“You might haunt the courts for two weeks at a time and never see a professional criminal on trial,” Drew went on. “And yet eighty-five per cent of crimes are committed by professional criminals, men and women with records, who make a business of crime, who haven’t any other occupation, who don’t want any other, who wouldn’t know what you meant if you asked them to settle down and live an honest life. In this city one person out of every three hundred is a professional criminal. Think of it! Three hundred people go to work every day, work hard, save their money, raise their children in a decent manner, look ahead to old age; and here is one man who robs them, beats ’em up, burglarizes their homes, disgraces their children. And the irony of it all is, the whole three hundred can’t catch that one man and lock him up. Be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.”
“I suppose,” said Johnny, “it’s because the city is so big.”
“Well, perhaps.” Once more the young officer’s voice dropped. “It’s discouraging. And yet it’s fascinating, this detective business. There are boys, lots of them, who think crime is fascinating. They read those rotten stories about Jimmy Dale and the rest, and believe them. I tell you, Johnny!” He struck the table. “There never was the least touch of romance in any crime. It’s mean and brutal, cowardly and small. But hunting down these human monsters. Ah! There’s the game! You tell of your white bears, your wolves, your grizzlies. Fascinating, no doubt. But compared with this, this business of hunting men, there’s nothing to it!” He took a long breath and threw his arms wide.
“I believe you,” said Johnny with conviction. “I wish I might have a part in it all.”
“Don’t worry. You have made a good start. You are to be a witness.”
“That—why, that’s nothing.”
“Nothing, is it? You wouldn’t say so if you had seen witnesses kidnapped, bribed, beaten, driven out of town, murdered by the gangs that all but rule us. A good witness. That’s all we need, many’s the time. And lacking him, the case is lost.
“You won’t fail us?” he said in a changed voice.
“I won’t fail you. When the trial comes up I’ll be there.”
“Of course.” Drew’s tone was reassuring, “I don’t want you to become unduly frightened. Pickpockets don’t band together much. We seldom have trouble once they are caught. It’s the robbers, the hi-jackers, the bootleggers. They are the ones.”
A few moments later they turned in for the night. Johnny, however, did not sleep at once. He had been interested in all this newfound friend had told him. He had felt himself strangely stirred.
“If only I could have some real part,” he whispered to himself.
A few moments later he murmured half aloud, “That’s it! I believe I could do that. Anyway it’s worth the try. Do it first thing in the morning.”
With that he fell asleep.
It was night: ten o’clock. Johnny stood atop a ten story building, looking off and down. A thousand white lights shone along an endless way. Like great black bugs with gleaming eyes, countless cars glided down that glistening boulevard. To the right, shimmering waters reflected the thousand lamps. And at the edge of this water, on a yellow ribbon of sand, a host of ant-like appearing creatures sported. These were human beings, men, women and children, city cave-dwellers out for a breath of fresh air and a dip in the lake before retiring for the night.
“How happy they are,” he murmured to himself as their shouts of joy came floating up to him. “And how happy they should be. The great Creator meant that they should be happy. And for the most part they have earned happiness, a brief hour of pure joy after a day of toil.
“‘One in three hundred,’” he recalled Drew’s words, “‘One in three hundred is a crook.’
“Ah well,” he sighed, “catching the crooks, and so making those others safer, happier, freer to enjoy their well earned rewards: that’s our job. And it’s a big one.”
These last were no idle words. Only a day had passed since his long talk with the young detective, Drew Lane; yet even in that brief span of time he had found for himself a part in the great work, in the task of detecting crime. A very, very small part it was, but a real one all the same.
