Continental Op Stories

together in this affair somehow, we knew⁠—so that left only Handerson to consider. You had told me he came to Sacramento sometime early this summer⁠—and the dates you got tonight show that he didn’t come until after Thornburgh had bought his house. All right! Now compare Handerson with the descriptions we got of Thornburgh.

“Both are about the same size and age, and with the same color hair. The differences are all things that can be manufactured⁠—clothes, a little sunburn, and a month’s growth of beard, along with a little acting, would do the trick. Tonight I went out to Tavender and took a look at the last batch of laundry, and there wasn’t any that didn’t fit the Coonses⁠—and none of the bills all the way back were large enough for Thornburgh to have been as careful about his clothes as we were told he was.”

“It must be great to be a detective!” McClump grinned as the police ambulance came up and began disgorging policemen. “I reckon somebody must have tipped Handerson off that I was asking about him this evening.” And then, regretfully: “So we ain’t going to hang them folks for murder after all.”

“No, but we oughtn’t have any trouble convicting them of arson plus conspiracy to defraud, and anything else that the Prosecuting Attorney can think up.”

Crooked Souls

Harvey Gatewood had issued orders that I was to be admitted as soon as I arrived, so it only took me a little less than fifteen minutes to thread my way past the doorkeepers, office boys, and secretaries who filled up most of the space between the Gatewood Lumber Corporation’s front door and the president’s private office. His office was large, all mahogany and bronze and green plush, with a mahogany desk as big as a bed in the center of the floor.

Gatewood, leaning across the desk, began to bark at me as soon as the obsequious clerk who had bowed me in bowed himself out.

“My daughter was kidnapped last night! I want the ⸻ that did it if it takes every cent I got!”

“Tell me about it,” I suggested, drawing up the chair that he hadn’t thought to offer me.

But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions, and so I wasted nearly an hour getting information that he could have given me in fifteen minutes.

He’s a big bruiser of a man, something over two hundred pounds of hard red flesh, and a czar from the top of his bullet head to the toes of his shoes that would have been at least number twelves if they hadn’t been made to measure.

He had made his several millions by sandbagging everybody that stood in his way, and the rage that he’s burning up with now doesn’t make him any easier to deal with.

His wicked jaw is sticking out like a knob of granite and his eyes are filmed with blood⁠—he’s in a lovely frame of mind. For a while it looks as if the Continental Detective Agency is going to lose a client; because I’ve made up my mind that he’s going to tell me all I want to know, or I’m going to chuck up the job. But finally I got the story out of him.

His daughter Audrey had left their house on Clay Street at about seven o’clock the preceding evening, telling her maid that she was going for a walk. She had not returned that night⁠—though Gatewood had not known that until after he had read the letter that came this morning.

The letter had been from someone who said that she had been kidnapped. It demanded fifty thousand dollars for her release; and instructed Gatewood to get the money ready in hundred dollar bills, so that there might be no delay when he is told in what manner it is to be paid over to his daughter’s captors. As proof that the demand was not a hoax, a lock of the girl’s hair, a ring she always wore, and a brief note from her, asking her father to comply with the demands, had been enclosed.

Gatewood had received the letter at his office, and had telephoned to his house immediately. He had been told that the girl’s bed had not been slept in the previous night, and that none of the servants had seen her since she started out for her walk. He had then notified the police, turning the letter over to them; and, a few minutes later, he had decided to employ private detectives also.

“Now,” he burst out, after I had wormed these things out of him, and he had told me that he knew nothing of his daughter’s associates or habits, “go ahead and do something! I’m not paying you to sit around and talk about it!”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Me? I’m going to put those ⸻ behind the bars if it takes every cent I’ve got in the world!”

“Sure! But first you can get that fifty thousand ready, so you can give it to them when they ask for it.”

He clicked his jaw shut and thrust his face into mine.

“I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life! And I’m too old to start now!” he said. “I’m going to call these people’s bluff!”

“That’s going to make it lovely for your daughter. But, aside from what it’ll do to her, it’s the wrong play. Fifty thousand isn’t a whole lot to you, and paying it over will give us two chances that we haven’t got now. One when the payment is made⁠—a chance to either nab whoever comes for it or get a line on them. And the other when your daughter is returned. No matter how careful they are it’s a cinch that she’ll be able to tell us something that will help us grab them.”

He shook his head angrily, and I was tired of arguing with him. So I left him, hoping that he’d see the wisdom of the course I had advised before