“He came right back with me into the room. I stood in the door, and I guess the racket of us running upstairs must of woke Mrs. Garr because she came out into the hall yelling.
“‘What’s going on here?’ And she went into the room with the cop and slammed the door. That’s all I know.”
Another account was headed:
MRS. GARR WON’T TALK
Vice Palace Keeper Refuses to Comment
Another was headed:
CHIEF HARTIGAN CLOSETED WITH PARTY LEADERS
Another:
AUNT WAS FIRST TO SUSPECT HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN CASE
Another:
VICE LORDS OF CITY TREMBLE AS NET CLOSES
Another:
WILL PROMINENT MEN BE NAMED AS FREQUENTERS OF PALACE OF VICE?
A two-line streamer at the bottom of the page ran:
THE LIFE STORY OF ROSE LIBERRY FROM BABYHOOD TO HER APPALLING END IN A DEN OF VICE; STORY ON PAGE 2
My fingers ached. I’d thought of Lieutenant Strom’s request for headlines and first paragraphs as modest, but I’d discovered otherwise. My handwriting began to look as if I’d never decipher it. But I got everything on the page. I ran through the rest of the paper, too, gathering all the angles the Comet hadn’t found room for on page one. Then I turned back to page one to check for anything I’d missed.
The pictures.
I studied them.
Mr. Liberry and the governor, snapped together, the governor smiling genially, the father’s face deeply furrowed with tragedy. Another picture of Rose Liberry. A studio photograph of the mother, serene and happy; grim irony now. A snapshot of the aunt behind a flowering rosebush, another grim reminder of unharrowed days. A smiling picture of Chief Hartigan, “Chief Called to Questioning.” A picture of a young policeman, Patrolman Walters, “Called by Screaming Girl to Discover Scene of Tragedy in Vice Palace.”
My eyes slid over that last picture, and then, as if recalled by intuition, returned. Intent, now, I bent over the pictured face. Young. But add eighteen years to it. Add creases in the forehead, blur the clean chin line with fat. Noses don’t change much. Add a lost look to the eyes. Patrolman Walters.
No! Mr. Waller!
21
I WAS QUIVERING WITH excitement.
Mr. Waller! Mr. Waller! How sure could I be? No, I couldn’t be sure. If only Mr. Kistler were here! If only Lieutenant Strom were here!
I whirled on the librarian.
“Where can I find a phone? Don’t let anyone touch that book. It’s important. It’s important in a case of murder! Don’t let anyone come near it! Where’s the nearest phone?”
The librarian, who had backed into the nearest corner, pointed down the other side of the room, to a laden desk. I dashed at it.
“Police headquarters, please.” To the girl at the switchboard. “Lieutenant Strom, please . . . Yes, it’s important. The Garr case . . . Mrs. Dacres . . . Oh, Lieutenant Strom, I think I’ve found something!”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not even sure I’ve found anything. But I think so. And if it is so, it may be frightfully important. Can you come over?”
“Where?”
“The Comet library.”
“Five minutes.”
He hung up.
The librarian stayed in his corner; he was still there when Lieutenant Strom stalked in, the omnipresent Van in tow.
“Hello, Mrs. Dacres, let’s see what you’ve got.”
My shaking finger pointed out the picture. I didn’t say anything; if he didn’t get it by himself I was just all wet.
Lieutenant Strom bent over the picture. Then he straightened to stare at me.
“Waller, by God!”
I felt almost faint.
—
WHILE I WAS DRIVING to the station with Lieutenant Strom there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the case was settled.
Together we’d run quickly through the multitudinous publicity the Liberry case had had in the Comet through the rest of July, through August and September of 1919. The investigation of the police department. The volcanic cleaning out. The lurid details of daily life in Mrs. Garr’s Palace of Vice, at least forty percent of which was certainly fiction. The revulsion of the ministry. The shrieks to heaven of the women’s clubs. The beginnings of Mrs. Garr’s trial. The continuous attempts by Rose Liberry’s father to uncover evidence that his daughter had been forcibly held in Mrs. Garr’s house, that she was forced to suicide as her only escape. The success of Mrs. Garr’s attorneys in upholding Mrs. Garr’s contention that Rose Liberry had come to the house with a young man for a party, and that she had stayed because she enjoyed the excitement and did not want to go back to her parents.
Not even a suicide note had been found. Again and again, the Liberry attorneys had grilled the girl named Leah, Patrolman Walters, and Mrs. Garr. No suicide note.
Then the Comet headlines carried the news that Mrs. Garr had been sentenced to five years at Waterford.
From Vice Palace to Penitentiary—
Mrs. Garr’s Life at Waterford
The Liberry case, as far as the Comet was concerned, had been drained to its last drop.
It had been drained to its last drop for Lieutenant Strom, too. We left the library to the librarian. Van was dispatched to bring the Wallers in for questioning. The lieutenant let me wander restlessly around his office while he waited for them to come.
“Can you prove it—can you prove from this that they murdered Mrs. Garr?” I asked, with variations.
The lieutenant merely grunted. He was sitting quietly at his desk, gazing thoughtfully down at the pencil in his hands. He stayed that way until Van brought
