood just inside the door and glanced around quickly.

The man was sprawled face downward in the middle of the room, not far from a table upon which there were books and documents. A revolver was on the rug beside him. There were two windows in the room, both closed. Another door opened into a bedroom, and Merker crossed and glanced into it. Two windows there—both closed and locked. Beyond was a tiny kitchenette, and a glance told the detective that it had not been used for some time. The bath opened off the bedroom, too, and had only one window, with a steel frame of bars across it.

Merker grunted and walked back to the body. He knelt beside it and turned it so that he could see the victim's face

“Gosh!” he grunted.

He sprang to his feet and, darting to the door, called down the stairs to the patrolman.

“Come up here! And tell those people to stay outside!”

The patrolman shouted the order and pounded up the stairs, to follow Merker into the room.

“Did you take a look at him?” Merker asked.

“Yes—to make sure that it was a coroner's case instead of a case for the hospital.”

“Know him?”

“No; but his features seemed familiar.”

“I should think so,” Merker grunted. “Our victim is Grover Gadlan, the famous criminal lawyer.”

“The one that—that2”

“The one who handled the famous Granburg murder case—yes! Send for the coroner and report to headquarters right away. I'll get busy here!”

The patrolman thumped down the stairs and hurried for a telephone. Detective Merker knelt beside the body again and made a better examination. He saw at a glance that a single bullet had been fired, and that it had pierced the heart. He picked up the revolver beside the body, handling it carefully, so as to keep from destroying any finger prints that might be upon it. Finally he put the weapon on the table room and began walking around the once more, inspecting everything with great care.

Grover Gadlan! Why had the famous criminal lawyer leased this small apartment in a poor section of the city when everybody knew that he had a gorgeous, large apartment far uptown? Grover Gadlan was a man of means. His home uptown was filled with expensive objects of art. And he did not have the name of being eccentric.

“May be a case of interest, after all,” Merker remarked.

Besides the law books and legal-looking documents, which were on the table, there were also some scraps of paper scattered about the floor, as though a collapsing man had pulled them from the table as he had fallen. Merker examined them briefly and found that they were filled with notations concerning some legal case. It appeared on the face of things that the attorney had been at work in this room, preparing for some trial.

Merker walked to the head of the stairs again and ordered the janitor to come up. He did not take him into the room, but questioned him at the end of the hall, where he was in a position to order any curious person away.

“See or hear anything unusual around here?” Merker asked. “Is this the only apartment?”

“There is a small one at the end of the hall, but it is not rented at present,” the janitor said.

“Locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Back entrance?”

“No, sir. This stairway is the only entrance to the second floor, and all the windows at the rear are barred.”

“Where were you?”

“Sitting down in the doorway, sir. I was smoking my2”

“When did you see this man who called himself Jones—see him last, I mean?”

“He came in about noon, sir. He spoke to me and hurried up to the apartment. He was peculiar in a way, sir; wasn't in the apartment much. Sometimes he wouldn't come near for three or four days, and I don't believe he slept here more than three or four times in the month. An old woman cleans the rooms, sir, and she was telling me the other day that it was an easy job.”

“Came in about noon, did he? Act peculiar?”

“No, sir, not more than usual.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why, sir, he always was peculiar, in a way. He seemed to be awfully serious-minded, like as if he had some trouble in his life. I—I used to think that he looked frightened. To-day he just nodded to me and went on up to his apartment.”

“You remained sitting at the door?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anybody else come in?” Detective Merker asked.

“One gentleman, sir.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was about a quarter after one o'clock, sir. In the first place, the tenant came down about twelve-thirty and went to the drug store on the corner. I saw him go in and come out again. He came right back and went up the stairs. Then, about a quarter after one, the other gentleman came. He had a little bag, like a doctor uses.”

“Walk in from the street?”

“No, sir. He drove up in a big roadster and left it at the curb.”

“Didn't happen to notice the number on the roadster, did you?”

