Partners Of The Night

Front matter

Chapters

I. The Frame-Up

II. A Holiday Enforced

I. The Frame-Up

I

First Deputy Police Commissioner Bradley, head of the Detective Bureau, was snapping directions across his fiat-topped desk to Lieutenant Detective Clifford in speech as terse and factual as a telegram. Until a year before Bradley had been an Inspector, the highest grade to which a policeman can rise from the ranks. But so effective had he been, and so promising for larger responsibilities, that the preceding Commissioner of Police had Secured for him a year's leave of absence and had appointed him to the position of First Deputy Commissioner, who in the New York Department must be a private citizen, and who is Chief of the Detective Bureau; and the present Commissioner had renewed his leave of absence and had continued him in this powerful position.

The famous "Chief" was short, but of a formidable breadth of shoulders, and had a dark clenched-fist variety of face pointed with small brilliant eyes. "Clean-up" Bradley he had been christened in his patrolman days in tribute to his courage and physical prowess; and "Clean-up" Bradley the news, papers still called him because of his spectacular sweeping from the streets of thugs and criminals. He had made live copy for the newspaper boys; he had grown to be the hero of almost every front-page criminal romance of the yellow papers, and New York, viewing him as he cleverly and masterfully conducted himself in these exciting histories, had come to rank him as the greatest chief of detectives that had ever protected its life and purse. Bradley and Clifford sat regarding each other without warmth, but with official courtesy. There were rumors about Headquarters that the spectacular chief and his young subordinate with the brilliant record--Lieutenant Clifford had fallen down badly in the last year, however--were hitting it off none too pleasantly together. But whatever they felt, both men were masters of the high art of masking sentiment and intention.

"That's all we know about the case," Commissioner Bradley chopped out in conclusion. "But it ought to be easy for you to grab the dip that collared Mrs. Fletcher's money."

"I'll do what I can," said Clifford.

"Remember, she's a society headliner. Gets all kinds of space in the papers. She's put up an awful holler here, and we've gotta make good with the new administration. Well, so-long."

"So-long, Chief."

Clifford, sea-bronzed, and looking much more a forceful young man of affairs than a police official, passed out into the corridor. Instantly several friends in plain clothes were upon him, asking when he had got back, and whether it had been raining in Lun'on, old chappie, doncherknow, and whether half a dozen husky New York coppers couldn't stop that little free-for-all over there-- this was in the early days of the Great War-- speaking a cockney dialect acquired in dead-head beats at variety theaters. During this ponderous facetiousness an erect gray-clad man, with face of Scotch-Irish leanness and immobility, came down the corridor and bowed slightly as he passed the detectives. All saluted, except Clifford.

"Who's he, Captain?" Clifford asked in a whisper from Captain Brown, with whom he had drawn to one side.

"Well, you certainly have been away!" exclaimed the gray-haired Brown. "that's the new Commish."

"What, is that Commissioner Thorne!"

Clifford, with quickened but concealed excitement, watched the head of the police department go down the granite steps of Headquarters and out into his waiting car. From the moment he had heard, while in Vienna, that a new Commissioner had taken office, he had pinned a doubting hope on Thorne. He had wondered if the new Commissioner was the sort who would help him in the vague, daring but determined enterprise he had been feverishly and secretly considering. No man lived for whose friendship and backing he was more eager. But his experience on the force had taught him to be cautious; cautious even of police offcials. He would not, dared not, trust Thorne until he knew the fiber of the man.

"What's the Commissioner like, Captain Brown?" he inquired.

"Search me," said Brown. "All the boys are up in the air about him. He may be a two-spot, or he may be the whole deck with both sleeves full o' trumps. But he ain't showed nothing yet. He leans a lot on Bradley." Captain Brown dropped his voice and gave a slow wink. "Bradley is still the big noise in the Department, and them that's wise is going to string along with him. You get me?"

Clifford nodded and went down the broad stairway into Lafayette Street. His watch showed quarter past one. He was already late for his lunch engagement with Stanley Tarleton, so after his six months' trailing over Europe at the city's expense he permitted himself the luxury of a taxicab at his own. As he thrummed toward the Astor, those daring thoughts and plans subsided that had possessed him while he had sat with Bradley and while he had gazed questioningly after Commissioner Thorne. He wondered, with a quickening of all his nerves, if he was about to meet that friendly, haughty, wittily loquacious, reticent young woman whose acquaintance he had made upon the Mauretania. For after having been tantalizingly evasive concerning her intended whereabouts, yesterday at the very moment of parting at the dock Miss Regan had smilingly tossed to him the information that she would be stopping at the Astor.