He smiled as he thought of it now. In half an hour he would enter the door at his back, would pass through a rather large room in which stood all manner of band and orchestra instruments, and then would enter a veritable cubby-hole of a place. In this closet-like room was a chair, a telephone, a large police gong set on a steel post, and a microphone. When these were rightly placed there was room for Johnny to squeeze himself into the chair, that was about all. Here, for two hours around noon, and again two hours at midnight, it was to be his task to sit waiting for the rattle of the telephone. Every jangle of that telephone was to set him into brief but vigorous action. In a word, he formed the last link between the unfortunate citizen who was being robbed, burglarized or attacked, and the police squad that stood ready to come to his aid.
Johnny had landed this part-time job, which he felt sure would prove more than interesting, just as he had secured all else in life, by going after it. He had spoken to Drew. Drew had spoken to a police sergeant. The sergeant had said a word to a captain. The captain, being just the right person, had spoken to the manager of the station. And there you are.
“And here I am,” Johnny said to himself. “And, for the glory of the good old city I have always loved, I am going to pound that police gong as no one ever has, and to such good purpose that someone higher up will say:
“‘Good boy! You deserve something bigger and better.’” He threw back his head and laughed. “Then,” he sighed, “maybe they’ll make me an honest-to-goodness detective.”
Meanwhile there was the telephone, the “mike,” and the gong. He had taken his training at noon. Now, from 10:30 P.M. to 12:30 A.M. he was to go it alone.
As he reached the door to his cubby-hole, a tall, red-headed youth rose and stretched his cramped legs.
“Quiet night,” he murmured. “Ought to have it easy.”
“Thanks. Hope so, for the first night at least.” Johnny eased himself into the chair and the red-headed youth departed.
A quiet night? Well, perhaps. Yet for Johnny, all unaccustomed as he was to his new duties, it proved an exciting one.
The very place itself, a great broadcasting station at night, was filled with interest and romance.
The large studio before him was not in use. More than a score of instruments, horns, bass viols, cellos, snare drums, basso drums and all the rest stood there, casting grotesque shadows in the half light.
Beyond this, through glass partitions, he could see a young man. Sitting before an elaborate array of lights, plugs and switches, this man put out a hand here, another there, regulating the controls, directing the current that carried messages of joy, hope, peace and good will to the vast invisible audiences out in the night. He was the station operator.
In the studio beyond, only half visible to Johnny, the men of a jazz orchestra performed on saxophones, trap drums and who can say what other instruments?
“And I am now part of it all!” Johnny thought to himself. “I—”
But now came a buzzing sound, a red light flashed.
“A call!” he exclaimed in an excited whisper. “My first night call.”
Placing his finger on a button, he pressed it twice. This told the operator in the glass cage to stand by, ready to give him the air.
“All right,” he spoke into the phone, then gripped a pencil.
His pencil flashed across the paper.
“Got you,” he said quietly. “Repeat.”
His eyes followed the lines he had written.
“O.K.”
Now, striking the gong, he spoke into the microphone: “Squads attention!” His own voice sounded strange to him. “Squads attention! Robbers breaking in at 6330 Drexel Boulevard. Squad 36 assigned.”
Repeating: “Robbers breaking in at 6330 Drexel Boulevard. Squad 36 assigned.”
Once more, save for the ticking of his watch and the faint throb of the jazz orchestra penetrating the padded walls, his cubby-hole was silent.
“Queer business,” he murmured.
He tried to picture what was happening ten miles away at 6330 Drexel Boulevard. Burglars had been breaking in. Who had reported them? He pictured neighbors looking through a darkened window, seeing the burglars prying up a window. He saw the neighbors tip-toeing to a telephone, notifying the police.
“And then the Chiefs call to me; my call to the squad. The burglars are inside by now. And here comes the squad. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“They are not the first arrivals. Nearby residents have heard the squad call. In dressing gowns and slippers they have rushed outside.
“But the burglars?” he mused, settling back in his chair. “Did they get them? Who knows? If they were professionals, wise to all the tricks of escape, probably not. If they were amateurs, first-timers, boys who saw romance in crime, probably they were caught. And Drew says one professional is worth ten first-timers in jail. The first-timer may never repeat. The professional will never do anything but repeat. It’s his business, hisprofession. And what a profession! Bah! I’d rather—”
Again the buzz; the light. This time it was a shooting at Halsted and 22nd Streets.
