I went up to Polk Street and joined Dick and Bob. They told me that Clane had gone in apartment number 27, and that the directory in the vestibule showed this apartment was occupied by George Farr. I stuck around with the boys until about two o’clock, when I went home for some sleep.
At seven I was with them again, and was told that our man had not appeared yet. It was a little after eight when he came out and turned down Geary Street, with the boys trailing him, while I went into the apartment house for a talk with the manager. She told me that Farr had been living there for four or five months, lived alone, and was a photographer by trade, with a studio on Market Street.
I went up and rang his bell. He was a husky of thirty or thirty-two with bleary eyes that looked as if they hadn’t had much sleep that night. I didn’t waste any time with him.
“I’m from the Continental Detective Agency and I am interested in Joseph Clane. What do you know about him?”
He was wide awake now.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No,” sullenly.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
What can you do with a bird like that?
“Farr,” I said, “I want you to go down to headquarters with me.”
He moved like a streak and his sullen manner had me a little off my guard; but I turned my head in time to take the punch above my ear instead of on the chin. At that, it carried me off my feet and I wouldn’t have bet a nickel that my skull wasn’t dented; but luck was with me and I fell across the doorway, holding the door open, and managed to scramble up, stumble through some rooms, and catch one of his feet as it was going through the bathroom window to join its mate on the fire-escape. I got a split lip and a kicked shoulder in the scuffle, but he behaved after a while.
I didn’t stop to look at his stuff—that could be done more regularly later—but put him in a taxicab and took him to the Hall of Justice. I was afraid that if I waited too long Clane would take a run-out on me.
Clane’s mouth fell open when he saw Farr, but neither of them said anything.
I was feeling pretty chirp in spite of my bruises.
“Let’s get this bird’s fingerprints and get it over with,” I said to O’Hara.
Dean was not in.
“And keep an eye on Clane. I think maybe he’ll have another story to tell us in a few minutes.”
We got in the elevator and took our men up to the identification bureau, where we put Farr’s fingers on the pad. Phels—he is the department’s expert—took one look at the results and turned to me.
“Well, what of it?”
“What of what?” I asked.
“This isn’t the man who killed Henry Grover!”
Clane laughed, Farr laughed, O’Hara laughed, and Phels laughed. I didn’t! I stood there and pretended to be thinking, trying to get myself in hand.
“Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?” I blurted, my face a nice, rosy red.
You can tell how badly upset I was by that: it’s plain suicide to say a thing like that to a fingerprint expert!
Phels didn’t answer; just looked me up and down.
Clane laughed again, like a crow cawing, and turned his ugly face to me.
“Do you want to take my prints again, Mr. Slick Private Detective?”
“Yeah,” I said, “just that!”
I had to say something.
Clane held his hands out to Phels, who ignored them, speaking to me with heavy sarcasm.
“Better take them yourself this time, so you’ll be sure it’s been done right.”
I was mad clean through—of course it was my own fault—but I was pigheaded enough to go through with anything, particularly anything that would hurt somebody’s feelings; so I said:
“That’s not a bad idea!”
I walked over and took hold of one of Clane’s hands. I’d never taken a fingerprint before, but I had seen it done often enough to throw a bluff. I started to ink Clane’s fingers and found that I was holding them wrong—my own fingers were in the way.
Then I came back to earth. The balls of Clane’s fingers were too smooth—or rather, too slick—without the slight clinging feeling that belongs to flesh. I turned his hand over so fast that I nearly upset him and looked at the fingers. I don’t know what I had expected to find but I didn’t find anything—not anything that I could name.
“Phels,” I called, “look here!”
He forgot his injured feelings and bent to look at Clane’s hand.
“I’ll be—” he began, and then the two of us were busy for a few minutes taking Clane down and sitting on him, while O’Hara quieted Farr, who had also gone suddenly into action.
When things were peaceful again Phels examined Clane’s hands carefully, scratching the fingers with a fingernail.
He jumped up, leaving me to hold Clane, and paying no attention to my, “What is it?” got a cloth and some liquid, and washed the fingers thoroughly. We took his prints again. They matched the bloody ones taken from Grover’s house!
Then we all sat down and had a nice talk.
“I told you about the trouble Henny had with that fellow Waldeman,” Clane began, after he and Farr had decided to come clean: there was nothing else they could do. “And how he won out in the argument because Waldeman disappeared. Well, Henny done for him—shot him one night and buried him—and I saw it. Grover was one bad actor in them days, a tough hombre to tangle with, so I didn’t try to make nothing out of what I knew.
“But after he got older and richer he got soft—a lot of men go like that—and must have begun worrying over it; because when I ran into him in New