II

Seven years before, when big Bob Clifford had announced that he had joined the force, his Yale friends had come near gasping themselves into individual and collective spasms. Stanley Tarleton had expressed the general consternation: "Good God, Bob, who ever heard of a college man, and a Yale man at that, becoming an ordinary cop!" he had exploded. "You're a bull-necked, dough-brained idiot! Look here--what's the matter with business, or the professions?"

The ex-guard had smiled his humorously obstinate smile at Tarleton, who had graduated from the law school in Clifford's sophomore year.

"Nothing's the matter, nothing at all--except everything, as far as I'm concerned. I don't care for business. As for the professions, where the devil will yours truly dig up the money to keep himself in soup, collars and shoe-polish while he's getting a start? Just remember that I am the king of finance who collected the unwilling dollars that saw me through Yale."

"What's that got to do with it? You know there are a hundred men who'd be as proud as brass buttons to stake the man who won last year's Harvard game!"

"And after they had staked me--what then?" Clifford had glanced about Tarleton's perfectly appointed office. "it's over two years since you started in at law. On the level now, are you paying expenses?"

"No," the other had confessed.

"And neither would I. No, I don't want any man to stake me. I've two feet of my own--large feet--and I'm going to stand on them."

"But, man--there's no money in a police career!"

"Perhaps not," Clifford had cheerfully agreed. "But you're not clearing expenses. The average lawyer or doctor in this country makes less than a thousand a year. I'm starting out on eight hundred and get a neat little raise every year."

"Oh, the present may not be so bad," the exasperated Tarleton had conceded. "But what about the future?"

"Big!"

"Big?" had scoffed the lawyer.

"Yes, sir, big!" Clifford had flamed with sudden energy. "All you educated chaps make a rush for the soft-handed jobs--with the result that the soft-palm market is overstocked, that only a few are making a decent living, and even fewer have any chance to come out of the ruck and show at the front. How many of the high-brow lads have ever thought of the police department?--starting in at the bottom, I mean? Not one. I tell you," rising in his glowing earnestness, "the biggest chance in the world for a man with brains, educated brains, is on the force! I don't mean chance to make big money. I mean a chance to do worth-while work and make a name for himself!"

Tarleton had stared at his enthusiastic, determined face. "Well," he had growled, "go do as you damned please."

Clifford had smiled again. "that's exactly what I've already done."

III

Clifford and Tarleton sat at a corner table in the Astor, their first greetings over.

"On something new that's interesting, Bob?" inquired Tarleton.

"Bradley assigned me another 'lemon.'" Clifford had dropped the mask of composure he had worn at Headquarters, and his tone was bitter. "Mrs. Stuyvesant Fletcher runs into town from Newport last night, carrying a wrist-bag; in the bag is a purse containing close on a thousand in bills. When she gets home she has the bag all right, but in it no purse. This morning she gets the purse in the mail--empty."

"What're you going to do?"

"Do? What can I do?" demanded Clifford. "While the Chief was telling me of the case, I knew who'd turned the trick. At least I was almost certain--Slant-Face Regan, the smoothest pickpocket lifting leathers in New York. that's the way Slant-Face works."

"If you know, why don't you go out and arrest him?"

"What good 'll it do to arrest him? He got money, and money can't be identified unless it's marked, which this wasn't. Slant-Face would be turned out of court, and that would be just another public fall-down for Bob Clifford. No, the Chief knew it was a lemon when he handed it to me. He hasn't assigned me a live case in a year. Stanley, I haven't told you yet," Clifford went on in mounting exasperation, "but that Eddie Graney case that's kept me away six months, is the worst lemon in the crate. I hunt Graney all over Europe-- the very day England enters the war I find him sick in a London hospital--he dies on me there ten days ago--and all I lead back in triumph to Headquarters is a death certificate. The Chief gave me the assignment just to get me out of the way."