“Drunken brawl.” The affair did not interest him. He put it through with neatness and dispatch; then he resumed his meditations.
It was twenty minutes past twelve o’clock, ten minutes before closing time. At this precise moment a thing happened that was destined to change Johnny’s whole career. It was to make him a hunter of men.
At this hour the radio studio in an out-of-the-way corner on the tenth floor of a great hotel was dimly lighted and spooky. The merry-makers in the studio beyond had long since departed. That room was completely dark. So, too, was the studio nearest Johnny. Even the dim shadows of musical instruments had faded into nothing. Two lights burned dimly, one over Johnny’s head, the other directly before the operator who, half asleep, sat waiting for the moment when he might cut a distant ballroom orchestra off the air and follow his fellow workers home.
“No more calls tonight,” Johnny was thinking to himself. “Quiet night, right enough; one holdup, two robberies and a shooting. Ho well, it’s been interesting all the same. Fellow wouldn’t—”
No, there it was again, one more call. Buzz, buzz, flash, flash.
He pressed his ear to the head phone, his lips to the mouthpiece. And then, like lightning from a clear sky, things began to happen. He was struck a murderous blow on the head. He was pitched violently forward. He had a vague sensation of something resembling a microphone glancing past him, then crashing violently against the wall. Other objects appeared to follow. A sudden shock of sound burst on his ears, filling the air.
“Shot,” he thought to himself. “I’m shot!”
He experienced no pain. For all that, his mental light blinked out and he knew no more for some time.
In the meantime the operator in the glass cage was seeing and hearing such things as he had never so much as dreamed of.
His first intimation that something was wrong was when Johnny’s microphone sent him a curious sound of warning. This was caused by someone grasping it in both hands. Compared to the sound that followed at once, this was as nothing. Had two freight engines entered the room from opposite directions and suddenly crashed they could not have produced a more deafening hubbub than that which came from the loud-speaker as the microphone, hurled by mysterious hands, crashed against the studio wall.
As the operator’s startled senses directed his attention to Johnny’s cubby-hole, and his eyes took in at a glance the full horror of the situation, he stood paralyzed with fear.
His chair overturned, Johnny Thompson lay crumpled on the floor. A shadowy figure reached up and crushed his light as a child might a bird’s egg. The same figure seized the police gong and hurled it through a window. Broken glass flew in every direction. A telephone followed the gong. Then, as mysteriously as he had come, the sinister figure stepped once more into the dark, leaving wreck, ruin and perhaps death in his wake.
“Gone!” No, not quite. One more act of violence. Came a flash, a roar, and a bullet struck with a thud against the padded partition.
The operator promptly dropped flat upon the floor. Nor did he, being a prudent youth, rise until heavy feet came stamping up the stairs and three uniformed policemen, led by a youth in shirt sleeves, burst into the room.
The young man in shirt sleeves was Drew Lane.
From the moment Johnny took his first squad call, Drew had been listening in at his room. He had come to have a very great interest in Johnny. “Anyone of his courage, spirit and ambition, coupled with a desire to be of real service to others, will go far,” he had told himself. “I’ll just listen in tonight. He may make a slip or two. If he does I can set him right.”
Johnny made no slips. In fact Drew was obliged to give him credit for a steady hand and a clear head. Drew had been thinking of throwing off the radio and turning in, when the crash of the wrecked microphone reached him through his loud-speaker in the shack.
With a mind well trained for sudden disaster, he knew on the instant that something unusual and terrible was happening in the studio. What it was he could not guess.
Grasping his automatic, without waiting to draw on his coat, he had dashed out of the shack, down one rickety stairway, up another, and raced. By good chance he had run squarely into a police squad car.
