The man’s surprise was apparently real, as it may well have been.
Word for word, the sergeant repeated his statement.
“What for?”
I answered the man’s question in as few words as possible.
“You are under arrest for robbing Barnable’s jewellery store.”
The man protested somewhat truculently that his name was Brennan, that he was well-known in Oakland, that someone would pay for this insult, and so on. For a minute it seemed that force would be necessary to convey our prisoner to Barnable’s, and Sergeant Hooley had already taken a grip on the man’s wrist when Brennan finally submitted, agreeing to accompany us quietly.
Glenn’s face whitened and a pronounced tremor disturbed his legs as we brought Brennan into the jewellery store, where Mrs. Dolan and Messrs. Barnable, Julius, Knight, and Strong came eagerly to group themselves around us. The uniformed man the Sergeant had called Tim remained just within the street door.
“Suppose you make the speeches,” Sergeant Hooley said, offering me the centre of the stage.
“Is this your bandit, Mr. Barnable?” I began.
The jeweller’s brown eyes achieved astonishing width.
“No, Mr. Thin!”
I turned to the prisoner.
“Remove your hat and coat, if you please. Sergeant Hooley, have you the cap that the bandit dropped? Thank you, Sergeant Hooley.” To the prisoner, “Kindly put this cap on.”
“I’m damned if I will!” he roared at me.
Sergeant Hooley held a hand out toward me.
“Give it to me. Here, Strong, take a hold on this baby while I cap him.”
Brennan subsided. “All right! All right! I’ll put it on!”
The cap was patently too large for him, but, experimenting, I found it could be adjusted in such a manner that its lack of fit was not too conspicuous, while its size served to conceal his hair and alter the contours of his head.
“Now will you please,” I said, stepping back to look at him, “take out your teeth?”
This request precipitated an extraordinary amount of turmoil. The man Knight hurled himself on Detective Strong, while Glenn dashed toward the front door, and Brennan struck Sergeant Hooley viciously with his fist. Hastening to the front door to take the place of the policeman who had left it to struggle with Glenn, I saw that Mrs. Dolan had taken refuge in the corner, while Barnable and Julius avoided being drawn into the conflict only by exercising considerable agility.
Order was at length restored, with Detective Strong and the policeman handcuffing Knight and Glenn together, while Sergeant Hooley, sitting astride Brennan, waved aloft the false teeth he had taken from his mouth.
Beckoning to the policeman to resume his place at the door, I joined Sergeant Hooley, and we assisted Brennan to his feet, restoring the cap to his head. He presented a villainous appearance: his mouth, unfilled by teeth, sank in, thinning and aging his face, causing his nose to lengthen limply and flatly.
“Is this your baby?” Sergeant Hooley asked, shaking the prisoner at the jeweller.
“It is! It is! It’s the same fellow!” Triumph merged with puzzlement on the jeweller’s face. “Except he’s got no scar,” he added slowly.
“I think we shall find his scar in his pocket.”
We did – in the form of a brown-stained handkerchief still damp and smelling of alcohol. Besides the handkerchief, there were in his pockets a ring of keys, two cigars, some matches, a pocket-knife, $36, and a fountain pen.
The man submitted to our search, his face expressionless until Mr. Barnable exclaimed, “But the stones? Where are my stones?”
Brennan sneered nastily. “I hope you hold your breath till you find ‘em,” he said.
“Mr. Strong, will you kindly search the two men you have handcuffed together?” I requested.
He did so, finding, as I expected, nothing of importance on their persons.
“Thank you, Mr. Strong,” I said, crossing to the corner in which Mrs. Dolan was standing. “Will you please permit me to examine your shopping-bag?”
Mrs. Dolan’s humorous brown eyes went blank.
“Will you please permit me to examine your shopping-bag?” I repeated, extending a hand toward it.
She made a little smothered laughing sound in her throat, and handed me the bag, which I carried to a flat- topped showcase on the other side of the room. The bag’s contents were the celery and lettuce I have already mentioned, a package of sliced bacon, a box of soap chips, and a paper sack of spinach, among the green leaves of which glowed, when I emptied them out on the showcase, the hard crystal facets of unset diamonds. Less conspicuous among the leaves were some banknotes.
Mrs. Dolan was, I have said, a woman who impressed me as being capable, and that adjective seemed especially apt now: she behaved herself, I must say, in the manner of one who would be capable of anything. Fortunately, Detective Strong had followed her across the store; he was now in a position to seize her arms from behind, and thus incapacitate her, except vocally – a remaining freedom of which she availed herself to the utmost, indulging in a stream of vituperation which it is by no means necessary for me to repeat.
It was a few minutes past two o’clock when I returned to our offices.
“Well, what?” Papa ceased dictating his mail to Miss Queenan to challenge me. “I’ve been waiting for you to phone!”
“It was not necessary,” I said, not without some satisfaction. “The operation has been successfully concluded.”
“Cleaned up?”
“Yes, sir. The thieves, three men and a woman, are in the city prison, and the stolen property has been completely recovered. In the detective bureau we were able to identify two of the men, ‘Reader’ Keely, who seems to have been the principal, and a Harry McMeehan, who seems to be well-known to the police in the East. The other man and the woman, who gave their names as George Glenn and Mrs. Mary Dolan, will doubtless be identified later.”
Papa bit the end off a cigar and blew the end across the office.
“What do you think of our little sleuth, Florence?” he fairly beamed on her, for all the world as if I were a child of three who had done something precocious.
“Spiffy!” Miss Queenan replied. “I think we’ll do something with the lad yet.”
“Sit down, Robin, and tell us about it,” Papa invited. “The mail can wait.”
“The woman secured a position as manager of a small apartment house on Ellis Street,” I explained, though without sitting down. “She used that as reference to open an account with Barnable, buying a watch, for which she paid in small weekly instalments. Keely, whose teeth were no doubt drawn while he was serving his last sentence in Walla Walla, removed his false teeth, painted a scar on his cheek, put on an ill-fitting cap, and, threatening Barnable and his assistant with a pistol, took the unset stones and money that were in the safe.
“As he left the store he collided with Mrs. Dolan, dropping the plunder into a bag of spinach which, with other groceries, was in her shopping-bag. McMeehan, pretending to come to the woman’s assistance, handed Keely a hat and coat, and perhaps his false teeth and a handkerchief with which to wipe off the scar, and took Keely’s pistol.
“Keely, now scarless, and with his appearance altered by teeth and hat, hurried to a barber shop two doors away, while McMeehan, after firing a shot indoors to discourage curiosity on the part of Barnable, dropped the pistol beside the cap and pretended to chase the bandit up toward Powell Street. At Powell Street another accomplice was stationed to pretend he had seen the bandit drive away in an automobile. These three confederates attempted to mislead us further by adding fictitious details to Barnable’s description of the robber.”
“Neat!” Papa’s appreciation was, I need hardly point out, purely academic – a professional interest in the cunning the thieves had shown and not in any way an approval of their dishonest plan as a whole. “How’d you knock it off?”
“That man on the corner couldn’t have seen the scar unless the bandit had turned his head, which the man denied. McMeehan wore gloves to avoid leaving prints on the pistol when he fired it, and his hands are quite