Tarleton opened his eyes wide. "To get you out of the way? Why, I thought everybody considered you the brainiest maxi in the department!"

"If I am, that's exactly why Bradley wants me where my brains will do no harm."

"I wish to God, Bob, you'd taken my advice and published your book about the police under your own name!"

"Yes," sneered Clifford, "and have got every man on the force down on me!"

Tarleton eyed him searchingly. "you're wearing an awful grouch, Bob. There's not a woman mixed in it, is there?"

"No," very shortly; but under his sea-tan Clifford flushed ever so slightly.

Tarleton was silent a moment; then he asked abruptly: " Met Commissioner Thorne yet?"

"No. Have barely seen him. The boys at Headquarters seem to think he's a dead one."

"Do they? Some men find out where they're at and what they've got to do before they begin to act. here's a tip, Bob. Thorne will bear watching." Another moment of silence. "By the way, I gave him a copy of your book and told him who wrote it."

"Why the devil did you do that?" cried Clifford in dismay. Then sharply: "You know the Commissioner?"

"A little," Tarleton said guardedly.

"Well," doggedly, "whatever he thinks, what I said is straight. The police department can be, and should be, and some day is going to be, one of the most valuable and humane of our institutions. What we've got to do is--"

"Throw on the brakes, old man. I've read it all in your book." Tarleton smiled. "As I was saying, Bob, you're awfully sore to-day for a great detective."

"Great detective!" exploded Clifford. "Close your trap, Stanley, or I'll be handing you one. Great detective! If you want to give up a dollar and a quarter you'll find him in a book. But elsewhere, not on your life!"

Tarleton merely smiled good-humoredly.

"Great detectives, in novels, or down at Headquarters, they're all bunk!" Clifford fumed on. "Take Bradley. If you believe what you read, Bradley's one whale of a detective. These miraculous cases of detection aren't miracles when you're behind the scenes. Most of the tricks are turned by 'stools'--crooks who give away their pals. Then the case is dressed up for the papers, showing the detective a super-bloodhound, super-scientist, super-toxicologist, super-psychologist and every other super-ologist thing that's happened along since Adam got cramps eating green apples. Of course the newspaper boys are wise, but they stand for it, grinning inside themselves, for those are the sort of fairy tales the dear public wants. God, but it gives me a mortal pain!"

"If it's so bad as that, why don't you quit the force?"

"Quit? Not on your life!"

"Well, go ahead then and get it off your chest."

"There's plenty to get off, all right!" Clifford, tight-mouthed by habit about his work, hesitated. But his long-gathering wrath and purpose were grown too strong for his habitual reticence. His voice lowered. "Let me tell you something, Stanley --and it's something I've been keeping strictly under my hat, waiting my time. The professional crooks could be almost cleaned out of New York if it wasn't for just one thing."

"And that?"

"The police."

"The police?"

"Yes, the police. They protect the crooks, get a share of the loot--are silent partners. They talk about cleaning up the city, but they don't want to clean up the city."

"Oh, see here, Bob!" protested Tarleton.

"I'm not talking of the rank and file," Clifford hastened to explain. "Most of the men are a clean, fine, honest bunch. I'm talking of a few-- of a hidden, rotten, powerful few in the very center of' things." He glanced about cautiously, leaned nearer and lowered his voice to a mere breath. "here's where I come to my great point. Want to know who's the biggest crook in New York?"

"Who?"

"His name is Bradley, and he happens to be Chief of Detectives."

Tarleton stared. Clifford's face had tightened; his narrowed eyes gleamed.

"Bradley's the crook I'm after. And, by God, Bradley's the crook I'm going to get!"

"Bradley--the detective of all detectives!" breathed Tarleton. He gazed at the young man, quivering with grim determination, who had declared war on the spectacular public hero. "Does --does Bradley know?"

"Can't say. But he knows I'm not his sort. that's why he's fed me lemons for a year."

"But, man alive--how does he work it?"

"I've only begun to find out, and yet it would take me a day to tell you what I know. He's working a dozen lines. Here's just one sample of how--"

Clifford's words snapped off; he stared beyond Stanley for a moment. "When did he come in?" he exclaimed in a quick whisper. "I say, Stanley, act as though nothing had happened, and in a Couple of minutes casually look around and notice at the third table directly behind you the man in gray-green tweed, with a gray-streaked Vandyke beard. You only get his profile."

