All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A ‘THIEVES’ “How the dickens did you get®him there?’’ I asked, accepting one of his cigars. On his feet. assisted him.” “ They were the three men—” “T suppose so. They walked him out under the noses of Policemen Carey and Rafferty and brought him up to me. I didn’t know that anything had happened to you until I called the night-clerk at your hotel to see if you had reached home all right. He told me that a Detective Parks had said he had you in custody and had been seek- ing information about you. Then, of course, I understood that the motor- man had been playing escort to Rollins when he walked down Fifty-Fourth Street in front of you.” I sat down slowly. “Where were you?” “At home, but Crowley saw him, though he lost him afterward, and you found him in the last place in the world Crowley would have thought of look- ing for him. I knew then that to get you out of jail I'd either have to let Rollins go or arrange a lie to account for his disappearance. The lie was much easier.” The shadow of a smile came and went, and blowing a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling, he walked over to the window and looked down into the street, seeming to have for- gotten that he wanted to telephone. I eould not see how the lie had been at all easy. It seemed deuced risky to ime. “Do you know that Rollins went to Parks and told him that the leader of that choice company of yours was a Fifth Avenue millionaire? ” Campbell turned his head. “ How do you know that?” ‘Parks made a confidant of me before he found the pawn-tickets.” “T see. I knew Rollins rang up 3100 Spring from his apartment about a week ago and met Parks at Columbus Circle, but, of course, I could not learn what was said.” 65 Crabbe and Crowley COMEDY. 801 I stared at him and laughed fool- ishly, ** How on earth—” “Tt isn’t difficult. People who live in apartment houses sign a slip for every call, and the numberof the call is on the slip. Rollins hasn't the faint- est idea that any one in his domestic employ knows what 3100 Spring means, any more than he realizes that practically every movement he has made since you landed here has been watched. “That is why I went to the trouble of sending you over those fences. [ suspected that Rollins would fetch an escort. It isn’t every man who can purpose murder with the assistance of the police!” The audacity of the thing made me gasp. Had I been assassinated Rollins would actually have had the favorable testimony of the police upon his side. Campbell glanced out of the window again, and I took the opportunity to “think a little in an effort to get things straight. When he faced about and began pacing the floor restlessly I watched him for a minute, then asked: “You mean you have some one in Rollins’s apartment—”’ “ Margaret’s maid. I put her there some time ago with Margaret’s inno- cent cooperation, and it was she who helped me with the lie. She used to be a dresser in the same company as the Gobbler’s mother, and is the lady, if you will remember, who did not care so much for Smith's blood as she did for his money. So when I needed some one of the sort, her qualifications seemed to answer perfectly.” “Then she knows that Rollins is the Gobbler’s father.” “ Yes—and who I am, too. But there is no murder in her eye, and she is no friend of the police. She is making too much money very easily to wish to have the men who pay it—” “ Blackmail! ”’ ““No—no, of course not. But if Rollins were dead, and I were in jail, her job, which is paying her two sal- comicloooks.com