“Step on the gas, Mike!” he shouted, springing into the car. “East on Grand, then north on Lake Shore. Something gone wrong at the broadcasting studio!”
The motor purred, the gong sounded as they were away at sixty miles an hour.
“Heard it,” Mike shouted above the din. “Guess your young friend dropped his ‘mike’!”
“Worse than that,” Drew came back. “I’ve heard that happen. This was different. Worse! Ten times worse!”
That he was telling the truth you already know.
And that was how it happened that Drew and the squad appeared on the scene, exactly six minutes after the destroyer had completed his work of demolition.
“Hey! What’s this? Who’s here?” bellowed Mike O’Hearne, the head of the squad, drawing his revolver and leading the way.
“He—he’s gone!” The terrified operator rose shakily.
“Who’s gone?”
“I—I don’t know. Truly I don’t. But look! Look what he’s done!”
“Where’s the light switch?” Mike advanced into the studio, tripped over a trap drum, dropped his gun; then said some words appropriate to the occasion.
“Here. Just a moment.”
The operator, who was rapidly regaining the power of his senses, touched a switch and the room was flooded with light; so, too, was Johnny’s cubby-hole.
“They—he shot at me,” stammered the operator, once more thrown into confusion at sight of Johnny’s still form crumpled up beneath the debris.
“Who shot?” demanded Mike.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much. Looks like they’d done for this boy here. And why, I wonder? That’s always the question. Why? Here, give us a hand. Let’s get him out of here. Somebody call the house doctor.”
Relieved to find there was something definite he might do, the young operator got the doctor on the phone at once.
“He’ll be up right away,” he reported.
“Hm, let’s see.” Mike, the experienced police officer, who had examined a thousand cases, living and dead, turned Johnny over carefully.
“Lot of blood,” he muttered. “Hit on the head. May come round. Doctor can tell. Bring some water.”
The operator brought a pitcher of water. Mike bathed Johnny’s forehead, then began washing away the blood. Johnny had just begun to stir a bit when the doctor arrived.
A full five minutes the doctor remained bent over the prostrate form.
“I hope he’s going to come out of it,” Drew said to a husky, grizzle-haired Irish sergeant named Herman McCarthey. “He’s a game kid, and he’s got right ideas. He’ll go far. This was his first night.”
At the end of that tense five minutes Johnny sat up unsteadily.
“He’s reviving,” said the doctor. “Let’s have some air.”
Windows were thrown up. Johnny opened his eyes and looked about him.
“Wha—where am I?” he half whispered.
“Right where you were,” Drew chuckled. He was pleased to see the boy coming round so soon.
“I—I—” Johnny’s eyes held an uncertain light. Then they cleared. “Something hit me. I—I went—went down. The microphone, the telephone, every—everything went—”
“That’s all right,” said Herman McCarthey quietly. “Just you take it easy. You’ll be fine and dandy pretty soon. Then we’ll take you home in the car and you can tell us all about it. He hit you, that’s clear. Hit with his gun. Dent of the hammer’s in your scalp. An’ it’s goin’ to stay some time.
“He hit you. We don’t know just why. But we’ll find out, won’t we, Drew?”
“You know we will!”
“And we’ll find the man, won’t we, Drew?”
“We sure will!”
“And when we do!”
“And when we do!” Drew Lane echoed with appropriate emphasis, and a light grip on his automatic.
Half an hour later Johnny and Drew were back at the shack. The squad car with its load of burly policemen was gone.
For a long time nothing was said. Johnny’s head hurt. It also ached in a most extraordinary manner. He felt sick at the stomach. Life for him had gone suddenly very strange.
“Drew,” he said at last, “that man, whoever he was, didn’t give me a chance, not a single fighting chance.”
“Of course not. They never do, those gangsters.”
“Drew,” said Johnny, “I was hunting in the Arctic once, stalking a polar bear all alone; following his track. He turned the tables and started stalking me. But, Drew, before he struck at me with that great paw of his, he hissed like a goose.”