Presently Tarleton swept the room, then turned back. "Well? "

"That's Joseph Russell."

"Which leaves me knowing as much as I did before."

"Naturally, since you are a civil lawyer. Mr. Joseph Russell, as far as culture and manners are concerned, would do honor to us as ambassador to London or Berlin. Incidentally he is the real head of a swindling, wire-tapping and gambling syndicate. And he's as safe as though he were incorporated under the laws of New York." "How's that?"

"Russell is the brains; he doesn't participate personally unless it's a big coup. But the chief point is that he is protected. He pays Bradley a regular retainer of $5,000 a month, and twenty-five per cent upon all big jobs he pulls off."

"How did you learn all this? "

"Not through any of your popular-fiction detective magic. One of my 'stools'--a new one--used to be in Russell's gang. He got sore at Russell and blew the thing off to me in a long session last night."

"If you can prove it, my God, what a sensation!" murmured Tarleton.

"It 'll shake the city, the whole country-- there's no doubt about that," said Clifford, seriously.

"But can you get the proof?"

"I've got to get it!"

"How do Russell and Bradley manage, their affairs?"

"Exactly how I don't know. That's one of the big things I'm going to find out. Bradley doesn't expect me to get anything on this Mrs. Fletcher thousand-dollar case, and I shan't try; but while I'm supposed to be running down the dip, I'm going to be looking into the private performances of Mr. Bradley."

"Luck to you, Bob. But if Bradley's half as clever as people say, look out."

"Oh, he's clever all right--none cleverer," Clifford conceded. "By the by," he added after a long puff at his cigar," that man with Russell, it's ten to one that Russell is stringing him along on some foxy scheme. Blackmore is his name; Colorado millionaire, and very easy; came over on the Mauretania with me, and was trimmed for twenty thousand by card sharps."

From time to time, as he had spoken, Clifford's eyes had slipped toward the curtained entrance from the lobby. He now stole another glance. He gave an inward start. In the doorway had appeared his ship acquaintance, Miss Regan, all in white, graceful, self-possessed. Would she see him?

But she gave no glance about the restaurant. Without hesitating, or waiting for the grand-ducal guidance of the headwaiter, she made the straight way among the tables of one who has a prearranged objective point. Where was she going, Clifford asked himself. Then his heart seemed to stop and turn cold. For with a little nod at the two, she had taken a seat at the table between Joseph Russell and the Colorado millionaire.

What in God's name was she doing with that pair? He recalled now, with sickening presentiment, how on shipboard she had adroitly evaded all his skilful attempts to draw her into talk about herself. Who was she, really?

Her chair faced him. Palpitantly he waited for her to glance in his direction. In a few moments she did so, and her dark face lighted with a smile. She spoke to Russell, who looked around, rose, and strode toward Clifford's table.

"How are you, Bob?" he said cordially, gripping Clifford's hand.

"Hello, Joe."

"I didn't know you were back. If you can excuse yourself for a minute, a couple of your friends would like to speak to you."

Leaving Tarleton bewildered by this easy familiarity between a crime-prince and a police official, Clifford was the next moment at Russell's table. Miss Regan's face showed a more frank liking than at any time since their friendship had been begun six days before by his seizing her gust-captured steamer rug.

"I had no idea you were a friend of Uncle Joe," she exclaimed. " You told me so little about yourself, you know."

"I followed your policy," he stammered. The millionaire he nodded to and forgot.

"It isn't wise to be too free about oneself with chance friends, is it?" His knowing her uncle seemed instantly to admit him within the reserve he had striven five intimate sea days to penetrate. "Won 't you join us for a little while?" He sat down.

"I suppose you are already on a new case?" remarked Joe Russell.

"A new case?" Miss Regan lifted her eyebrows. "So then--you are a doctor?"

"A doctor!" Joe Russell laughed. "Mr. Clifford is Lieutenant Detective Clifford, and he's the cleverest detective in these parts." There was very genuine admiration in Mr. Russell's voice.

"A detective!" Miss Regan's dark face, so openly cordial the moment before, became instantly cold and steely hard. Her black eyes held steadily upon him in an amazing hauteur and contempt. "So you are a detective." She turned away, reaching calmly for her soup spoon. "Lieutenant Detective Clifford," she remarked icily, "I believe your friend is waiting for you."

