VI.DETECTIVE DOBBS.

ALLAN looked dazed when the superintendent had gone. They all looked dazed.

“I am wondering,” said Dr. Hartel, “whether Cheney was sent to do this by his father, or whether, knowing that his father was suspected, he did the thing on his own account.”

“But we don’t know that Cheney did it,” said Mrs. Hartel.

“True,” the Doctor replied, “but the chances are much that way. Allan,” the Doctor continued, “we had better go out and look over the place again.”

“A cat might have knocked them down,” suggested Mrs. Hartel, as they were leaving.

But there could be no suspicion of a cat. There were no broken fragments anywhere. The only negative in the rack was that of Artie on the wheel.

“And you found the door unlocked?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes,” Allan said confidently. “At first I didn’t think anything of it. But I remember distinctly now that I locked it, and I remember thinking that it was foolish to bother locking it.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It is too bad. I am sorry about Cheney.”

Before going back to the house Dr. Hartel made some suggestions as to the keeping of the chemicals, as to guarding the floor from drippings of the hypo, as to pouring from the bottles, as to keeping the place free from dust, and so on.

Father and son were seated talking over photographs and the fire and Cheney, when a sharp rap sounded on the door at the foot of the stairs.

“Come in!” called the Doctor from the top step.

A lank man with a bristling red mustache came up the steps.

“Is this Dr. Hartel?” asked the man.

“Yes,” replied the Doctor. “I do seem to be wasting a good deal of my time out here just now.”

“The chief sent me over,” said the man, “to see you about some pictures that were stolen.” As he reached the top step the man looked questioningly at Allan.

“This is my boy,” Dr. Hartel said. “He took the pictures—I mean that hemadethem,” laughed the Doctor. “You are Dobbs, are you not?”

“Yes,” said the man. “I wish you would tell me what you know about it.”

“Dr. Hartel made some suggestions.”

He was a ruddy-faced man. His mustache stood out like the hairs of a brush, and he had a little red scar over his right eye. When he smiled Allan liked him at once. Allan remembered that he often had seen him down by the railroad station.

They told the detective all they knew and he listened attentively. Then he looked about the rooms, and seemed much interested in everything he saw in the dark-room. He held up to the light the negative of Artie on the bicycle, and laughed over it.

“I have a kid about that size,” he said. “I wish you’d photograph him sometime.”

“I will,” said Allan.

“My boy Sporty,” said the detective, “is great. Why, sir,” said Dobbs to the Doctor, “that kid got a hold of my nippers the other day and got them on the necks of our cat and the cat next door. You never saw such a thing in your life. Scott! wasn’t there a row!”

At the thought of the handcuffed cats—that is to say, the neckcuffed cats—the Doctor and Allan joined in the detective’s jolly laugh.

Presently the Doctor, wishing to get back to the question of the plates, ventured to ask Dobbs what he thought about the situation.

“Oh,” said Dobbs, stooping to pick up a burnt match from the floor, “I guess Cheney did it; though his father didn’t have anything more to do with that fire than I had. Say,” continued Dobbs, turning to Allan, “how do you light your lamps here?” The room was lighted now by a small, ordinary lamp which Allan had borrowed from the kitchen.

“Why, with a match,” replied Allan.

“Will you let me see one of your matches?” asked Dobbs.

Allan took a match from the little tin safe he had tacked up beside the sink, and handed it to Dobbs. As he did so he noticed for the first time that Dobbs had a burnt match in his other hand.

“Then you don’t throw your burnt matches on the floor,” said Dobbs.

“No,” said Allan, perplexed at the statement, “I always put my burnt matches in here;” and the Doctor smiled as Allan indicated another tin box on the corner of the shelf. It was this sort of care of which he had sought to teach Allan the importance.

“I believe you,” said Dobbs, “for this isn’t your match.” Dobbs was holding up the burnt fragment he had picked from the floor.

The Doctor and Allan, coming closer, saw that the two matches certainly did not have the same sort of stem.

“Then that,” said the Doctor, pointing to the partly burnt match, “belonged to the thief, whoever he was.”