“Gave you a warning,” Drew said quietly. “Rattlesnake’d do that, too; but not a gangster.
“Johnny,” he said, suddenly wheeling about, “you’ve been believing in that old saw, ‘honor among thieves.’ Forget it. There isn’t any. Not a bit.
“I’ve known them to run over a little family car, smash it in bits with a powerful truck they were using to carry illicit goods. Did they stop? Not much. Fired shots in the air, and left little children to perish in the wreckage. Honor! Not a bit. I tell you it’s war! Pitiless war waged by monsters. And this land will not be free until they are all safely lodged in jail.”
Again for a time there was silence.
“Drew,” Johnny spoke again, “I used to say that if a man picked my pockets or held me up and got my money, I’d say, ‘You are a smart guy,’ and let it go at that, but that if he hit me on the head I’d spend the rest of my life hunting him. And when I found him I’d kill him. That man hit me, Drew, hit almost hard enough to kill, and without warning!”
“He did,” said Drew, “and we are going to get him, you and I. But after we get him, I guess we’d better let the courts deal with him. Justice, Johnny, is an arrow, a keen pointed arrow that goes straight and fair. Sometimes I think it is an arrow of fire that burns as it strikes.”
Johnny thought that a strange expression. He was to learn more of it as the days passed.
“First thing we’ve got to do to-morrow,” said Drew, “is to work out the probabilities?”
“The probabilities?”
“Sure. You’ve read detective stories?”
“Sometimes.”
“Know how most of ’em go? A murder. One of six men may have done the killing. This one might have, or that one. This one probably did. And this one, well, you hardly consider him at all. But in the end, it’s always the one you did not suspect. It’s the bunk. Real life is not like that at all. You have to figure out what is probably true, and try to prove that it is true. It usually is.
“Take this case of yours. You are to be a kingpin witness in my case against two pickpockets. Your testimony will convict them. No doubt about it. Do they belong to a well organized gang? Did a member of the gang try to do away with you so you could not testify? It’s been done many times.
“Another possibility. You were about to put through a squad call. What was that call? Was it important? Was a big burglary in progress? Was this man sent up to silence the radio and prevent the squad call? If that was the angle, was more than one major crime committed in that half hour? If so, which one was connected with the attack upon you?
“Once again; many a gang’s activities have been interrupted, their purpose thwarted, by radio squad calls. The leader of one of these gangs may have decided to take revenge; hence the raid to-night.
“So you see,” he said, rising, “there are several possibilities to work out. The probability must be reached. Herman McCarthey will have all the dope in the morning. He will help us work it out. He is a seasoned trooper and has a wise old head on his shoulders. Meantime, you must try to recall every incident connected with the affair.”
“I remember one thing,” said Johnny. “It came to me at this very instant. I didn’t see the man’s face, but I saw his hand, a large dark hand, and it was deeply scarred. It had a hole in the middle of the palm.”
“Good!” exclaimed Drew. “Couldn’t be better. Take us a long way, that will.
“And now we must catch three winks. To-morrow is a big day. To-morrow you are to be our star witness.”
Johnny and Drew were up at eight o’clock next morning. At 8:30 the black-haired, dark-eyed girl with smiling lips and dimpled cheeks brought in steaming coffee and some unusual but delicious pastry.
Drew called her Rosy, and patted her on the arm. Rosy’s dimples deepened.
Who was Rosy? Why did she live in that other shack among the walls of brick and mortar? Why did Drew room in this odd place? Johnny wanted to ask all these questions. Realizing that their answers did not greatly concern him, he asked none of them.
At ten o’clock he and Drew were seated on the front bench of the “Local 46,” the particular court room in which their pickpocket case was to be tried.
The whole scene was packed with interest for Johnny. The judge in his box-like coop, the young prosecutor and the deputies standing below, the motley throng that filled the seats at his back, each waiting his turn to appear as complainant, defendant or witness, made a picture he would not soon forget.