Clifford stumbled away, his mind flashing questions. What had been her past? What was she doing now? What was her active relationship to that magnate of protected crime, Joseph Russell? Was it her role to cross and recross on luxurious liners, bait to lure rich dupes into the net of Joe Russell?

As he let himself down into the. chair, Tarleton eyed him in searching amazement.

"So, after all, there is a woman!"

"Only a steamer acquaintance," Clifford tried to say calmly.

IV

"I'm going to watch that man Blackmore," Clifford remarked a little later. "he's in for a good trimming at the hands of Russell. I don't care much how hard Russell soaks him; his fortune's in mining property, and over three hundred men were killed in his mines last year, and it's been champagne and Europe for his. But his money may lead from Joe Russell to Bradley."

"Ah," breathed Tarleton, " and give you the evidence you want?"

Clifford nodded. "By the by, Tarleton, one or two of Bradley's men are always watching Russell when he has anything on, and they know me and my men. I ought to have some one to help me that they don't know. If you're not busy, could you lend me a hand during the next few days. Nothing very dirty--and I'll phone you when I want you."

"These are dull times with me. I'm as much a boob as the incomparable Dr. Watson, but I'm on."

For three days Clifford, keeping himself unseen, tailed Blackmore and Russell--frequently Miss Regan was with them--about the more showy hotels and restaurants of New York, where Russell entertained the Western millionaire with the select lavishness of the rich New Yorker who knows exactly where to find the best. On the third day Russell and Blackmore made the acquaintance of four plausible men, ostensibly strangers to Russell. Clifford had hourly been expecting confederates of Russell to come upon the stage. To him his part of the game was wearisomely old, though daily that game entrapped its scores of big and little victims.

Toward three in the afternoon of the fifth day he tailed the six men through the rain to an old brownstone house in the West Forties. Ten minutes later he and Tarleton, having arrived in a taxicab, and having gone up the steps shielded by raised umbrellas, and having paid a week's rent in advance, were the occupants of a front room in a furnished-room house directly across the way.

"See that man in a black suit," said Clifford, the man walking up and down the street?"

"Yes. Who is he?"

"Harrigan, one of Bradley's men. Perhaps he's planted here to collect Bradley's percentage when the trick is pulled. But there 'll be nothing doing to-day. they'll let Blackmore win, so that he'll plunge to-morrow."

Sure enough, shortly after five, Blackmore came out with Russell, both smiling with the good humor of chance's favorites. During the following twenty-four hours neither Clifford nor Tarleton left the house. The next afternoon Blackmore with the four men, Russell this time not with them, again entered the brownstone residence.

"To-day Blackmore will probably get his trimming," said Clifford.

At five Clifford and Tarleton saw Blackmore come out alone and go down the steps. His face was dour. At the foot of the steps they saw Officer Harrigan stop him, draw back his black coat and flash his shield, and converse with Blackmore for several minutes.

Then Harrigan went up the steps of the brownstone house with an air of determination.

"Come on!" said Clifford, and the two men hurried from the house.

At the corner, as though the meeting were entirely casual, Clifford intercepted his steamer acquaintance. "By the by, Mr. Blackmore," he remarked, when the greetings were over,"I've noticed some pretty shady characters playing with you during the last day or two, and I just saw Officer Harrigan speaking to you. Drop any money?"

"Fifty thousand."

"Pool room?"

"Yes. On the Louisville races."

"What did Harrigan say?"

"That I'd been trimmed by a bunch of wiretappers. He said he was going into the house to try to get my money back, and advised me to go straight down to Headquarters and report to his chief, Mr. Bradley."

"Better hurry if you want to catch him. Only don't mention that you met me. I'm supposed to be on another case and it'd put me in bad for the Chief to know I was here. So long."

Clifford moved to a private looking closed car standing at the curb. The nod he gave the chauffeur showed that it had been standing there with a purpose.

"Have a lot of motor trouble, Jack. Stall, except when I tell you to go. Get me?"

The chauffeur nodded, and the two slipped into the car. The chauffeur made show of having difficulty in starting his engine--the while Clifford kept his eyes upon the door of the brownstone front.