“Looks so,” said the detective, briefly, studying the matches, or seeming to. Then “Wait a moment,” he said, stepping across the room, and he picked up another fragment of a match. It was almost completely burnt, but the fragment showed that it had been of the same form as the first piece. “He lighted two matches, you see; this one burnt out on him before he found the plates. Then he struck this other one.”

Allan’s eyes stared. He never should have thought of these things.

“Oh, I wish you had been around to get a picture of those cats with the handcuffs on,” said Dobbs, as if that subject was much more interesting. Then heslipped the two fragments of matches into his vest pocket, and when he was going he said: “I don’t suppose we’ll get down to the fine points on this thing—what you want is to get the plates back if they haven’t been broken or thrown into the river. I’ll be around again in the morning.”

And Dobbs did come around in the morning. “You haven’t forgotten about Sporty, have you?” was the first thing he said to Allan. He seemed to have forgotten about the plates, but when he saw Dr. Hartel he remarked that he had been looking into the business.

“What beats me, Doctor,” he said, “is why the Cheneys should steal those pictures. If the factory people were right, and the fire did start on the east side of the wing, then Cheney couldn’t have anything to do with the fire. The factory people don’t think he did. It’s the fire marshal who’s raising the row. So you see that the pictures help Cheney as much as they help the factory people. If Cheney has stolen or smashed those plates,—I mean the father,—he has removed very good evidence, as I understand it, that he is innocent. I tell you he didn’t have anything to do with it. He was sore on the factory management, but he wouldn’t be such a fool. That fire started in the east of the wing, nowhere near the naphtha.”

“Then why should the boy have taken the plates?” demanded the Doctor.

“I can’t see,” replied Dobbs, “unless the father or the boy, or both, got it into their heads that these pictures might be used against Cheney in some way. It was a crazy notion.”

“Have you any further clews?” asked the Doctor.

“No, I can’t say I have. But I threw out a hintin the Cheney direction that may do some good. The old man is over at Westwall, but I saw the boy. The little rascal actually stumps me. I can’t tell whether he did it or not. But I left something there to soak through his thick young skull. It may work.”

Dobbs’s attention again turned to the camera. “I was saying, Doctor, that I wish your son would take my boy, Sporty.” A happy idea seemed to strike Dobbs. “I tell you what I’ll do!” he exclaimed. “If you’ll make a picture of Sporty, I’ll take you to New York with me to-day.”

“I’d like to go,” Allan admitted.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” said the Doctor.

“Is it a bargain?” asked Dobbs.

“Yes, it’s a bargain,” laughed Allan.

“You see,” said Dobbs, as they walked down toward his house a little later, “I’ve got to go down to New York anyhow, and you might as well run around with me. I dare say you’d like to see police headquarters, and some other places, anyway. There are lots of things to photograph down there.”

Dobbs lived in a little wooden cottage near the bank of the Hudson. It was painted a bright blue. Allan thought there was something peculiar about the house, and he became fixed in this opinion after seeing more of it. There was a stretch of tree-grown ground back of the house. In the front garden three stalks of corn and four sunflowers were ripening. In the hallway was a big iron dog, painted blue like the outside of the house—with some of the left-over paint, Allan guessed. In the back parlor were five canaries in cages, all singing in a great clatter of high notes; and a small, but very hoarse-voiced red and green parrot in the corner shouted, “Hello Central!” when he sawDobbs and Allan. Mrs. Dobbs, a fat little woman, sat sewing at a window, with a white cat in her lap.

“Where’s Sporty?” asked Dobbs.

“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Dobbs. “He bothered me to let him paddle, so I put on his trunks and turned him loose.”

“Probably he’s drowned then,” said Dobbs.

But Mrs. Dobbs only laughed softly, and went on with her sewing.

“‘Must I put on my Sunday clothes?’”

Allan and the detective found Sporty down at a little inlet of the river near the house. He wore red-striped bathing trunks, and was sailing a boat, which he pushed into her proper course with a long stick.

“Say, Pop,” Sporty called out, when he saw his father, “I wish you’d buy me a steamboat.” Then Sporty noticed Allan and the camera, and looked curiously at the black box.

“Sporty,” said Dobbs, “you’re going to have your picture taken.”

“Am I?” Sporty peered again at Allan. “Must I put on my Sunday clothes?”