The judge was a dark-skinned man of foreign appearance. His hair was long. His eyes were large, and at times piercing. He sat slumped down in his chair. When sudden problems arose, he had a trick of bracing his hands on the arms of his chair and peering at a prisoner as a hawk might peer at a squirrel or a mouse.
“He’s Italian,” said Drew. “Smart man. Knows his business. Square, too. A good judge. Lots of fun, too, if he wants to be.”
At this moment two names were called. Two large men, respectably dressed, walked up the aisle to take their places at the high, narrow table just before the judge’s stand. Two officers stepped up beside them.
“Confidence men,” whispered Drew. “We all know them. Haven’t got a thing on them, though, I’ll bet. Just picked them up on suspicion. They get thousands every year from people who are looking for a chance to make easy money. They—
“See! I told you. The judge is letting them go. It’s not what you know that counts in court. It’s what you can prove.”
Once more the stage was set. An attractive young woman, carefully and tastefully dressed, a young man at her side, a middle-aged man of stocky build carrying a package, a young lady of the shop-girl type at his side; these four stood before the judge.
“Young lady,” said the judge, leaning forward and adjusting his glasses as he spoke to the well dressed one, “you are charged with the theft of one dress, taken from the store of Dobbs, Hobson & Dobbs; value $14.00. Guilty, or not guilty?”
“Guilty,” the girl murmured with downcast eyes.
“It is my duty,” the judge leaned forward in his chair, “to warn you that if you plead guilty I may fine you from one dollar to one hundred dollars, or send you to jail for from one day to one year. Knowing this, do you still wish to plead guilty?” His tone was impressive.
The girl hesitated. A short, gray-haired man stepped up and whispered in her ear.
“Her lawyer,” explained Drew.
“Guilty.” The girl nodded her head.
The evidence was presented. Then the husband of the young lady spoke: “If your Honor please. This is the first time this sort of thing has happened. I will give my pledge that it will not happen again.”
The judge raised himself on his elbows, stared through his glasses and exclaimed: “I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again for sixty days. The idea! A woman of your intelligence going into a store and carrying off a dress that doesn’t belong to you and you don’t need! Why did you do it?”
“I—I don’t know, Judge. I—I just saw it there. I—I liked it. So, the first thing I knew I was taking it away.”
“Exactly. Sixty days! Sit over there.”
The judge pointed to a row of chairs at the right of his box; the defendant burst into tears, dabbled her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief; her young husband led her to a seat and, for the time, the affair was ended.
“The judge will allow her to weep for a couple of hours,” Drew explained in a whisper. “Meantime, his secretary in the back room will get some people on the wire and look up her record. If her record is good, he’ll set his sentence aside, put her on a year’s probation. Probably never hear from her again. She’s had about enough.
“But why do they do it?” he exclaimed in a whisper. “If you were a young woman would you go through all this and carry the memory of the humiliation and disgrace through a long life for a fourteen dollar dress? You would not; nor for forty dresses!
“But they do it, over and over and over. Hats, belts, coats, dresses, artificial flowers. What don’t they steal? And they come to court, sometimes three or four a day, to stand before the judge and weep. You’d think they’d learn, that everyone in the world would learn after awhile, everyone, except the professional shoplifter. But they don’t.”
And now a score of young black men stood before the bench. They were accused of gambling with dice. The dice, a hook for raking them in, and a few coins were offered in evidence.
“Who was running this game?” the judge thundered at them. Nobody knew; not even the arresting officer.
“Well,” said the judge, “you all working?”
“Ya-as, sir.”
“Got good jobs?”
“Ya-as, sir.”
“Louder.” The judge cupped a hand to his ear. “You all got real good jobs?”
“Ya-as, SIR!”
“All right, you can go, but we have a police benefit fund here. If you’ve all got real good jobs you might contribute a dollar each to that fund.”
