The Black Mask — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

The Triple Murder in Mulberry Bend 77 and uninteresting. He owned a little home in the far reaches of the Bronx; his wife was dead and his daughter— now about eighteen—kept house for hirn, All this was water on Gatty’s wheel. While Cass had been silent and color- less, the sergeant had always been gar- rulous and spectacular. Now he was playing true to form. Hardly a day passed without some new development _ from this energetic and ambitious offi- _-cer. He combed the underworld for suspects and dragged bloodied and di- _sheveled prisoners into Headquarters _ porch. for the line-up. He was always “fon the eve of an #mportant arrest.” The Commissioner looked with toler- ant, if skeptical eye, upon these activ- ities and with growing impatience at the lieutenant’s failure to produce re- sults, In the midst of all this a reporter journeyed to the Bronx with the dimly _ burning hope that he might be able “‘to smoke Cass out’’ right in his own home. He found the lieutenant in overalls, spading the garden, and young Miss Cass pruning the vines around the An ironic description of this bucolic scene was duly printed the next morning, coupled with the news of an- other “important arrest” by Sergeant Gatty. Then things began to happen around Headquarters. In a special order by the Commis- sioner, Lieutenant Cass was reduced to the rank of patrolman and assigned to duty in the Bronx—with a post at the Zoological Park, This play to the gallery met with instant applause. One smart paragrapher remarked that Cass would find congenial companionship among his simian brethren in the zoo, A few days later the promotion of Sergeant Gatty to the rank of lieutenant was announced. Molspini and a few other mysterious prisoners were transferred to the. de- tention house as material witnesses ‘and “the triple murder in Mulberry Bend” began to wear down in public interest. Cass accepted his reduction without protest. in the garden was the first one he had taken off in a month, but he did not urge the point. Instead, he left his measure for a new uniform and soon was pounding the pavement around the buffalo entrance of the Zoo. The larger measure of leisure he enjoyed in his humbler task was spent in the garden with his daughter. So things went on for another week. One morning, when “Silent” Cass was putting down his radishes, a bronzed young man swung from the rear plat- form of a trolley car directly in front of the house and walked briskly over to the fence. Cass looked up and nodded pleasantly. “Is this Lieutenant Cass?” asked the stranger abruptly. “Patrolman Cass,” dener, “T want to give myself up,” stranger. Cass made a trench with his stick and sowed a handful of seed. “Come in,” he said, standing erect and looking squarely at the newcomer. “What have you been up to?” “T’m the man who killed those three tats in Mulberry Bend,” explained the bronzed young man coolly. Cass bent down on one knee, made another shallow little trench’and sprin- kled it with seed. “Oh, yes, the Mulberry Bend case,” he said reflectively. “I’ve been expect- ing you.” B Turning to his daughter, he contin- ued: “You don’t mind leaving us alone for a few minutes, do you, Nellie?” The girl smiled at the stranger and walked to the ports corrected the gar- said the The day he had been: caught ©