“No, Sporty,” said the detective, “no clothes will do. You’re just right.”

“You mean this way?” Sporty asked.

“Bathing tights are very becoming to your style of beauty, Sporty,” the detective went on with hispleasant grin. “Come over here,” and Sporty’s shining legs timidly carried him to where his father waited. “I want you with your arms folded, Sporty—you know,” and Dobbs struck an attitude to show what he meant. “There! that’s it!” cried the detective, when Sporty had folded his arms. “Now, don’t look so savage. I want you to look as innocent as if the judge was asking you if you had ever been convicted before.”

Allan adjusted the camera and pressed the trigger.

“Is it took yet?” asked Sporty.

“Yes,” said Allan.

“That was great!” exclaimed Dobbs. But Allan thought Sporty had not looked very happy. “We’ll have to take him again some time when he’s in the humor,” Allan suggested, “or when he isn’t looking.”

“That’s so,” Dobbs said; “good idea—when he doesn’t know it.” He looked after Sporty as the boy went back to his boat, which had drifted far out of her course. “I tell you, he’s one of the greatest boys you ever saw. He’s simply wonderful. You ought to see him do the cart-wheel. When can I see that picture?”

“Probably I’ll develop it to-night and you can see a proof to-morrow.”

“Good! Are you ready to go to New York?”

“Could you wait until I changed this plate? I want to take the full plate-holders with me.”

“Sure,” returned Dobbs; “why not take a lot more. You could change them somewhere—I can fix that.”

Acting on this suggestion Allan carried in the pocket of his jacket an extra package of plates when he met Dobbs at the station fifteen minutes later.

“Got all your ammunition?” Dobbs asked. “There’s big game in New York; you want to be loaded for bear.”

Allan had not been to New York for several months, and now that he had his camera with him the prospect of so many interesting subjects for pictures filled him with a pleasant excitement. It was a bright day, and as he looked out across the glistening Hudson he made up his mind to “do” the Palisades sometime. He remembered a cat-boat cruise he had taken with the McConnell boys, how they almost had been wrecked near Fort Lee. Yes, he thought a cat-boat and a camera would make a good combination. He already found himself planning certain pictures at the base of the cliffs and from the crags overhead.

“The long arch of Washington Bridge.”

There were many scenes along the Harlem that attracted Allan—the long arch of WashingtonBridge, the varied craft of the river, the loops of the elevated roads; and when they were in Manhattan, there were funny little remnants of the squatter settlement that seemed made—or at least left—to be photographed.

“Now, you understand,” said Dobbs, “that I’m in no hurry. You can go anywhere you want to and I’ll trot around with you. I want to see how you do it—I’m going to get one of those things myself one of these days.”

“You can’t learn much from the wayIdo it,” said Allan. “I’m only a beginner.”

“It seems to me,” pursued Dobbs, “that we might do a little of the Bowery and around the Pell Street way—in the Chinese quarter and so on. Oh, I suppose you could put in a week here—slumming with a camera, how would that go?—unless you don’t like slums. First, I’ve got to run in and see one of the Central Office men at headquarters.”

And so they went over to Mulberry from the “L” road, and Allan was so much interested in being at police headquarters that he thought no more about the camera until Dobbs was ready to go.

“Suppose we go and look at the Rogue’s Gallery,” suggested Dobbs, and he led the way into one of the rooms opening off the main hall. “There’s a collection of photographs for you!” exclaimed Dobbs, turning the doors of a curious cabinet like a vast wooden book.

Allan stared in amazement at the countless faces that stared out of this curious collection. Something in the style of these faces made Allan feel sad. Yet the faces were not all evil-looking faces by any means. Perhaps it was because they were not thatAllan felt awkward and grieved as he looked at them. There were handsome faces of both men and women, some of them very young—mere boys and girls, sometimes—and the well-dressed and the ragged were shoulder to shoulder. One face, that of a boy who appeared to be of about Allan’s age, held Allan’s attention until Dobbs asked if he knew the face.

“‘Young America and Young Italy.’”

“No,” said Allan. He had been thinking how clear-eyed and manly the boy looked. He wondered what trouble the boy had fallen into, and if the boy’s mother thought he was guilty.