"What will Bradley do when Mr. Blackmore makes complaint?" inquired Tarleton.

"He'll send men down to raid the place. But within half an hour the gang will have the blackboards, telephones and telegraph instruments out of there; the wires, you know, just go into the wall and end there. Bradley's men will find an empty room. Harrigan will report that he was thrown out by the bunch, who all escaped. There 'll be no arrests and Blackmore will never see a cent of his fifty thousand."

Harrigan came out of the house they watched. "Follow that man in black," Clifford called sharply to the chauffeur.

The motor moved lamely toward Broadway. Here Harrigan caught a southbound car, and the automobile deftly followed it. At Fourteenth Street Harrigan left the car, walked eastward through the heterogeneous crowd and turned into a saloon.

"Go in after him, Tarleton; he knows me," breathed Clifford. "Don't appear to notice him, but see everything that he'does."

Tarleton got out. The automobile ran into Irving Place, where the chauffeur had to attend to its refractory engine, and Clifford screened himself by opening to its widest an evening paper and engrossing himself in the financial news. Thirty minutes later Tarleton was back in the car.

"Well?"

"Harrigan bought a couple of whiskies, talked with the barkeeper about the baseball scores which were coming in over the ticker, then carelessly pushed a sealed Manila envelope across to the barkeeper, saying, 'Just keep that for me, Bill, will you, till I ask you for it?' The barkeeper took the envelope, nodded and tossed it into the cash drawer."

"Twelve or thirteen thousand in that envelope, and nobody ever guessed it," commented Clifford. "Clever, doing such a thing before a crowd. What next?

"Harrigan went into a private booth in the saloon, telephoned, then went out and started west through Fourteenth Street."

"He telephoned to some one that the money was at the saloon. His job 's done."

Clifford stepped from the car, nodding a dismissal to the chauffeur. "Come on. We want to follow that envelope. You go back into the saloon and hang around and watch the barkeeper's cash drawer. Keep looking at the ticker; get your dinner at the saloon's grill. there's always a bunch of well-dressed sports in there, and you'll not be noticed."

Clifford himself went up into a little restaurant on the stoop floor of a house on the north side of the street. He commanded an elaborate, every-dish-cooked-to-order dinner, that would excuse his remaining there for two or three hours, and from his table at the curtained window he kept his eyes upon the saloon across the way. Who Would be the man? Bradley himself?

He had not the optimism of his earlier days in the service, but he exultantly felt that he was closing in upon Bradley. His way was not yet clear, but perhaps within a few hours, or a day, he might have the goods on Bradley, and the great Bradley might officially be no more! And then the cleanout the rebuilding!

He wished he knew what manner of man Commissioner Thorne was. And while he waited in tense expectancy, his mind flashed again and again to that beautiful, disdainful, enigmatic Mary Regan. Just what was she?

Night came elsewhere, but night never comes in that part of Fourteenth Street. The million lights of saloons, picture shows, museums of manufactured freaks, gave to the street a hectic imitation day, through which girls with cold prospecting eyes, and cadets, and gangsters, and gunmen, and flashy sports and honest working folk pursued variously their pleasure or their business.

Suddenly Clifford's frame tensed. Into the saloon had sauntered a gray-haired man in a straw hat--Captain Brown, who but a few days since had advised him to stick close to Bradley. Was Captain Brown in it? He was not conscious of thought or purpose, but his whole being gave a sudden leap as he recalled that night almost two years back when old Captain Brown had begged him for mercy.

Presently Tarleton emerged from the saloon and Clifford hurried from the little restaurant to meet him. Tarleton reported that the yellow envelope had been unobtrusively slipped to a gray-haired man in a straw hat.

Almost at once Captain Brown came out. The two shadowed him.

"I wonder where that envelope will go next," said Clifford.

It went to Captain Brown's house up in the Bronx. There it remained throughout the night, for Clifford, who watched the house alone, saw no one else enter and no one come out. The next morning Captain Brown, fresh shaven, and in citizen's clothes, went down into the financial district. Clifford tailed him from bank to bank. He glimpsed enough in one bank to inform him of what Brown was doing in all--changing the bills that had come as tribute from the fake pool-room into fresh bills of different denomination. Yet another precaution to cover up the trail; the identity of the money was being lost.