The black men went into a huddle. They produced the required sum and marched out.
“One of the judge’s little jokes,” Drew smiled. “I don’t see how he could live through all this low down squalor day after day if it wasn’t for his jokes.”
“I want to tell you, Johnny, I wish I could tell every boy in the land a thousand times, crime is not attractive! It is mean and low down, sordid and dirty. That’s the best you can make out of it.”
“One more case,” he whispered as he rose, “then comes ours. You wait here. I’ll go get the men.”
Johnny will never know what that next brief trial was about. It had struck him all of a sudden that he was to play a part in the trial that was to follow. This thought set his blood racing. He was glad not to be the defendant. But as a witness his responsibility was great. For the first time in his life he was to utter words that would without doubt send a fellow human being to jail. The thought was not pleasing.
“And yet it’s my plain duty,” he told himself. He found much consolation in that.
A fresh turn of his mind for the moment crowded out all other thought. Who had beaten him up the night before? Was it some pal of these pickpockets? Would he be able to tell from the expressions on their faces when they saw him? His head was heavily bandaged. “They could not help but notice that. Perhaps they believe that their confederate made a thorough job of it,” he told himself. “They may not expect to see me here at all.”
“Ah! Now’s the time!” he whispered to himself. His name was being called. So, too, were the names of the two pickpockets and Drew Lane.
“Here they come.” He caught his breath and half rose from his chair. As he did so, one of the two prisoners coming down the aisle caught sight of him. It was the larger of the pickpockets. For ten seconds he stood there motionless, one foot poised in midair. Then his face spread in a broad grin, and he marched on up to the bar.
That grin puzzled the boy. “Wouldn’t grin if he hadn’t expected to see me,” he reasoned. “But why the grin at all?”
There was no further time for such thoughts. He was at the bar, between a police officer and a pickpocket. His right hand was in the air. He was being sworn to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, God.”
It struck him all of a sudden that some witnesses these days truly needed Divine help if they told the whole truth. He felt his bandaged head, and resolved to honor his oath, come what might; not only now, but always.
The judge went through with the usual formalities. The prisoners were charged with the theft of a purse. Guilty, or not guilty? A hook-nosed lawyer had advised a plea of guilty.
“And do you wish to be tried by this court?”
“Yes, your Honor.”
The prisoners were warned of the possible outcome. Did they still wish to plead guilty? They did.
The trial began. Johnny was asked to tell his story. This he did in a straightforward manner, in spite of numerous interruptions from the lawyer for the defence. He neglected no detail of the little drama that was played by Drew and Howe, two pickpockets and himself on that fateful June day.
“Is that true?” The judge leaned forward to glower at the older of the two prisoners.
“Yes, your Honor. But, your Honor, it’s the police. They—”
“Just a moment,” the judge cut him short. “I asked you a question. You say this young man has told the truth? Very well.
“Now you tell us what you know.” He nodded to Drew Lane.
Drew said that he and his fellow detective, Howe, had been riding that car line for three days, because there had been several losses by surface line riders along that line.
“When we saw these two birds,” he went on, “we knew we had our men. We—”
“You knew them?” the judge interrupted.
“It’s our business to know them. We know more than three hundred pickpockets by sight.”
“You’re too darn smart!” snarled the slighter of the two prisoners.
The bailiff rapped for order.
“Have these men a record?” the judge asked.
Drew Lane passed up two sheets of paper.
The judge studied these with a gathering scowl. Then his face lighted as he looked at Drew Lane.
“Bad ones. That right?”
Drew nodded.
“Go on. Tell us what happened.”
“We saw them take this boy’s pocketbook. They saw us and made a break for it. We nabbed them. That’s all. What this boy told you is true, as far as we saw it.”
“It must be,” agreed the judge. “They don’t even deny it.
“What have you got to say?” He turned a poker face toward the prisoners.