“No, sir,” answered the janitor. “I didn't pay much attention. The gentleman went right past me and hurried up the stairs. He knocked on the door, and I heard the tenant call for him to come in.”

“Sure you heard him call?”

“Sure, sir.”

“Go on with your story,” Merker said. “And don't forget anything while you're telling it.”

“The gentleman was in there about fifteen minutes, sir—no longer. I thought that I heard high words once, but wasn't sure. Then the gentleman hurried down the stairs again. He seemed to be very angry. There was a terrible look in his face. He pushed people out of the way, got in the roadster and started the engine, and dashed down the street at an awful speed, sir.”

“And you remained right in the chair by the door?”

“I got up and walked out to the curb and looked after him, sir, and I think I talked for a minute or two to one of the men standing there. Then I came back and sat down. I was here until I went up to get the broom from the closet, and then I saw the tenant on the floor and found that he dead.”

“What sort of a gentleman was it that called on him—the one who carried a bag like a doctor's?” Merker asked.

“A middle-aged man, sir, very prosperous looking, I should say. He looked more like a doctor than anything else. He was dressed in a dark suit, wore a soft hat and black shoes. He had a mustache, sir, and his hair was just turning gray at the temples. That's about all that I noticed.”

“Well, that will do for the present,” Merker told him. “Go back to the door, and don't talk to any of that crowd.”

“I'll not, sir.”

Merker watched the janitor go back down the stairs, and then he entered the room of tragedy again. He walked over to the table and picked up the revolver, and once more he examined it.

The weapon was of standard pattern, except that the mountings were of silver. The barrel was of highly polished nickle, and not dark and dulled. It evidently was a weapon that had been made to order for presentation. On the barrel was engraved: “To R. S., M. D.”

“Um!” Detective Merker grunted. He wrapped the revolver carefully in a sheet of tissue paper he found on the table, and then in heavy wrapping paper, and slipped it into one of his pockets. Then he went to the door again and stood looking down the hall, awaiting the arrival of the coroner's assistant.

Merker guessed that the revolver was the property of a Doctor Richard Sloane. He knew that Sloane and Grover Gadlan were enemies. They had been enemies for years, and the Granburg murder case had been the culmination of their hatred. Sloane had been a witness for the prosecution, and his testimony had wrecked the defense that Gadlan, the famous criminal lawyer, had prepared. Gadlan had even attacked Sloane in open court, and had received a heavy fine for contempt.

“I'm not jumping to conclusions,” Merker told himself, “but it appears to me that Doctor Richard Sloane will be compelled to answer a few pointed questions before the day is much older. Have to go about it carefully and be sure of my ground, of course. Sloane is some big man—and so was Grover Gadlan!”

He turned and glanced at Gadlan's body again, noted the position it occupied, and gazed once more around the room to be sure that he had overlooked nothing. He examined the papers on the table, every scrap, but found nothing except notations such as a lawyer might make while preparing a case.

The great puzzle Merker faced at present was how Grover Gadlan happened to be here at all, and passing under the name of Jones. It was evident on the face of things that Gadlan did some work here, and did not maintain the apartment merely as a rendezvous of some sort.

Steps were heard on the stairs, and the coroner's assistant and a physician came up. Merker knew them both and waved a hand in greeting.

“A puzzle,” he announced, in a low voice. “I've had a patrolman report to headquarters, but haven't received any orders yet. The victim is a prominent man.”

The doctor and the coroner's assistant looked at the face of the dead man and gasped.

“Make your investigation and get the body away, and then I'll have a guard put over the 0the apartment,” Merker said. “There are some peculiar features about this case. Gadlan had been going under the name of Jones here; he leased the apartment and has been in it about a month. There are law books and papers, as though he had been working.”

“Murder of suicide?” the coroner's assistant asked.

“Haven't decided. Looks like murder.”

“Find the gun?”

“Got it in my pocket,” Merker answered, “I'll communicate with the coroner this evening about the inquest. I may need some time. The gun points to a clew, but you never can tell about such things.”

