Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 19, 1924 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

THE DECOY. cern, beginning as porter and rising by slow - stages to become young Keene’s chauffeur. _ In a moment of inspiration his employer made him a full fledged “ dick,” with badge, _ automatic and everything. It was Keene’s subtle habit to send him to the scene of some dastardly crime, there to become the glittering and obvious representative of the Sleepless One, to serve, in short, as a human anise bag, a red herring dragged across the trail. While the wily crooks, the local police and the public at large were dazed by this eye filling and completely satisfying figure, the real operatives, merging unobtrusively into the life of the community, and un- known to James Putter, who blissfully con- ceived himself to be working alone—as, in- deed, he was—did the dirty work and got their man, or woman. It was not desired—nor expected—that the gorgeous Putter should unearth a baf- fling clew, or recognize one if he stumbled upon it, or furnish a valuable suggestion, or _discover any evidence, or make an arrest. And his secret grief was this: that just as his subtle net was spread, the jaws of his trap about to close upon the unwitting vic- tim, some outsider crashed in and by bull luck hogged all the glory! Otherwise, he was a perfectly happy animal with an enor- mous appetite for victuals, human compan- ionship, admiration, and the translated works of Emile Gaboriau. He possessed a resounding terminology, and had a tenacious memory for everything he had read about detective methods. He worked, so he said, by inductive methods, He would not crudely state that he had ever outwitted a crook, made a monkey of him; rather, he phrased it that he had applied the reductio ad absurdum; and a physical encounter he termed the argumentum ad hominum. He was a good mixer, a free buyer of the usual thing in pre-Volstead days, and of what-have-you in these grayer times. He received a good salary and a liberal expense allowance, and earned them, though not in the ways he supposed. Big and hearty as he was, the truth would have prostrated him; but the barbed arrows of truth never penetrated his layers of thick, plump skin, nor could. Keene had often 067 warned his operatives not to kid James Put- ter too iar; but the warning was unneces- sary. His armor of bland, childlike, im- pregnable self-esteem sopped up compli- ments that would have roused the suspicions of a.deaf and dumb cretin. James Putter was immune. 7 Upon a certain drizzly summer afternoon he was expounding to one of the three great- est living authorities on safe workers, a few subtle points concerning the proper—or im- proper—use of the can opener by yeggs. While Putter was enlightening a pop eyed group of fellow sleuths as to certain. details that had been of some relevance when they were wearing rompers, Robert Keene was closeted with a worried looking man who had been delegated to enlist his services in a small city in central Massachusetts. “?S? this way, chief,” the visitor was say- ing, the while he wiped his negligible brow and prominent nose with a silk handker- chief the size of a bath mat. ‘“ This is the eighth break in less’n two weeks, in Mid- ville. All jewelry stores. There’s two guys in the team. One stays outside as a look- out, the other walks in and asks can he see a sparkler, or what will you. They always pick a time when they’s only one clerk on duty, and they’ve cleaned up big. Don’t seem to care a hang whether the streets are crowded or not. Last Wednesday they got to Hamilton for a tray of rings worth over two thousand dollars; and it was the noon hour, with half a dozen looking into the show window and a traffic cop not a hun- dred feet away. The local force ain’t doing a thing. Just making wise cracks about having a clew and an arrest to be pulled soon and that sort of bull. It’s got so we jewel merchants don’t dare to display noth- ing but junk. And every time a door slams or a flivver backfires, we jumps six feet. It’s fierce!” The chief nodded sympathetically. “Just whom do you represent?” he asked. ‘‘ What I mean is, have you really got together and arranged for a fund suffi- cient to finance this thing right? That’s really all there is to it, you know. The Keene Agency will guarantee to land these bandits or drive them out of town; but we must not be parsimonious. The crisis is too oO ; ' ue ’ eel cat hae eae GOmicvoOoks-co wh HADAS yy! ay WYN DEA) oe Ba Tes UE ae Not ee psi es a SL ANY 9 APART vy Lae tele ‘ pan ¢ : vi oe" Pay tas. J Pewee eet } oth tae Ph Ook aie 2 Mis Sat Aa z > z ‘ 4 a Pe z 3 %