The larger one answered, “It’s the police, Judge, and the detectives. I was goin’ to tell you, Judge. They won’t leave us alone. We been out of the jug six months. Been goin’ straight.”
“Call picking pockets going straight?” the judge flashed.
“We wouldn’t have done it, Judge, only them college boy detectives made us.”
He glared at Drew Lane.
“Your Honor,” a flicker of a smile hovered about Drew Lane’s mouth, “I object to being called a college kid. I’ve been out of college four years, and been in the service all that time.”
“I wouldn’t,” the judge leaned forward and pretended to whisper, “I wouldn’t object at all if I were you. It’s your greatest asset. They don’t know you’re a detective, these fellows, and when they do they don’t take you seriously. That right?” He winked at the older pickpocket.
“That was it, Judge. You see, Judge,” the man went on, encouraged by the judge’s disarming smile, “I knew this boy was a detective. I—I’d see him before, and I says to Jimmy, me pal here, I says, just whispers, y’ understand, ‘Jimmy,’ I says, ‘it would be great sport to grab that country boy’s wad right before this college boy detective’s eyes.’ We done it for sport, Judge, honest we did.” The prisoner essayed a laugh, which turned out number one common, and scarcely that.
“I see,” said the judge, leaning back in his chair and appearing to think deeply. “You stole a hundred dollars from an innocent boy as a joke on a boy detective? You were getting off the car, weren’t you?”
“Yes, your Honor.”
“And the boy was getting off to go another way. How did you expect to get his money back to him? How did you mean to explain his loss to him?”
“Your Honor, we—”
“Ah no! You didn’t do it as a joke!” The judge leaned far forward. There was a glint of fire in his eye. The smile had faded from his face as a field of sunshine is blotted out by dark October clouds. “You meant to steal that boy’s pocketbook. These records show that.
“It didn’t matter to you that this boy might be left penniless in a strange city. If it had been a poor shop-girl with two weeks’ pay in her purse, the price of a well earned week’s vacation, you’d have done it too. It wouldn’t have meant anything to you if it had been a scrub-woman. If the money had been earned by eight hours of scrubbing six days a week, you’d have taken it just the same.
“You don’t want to go straight. You want to be pickpockets. That’s the only occupation you have. It’s the only one you’ll ever have, except when you’re in jail. And that’s where you’ll be for some time.
“Six months. Take them away.”
The deputies led the prisoners down the aisle. Johnny followed Drew out into the bright sunshine of a beautiful June morning.
“So that’s the way they do it?” Johnny said breathlessly.
“It’s the way they do it sometimes,” replied Drew.
“You see,” he went on to explain, “you are a transient witness. You are here now. But if we needed you to appear before a jury as a witness in this case four months from now, would you be in Chicago?”
“Four months is a long time.”
“Sure it is. Ordinarily those fellows would have gone before a grand jury and been held over to the higher courts. They’d been tried by a jury and got three or four years; that is, if you were present. But the judge, knowing you were likely to leave the city, made the best of things and tried them for larceny. He gave them all he could, under the circumstances. They are out of the way for a while at least.
“Well, that’s that!” Drew said a moment later. “Thanks a heap. You made our case for us. You helped us; now it’s up to us to help you find the fellow who battered up your head. Herman McCarthey is in the station now. Let’s go back and see what he’s uncovered.”
Retracing their steps, they walked once more into the lobby of the police station and waited for an up-bound elevator.
“It’s queer the way the thing works out.” Sergeant McCarthey looked the two boys squarely in the eyes when Drew Lane asked him how he had progressed with the radio station case.
Meanwhile Johnny was sizing up the sergeant. Nothing very wonderful to look at, this Sergeant McCarthey. Average size he was, with a face like a hawk. His nose was too long. It was curved like a beak. Shining out from behind it were two small black eyes. His head was, for the most part, bald, and he was but forty-five.
“Reminds me of a bald eagle,” Johnny told himself.