The physician concluded his examination and stepped back to them, polishing his spectacles.

“One shot, straight through the heart,” he reported. “Death was instantaneous.”

“Get the bullet at the undertaking establishment,” Merker instructed. “I'll telephone to learn its caliber, though I imagine that I know it.”

“I'll attend to it as soon as possible,” the physician said.

“And I'll have the body moved at once,” added the coroner's assistant.

“All right. As I go out I'll have a guard sent in.”

Merker met his captain and a policeman at the bottom of the stairs, and explained the case to them rapidly. The policeman was assigned to guard duty, and Merker and the captain scattered the crowd and walked down the street.

“Need any help?” the captain asked. As a usual thing, Merker had pretty much his own way in homicide cases. He seldom failed to solve a puzzling one.

“Not at present,” the detective replied.

“Got an idea?”

“Yes. Don't like to talk about it yet, though. I'll report later.”

“Take your time, Merker, and get to the bottom of it. Grover Gadlan had a lot of enemies, you know. He was a criminal lawyer, and he had a nasty tongue. I've heard men growling threats after he got through grilling them on cross-examination.”

“I know.”

“Or, it may have been some crook he has defended—a row over money matters. Go to it hard, Merker.”

The captain got into his automobile, which had been left at the nearest corner, and Merker walked on down the street. He walked for several blocks, thinking of the case, trying to plan so as to avoid mistakes that might come through haste.

Doctor Richard Sloane, he knew, was a prominent member of a certain exclusive club, and generally ate luncheon there. Merker directed his steps toward the club and presently came to it and entered.

Merker knew the clerk there well, and most of the employees. He made it his business to know such persons and to be on friendly terms with them. And so the clerk greeted him cordially, and willingly stepped aside when Merker indicated that he wished to hold a private conversation.

“Just checking up on something,” said Merker. He knew that the news of the tragedy had not reached the club yet. “I don't want you to say anything about our talk2”

“I'm wise, Merker.”

“Doctor Richard Sloane here for lunch to-day?”

“As usual,” said the clerk. “He generally comes in at a certain hour, sits at the same table, and leaves at the same time. That man runs by the clock and a schedule. Maybe that is one of the reasons for his success.”

“Possibly. Was he on time to-day?”

“Yes—got here about one o'clock.”

“What time did he leave?”

“Not as usual, Merker.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“He sat down and ordered his luncheon and began eating. I think he received a telephone call. I saw him go into the booth, and when he came out he called for his check, signed it, got his hat, and hurried out to his machine. I watched him through the window; saw him drive away.”

“What time?”

“About ten minutes after one, I think, He hadn't been in the club more than ten minutes altogether.”

Merker thought rapidly. He judged that a man in a hurry could drive a powerful roadster from the club to the place where Gadlan had met death in about ten minutes. The janitor had said the unknown man had arrived to visit Gadlan about a quarter after one; either the janitor or the clerk might have made a mistake of five minutes.

“Seen him since?” Merker asked.

“No, I haven't.”

“Can you find out for me whether he received a telephone call or went into the booth to call a number himself?”

“Easily,” the clerk said.

He turned back into the office and consulted the man at the switchboard and the captain of the bell boys. Almost immediately he was beside Merker again.

“He received a call from outside at three minutes after one,” the clerk reported. “He was paged, and the boy found him in the dining room. We can't tell where the call came from, of course.”

“Thanks for what you have told me,” Merker said.

“I trust that Doctor Richard Sloane hasn't been cutting up,” the clerk said, grinning. “He's rather sedate, you know.”

“Just what sort of a man is he?” the detective asked.

“Solid, respectable, serious-minded—that sort. Pillar of society, you know.”

“Quarrelsome?”

“Good heavens, no. He is heavy on the dignity stuff, but he's got a warm heart. I know of several little kindnesses he has done. He's got a beauty of a wife, a son about seventeen, and a girl a couple of years younger. Great doctor, too—dandy surgeon. The only fuss he ever had that I know of was with Grover Gadlan, the lawyer.”