“Well,” said Allan, a lump in his throat, “I don’t believe they are all rogues. I believe there were some mistakes—that some of them were innocent.”

“Maybe,” said Dobbs. “Maybe there are fellows there who don’t belong there. And there are a great many folks who belong there who are not there.”

Allan said nothing more while they were going downstairs again. They walked back to the Bowery and turned to the south. One of the first things that Allan saw struck him so oddly that he adjusted the focus of his camera to fifteen feet, and turning about made a quick shot, Dobbs watching attentively.

The subject of Allan’s picture was a boy of twelve or thirteen perched in a high boot-black’s chair with a grimy little Italian “shiner” polishing his shoes.

“Shine?” called the Italian boy over his shoulder, when he saw that some one had stopped; then went on with his work.

“Young America and young Italy,” laughed the detective, as they walked down the Bowery. When they came to one of the numerous dime museums ofthe street, Dobbs halted and they read over the glaring announcements that plastered the front of the building.

“You haven’t a big enough plate to take the fat lady,” chuckled Dobbs, “but I don’t see but that you might take a shy at the ossified girl. Ha, ha!” the detective laughed loudly, as he pointed to a huge picture spreading across the front of the building; “there you are!” and Allan read:—

Great Pie Eating ContestBYEleven Lovely Ladies!!

Great Pie Eating Contest

Eleven Lovely Ladies!!

“Couldn’t we get them to let us take that?” asked Dobbs, “when they were half through, you know!”

Allan joined in the detective’s laugh, until the man in the little window to the right of the entrance looked over at them with a scowl.

“The drinking tap.”

Dobbs appeared to be greatly taken with the idea, and for a few moments Allan feared that he might suggest carrying it out. But presently they left the region of the museums, and Allan changed the subject by catching a group at the drinking tap in front of the Young Men’s Institute. Then the detective and Allan came to the shooting-galleries where wooden deer and green lions were ceaselessly jumping, and silvery balls were rising and falling on jets of water until shattered by some successful marksman.

“Here’s a chance,” said Dobbs, “to get some of those queer things in animal locomotion. The great advantage here, though, would be that no matter when you caught the deer and lions, their legs would always look perfectly natural. That would be a big advantage. I don’t like these snap pictures that show the horses standing on one foot with their hind legs twisted.” Below Grand street, in front of a clothing store, they found five men standing at the curb, each supporting a huge wooden letter. When Allan stepped into the street to read the letters from the front, he found that they spelled “P-A-N-T-S.” A “Great Pants Sale” was in progress here. Other sales were in progress at every step of their walk.

“Isn’t it almost time to eat?” asked Dobbs. “I know a joint here where you can get the best steak in New York.”

The “joint” was across the street, and Dobbs saluted the proprietor cheerily as they walked in. Allan was too much stirred up by the sights and sounds out of doors and the whirr and clatter of this “quick lunch” indoors to eat much. When they had finished Allan wished to share the bill.

“A Great Pants Sale.”

“But there isn’t any bill,” said Dobbs; which seemed to be true, for, as they passed out, Dobbs merely nodded again to the proprietor. “I once did that fellow a great big favor,” said Dobbs, “and so my money wouldn’t go in there—nor yours either if you were with me.”

“Suppose you lived near by,” said Allan, “andtook all your meals there, do you think he would keep on being willing?”

Dobbs laughed. “Well, I think I could keep it up quite a long time, if I wanted to.”

Presently they came to Chatham Square, and Dobbs, pointing over to the west, said, “Here’s Chinatown.”

Dobbs knew all the queer places, the joss houses, and theatres, and restaurants, and he pointed these out or indicated them with a jerk of his head.

“They are suspicious here,” said Dobbs, “and when you want to take anything I’ll turn and talk to you so that you can shoot past me.” It was in this way that Allan caught a group of men in front of one of the queer places. Hundreds of Chinamen were passing up and down the street, hundreds more could be seen in the tea-shops and at the windows of the restaurants.

Suddenly Dobbs turned away with an exclamation which Allan did not understand, and, looking about, the boy saw the detective run into an alley.

Allan, much perplexed, walked to the mouth of the alley and peered into its dingy depths. But there was no sign of Dobbs. He had utterly disappeared.

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