“What was that?” Merker asked.

“I don't know how it started, but they always seemed to be enemies,” the clerk replied. “The board of directors warned Gadlan once that he would have to curb his animosity while in the club. He used to sneer and snarl every time he caught sight of the doctor. The other members were careful to keep from getting them at the same card table, and things like that.”

“I understand.”

“Then they had that trouble at the time of the Granburg murder trial. The doctor's testimony wrecked the lawyer's case, and as he left the stand Gadlan made a jump for him.”

“I saw that,” Merker replied. “Gadlan got fined for contempt.”

“Since then they've not even nodded to each other here at the club when they happened to meet. And I think Gadlan was afraid of the doctor, at that.”

“What makes you think so?”

“He was hinting around all the time that he was afraid he was going to be murdered some day. He didn't mention any names, but everybody knew he meant Doctor Sloane. He had an idea that he was being watched. He told a couple of members one day at luncheon that he had a private apartment somewhere in town, where he went to study tough cases; said sometimes he was afraid to stay in his rooms uptown, that he had a hunch trouble was coming.”

“Peculiar,” Merker remarked.

“They made fun of him, of course, but it seemed to be serious enough to him.”

“It was serious, all right,” Merker informed him. “You would learn it in a short time anyway, when the extras come out. Grover Gadlan was found dead about two o'clock, in a little apartment downtown. He was shot.”

“Good heavens!” the clerk gasped, his eyes bulging. “And—and you think that Doctor Sloane2”

“I'm not thinking aloud,” Detective Merker reminded him, speaking in a sharp voice. “And I'll thank you to forget our little conversation, except the part about Grover Gadlan being dead.”

“I—of course I'll forget it, Merker. I'm wise. Gadlan dead, eh? The best criminal lawyer in the State!”

“I guess he was, at that—and one of the best in the country,” Merker said. “Leaving the doctor out of it, did other men seem to like Gadlan?”

“Yes. He appeared to be very popular. Both Gadlan and Doctor Sloane were popular with the same men, and everybody thought it was a shame that they couldn't get along together. There must have been some ancient grudge.”

“Well, I can't spend. all my time with you,” said Merker. “Thanks for answering my questions—and remember to forget all about them. Now I'll get out and let you announce Gadlan's death to the men in the club. I can see that you're dying to do it.”

“Think of it! Gadlin—murdered!”

“Where did you learn that?”

“Why, you said2”

“I said that Gadlan had been found dead, and that he had been shot,” Merker told him sternly. “I did not say that he had been murdered, did I? You'd better not quote me at all.”

As the clerk hurried away to spread news of the tragedy through the club Detective Jim Merker went into one of the telephone booths and called police headquarters.

He asked that the finger-print expert be instructed to go to the mortuary and take the prints of Grover Gadlan's dead fingers. And then Merker left the club and hurried down the street, walked rapidly toward the building where Doctor Richard Sloane had his offices.

CHAPTER II. Doctor Sloane's Story

MERKER had a peculiar feeling about this case. It seemed too easy of solution. The revolver, if it was Doctor Sloane's, was a bit of damaging evidence. The old janitor could identify the man who had visited the apartment of Grover Gadlan and who later had rushed away as though frightened or horrified.

Sloane's quarrel with Gadlan was well known. Gadlan had been acting as though afraid for his life. The facts seemed to fit perfectly, and Merker did not like cases where the facts fitted too perfectly. Either this was one of those cases with a quick solution to be followed by admission and a plea of self-defense, or it would prove to be a stubborn case with new developments continually bothering the police and the prosecuting attorneys.

Jim Merker did not have the appearance of the conventional detective. He was a large man, and strong, but he did not possess the huge, flat feet plain-clothes men and police detectives are supposed to have. Merker looked like an ordinary, middle-aged business man of sound common sense and good judgment.

He went up in the elevator and got off at the proper floor, entered the reception room of the suite of Doctor Richard Sloane—and found himself alone. There were no patients waiting, no attendant was sitting at the desk in the corner, but voices came from the consultation room.

Jim Merker, hat in hand, walked slowly around the room as he waited for attention. On a table in one corner were half a dozen kodak snapshots of Doctor Richard Sloane, left there as though somebody had been looking at them and had tossed them aside carelessly. Merker glanced at them swiftly and selected one that showed the doctor, his hat on, standing at the curb beside his roadster. He slipped the picture into his pocket and walked the length of the room and sat down.

Presently a young woman attendant emerged from the consultation room, followed by a messenger boy who carried a small package, to whom the girl had been giving orders.

“You are to get the prescription filled, and then deliver it to that address, together with the other package,” she was saying now. “And please move with a certain amount of speed. There is a mighty sick woman waiting for that medicine.”

The boy grinned and made a quick exit to the corridor, and the young woman faced Merker haughtily, her eyebrows lifted, the expression on her face saying plainly that she felt her own importance at the present moment and doubted whether such a person as Jim Merker could have business in the office.

“You wished to see2” she asked, leaving a blank at the end of the sentence, her manner imperious.

“Doctor Sloane, please,” Merker replied, restraining a grin with great difficulty.

“The doctor isn't in.

“Be in soon?”

“No more to-day!”

“Um!” Jim Merker grunted. “I thought that his office hours were from two to five in the afternoon. That's what the sign on the door says.”

“The doctor is engaged elsewhere,” the young woman attendant declared. “If you'd like to make an appointment for to-morrow2”

Jim Merker suddenly became professional and exhibited his shield of authority.

“I don't want to bother the doctor—or you, young woman—unnecessarily,” he said blandly, “but it is imperative that I locate Doctor Sloane as soon as possible.”

“He went out to lunch at the usual time, and he has not returned,” the girl explained. “About half an hour ago I received a telephone message from him telling me to send a certain prescription to a patient by messenger. He said that he would not be in the office any more to-day. Possibly he has an emergency operation.”

“You don't know where he was when he telephoned?”

“He did not say,” the girl replied.

“Very well—and thank you,” Merker said. “I'll catch him somewhere later.”

Merker left the office and went down to the street again, engaged a taxicab, and returned to the scene of Grover Gadlan's death. The crowd was gone now; the momentary shock of violent death was over. Denizens of that section of the city had been jarred out of their personal ruts for an instant, but now they were back at work on the treadmill of life.

The patrolman was on guard in the apartment, and the ancient janitor sat before the doorway, puffing at his pipe and dreaming in the sun. The tragedy did not seem to have impressed him much. Jim Merker took the kodak picture out of his pocket and showed it to the old man.

“Know this fellow?' he asked.

The janitor adjusted his spectacles and gave the photograph a single glance.

“That's him!” he exclaimed, exhibiting some excitement. “That's the man as visited Mr. Jones a bit before I found the body on the floor of his room.”

“Sure of it?” Merker demanded.

“Yes, sir, I'm sure of it. Why, I'd know him among a thousand, sir! He has even got on the same kind of hat and clothes. That picture must have been taken quite recent, sir. It's him, all right.”

“Thanks,” Detective Merker said, returning the photograph to his pocket. “Anything new around here?”

“The police scattered the crowd, sir, and there's nothing new except that officer in the apartment upstairs. He's just sittin' there on guard and smokin' and tryin' to read a newspaper, and growlin' about bein' picked for the job.”

Detective Merker did not seek to prolong the conversation. The janitor had identified the photograph of Doctor Richard Sloane, and that was all that Jim Merker wished at the present time. He got into the taxicab again and gave the chauffeur an address that was only a block from Doctor Sloane's residence.

His destination reached, Merker paid the chauffeur and walked up the street slowly. Some distance from the house he stopped beside the stone fence around the property adjoining, made a pretense of lighting a cigar, and calmly observed the property of the man he suspected of slaying Grover Gadlan.