The sheriff’s eyes were a steely blue as he handed the youth a paper. Joe Carrol glanced at it and his face turned a ghastly yellow.
“A warrant!” he groaned.
The sheriff nodded.
“Assault with intent to kill Pete Mongone,” he replied coolly. “The sheriff of Cook County asked me to serve it on you.”
Joe hung his head, and Maisie Carrol threw her arms around his neck.
“I thought the grave business would work, Joe!” she cried frantically. “Honest. I did! I thought if a bull did come my little song and dance would give you time to make a getaway, but the sheriff double crossed me. I’ll go hack with you, Joe!”
Joe Carrol coughed, and a spasm of pain shot across his white face.
“I’ll go with yon,” he said to the sheriff.
But Sheriff McKenzie smiled grimly as he took the warrant from Joe’s fingers.
“You won’t go with me, son,” he said gently. “I said the sheriff of Cook County asked me to serve this warrant on you. I didn’t say I’d serve it. The law says there’s a difference between talking and doing.”
He mused silently for a moment, then took out his fountain pen, unscrewed the cap and glanced down at the empty grave. His blue eyes twinkled.
“You’ve been dead and buried, son,” he chuckled, “so I suppose I ought to make my return on this warrant ‘Dead’ but—”
He scrawled “Not Found” on the back of the warrant and held it up.
“That means I couldn’t find you, Joe,” he explained, “when the tenth assistant deputy sheriff of Cook County reads that he’ll pigeonhole the warrant and forget all about it in a week.”
The sheriff grinned.
“Shucks,” he went on, “assault to kill ain’t no more serious in Chicago than drinking a cup of weak tea.”
Joe and Maisie Carrol stared dumbly at Sheriff Bob McKenzie for a few seconds, then, their eyes wet and their faces bright, they lunged at him with open arms.
But the sheriff quickly edged around the side of the cabin and made for the bridge across the creek.
“I got to get back to town to draw a venire!” he called over his shoulder: “If you want anything tell the storekeeper and he’ll give it to you. I’ll be back in a few days to see you.”
Safe on the other side of the creek, he lighted a cigar and gazed back at the boy and girl who stood watching him, their arms around each other.
“This climate’ll fix you up, son!” he shouted, “but don’t let your wife bury you again. If I let mine do that she’d never dig me out.”
International Crooks I Have Known
by Captain Charles H.Moss
But for a detective’s intervention, the underworld’s “Slyest, Slimiest Crook” would have sent an old man to a pauper’s grave.
Just after midnight, I found him lying in a heap before the door. It was bitterly cold; snow was falling, and behind me the sea lashed itself to a fury under the scourge of the northeast wind.
That is my introduction to a human story I was later to unravel and which, to-day, I remember in every detail.
James MacDougall was a man of some sixty-live years of age, tall and of some presence. He wore a gray heard and, when I met him, was living in a well furnished flat in a block of mansions at Hove. Temporarily, I was living in the same block.
When I found him he was as one dead, and even as I dragged him into the hall and up the stairs. I feared that I had found him too late. His keys were hanging from the end of a chain in his trousers pocket.
I dragged him into his bedroom and on to his bed, switched on the electric fire, undressed him, poured brandy down his throat and set to work on him, but it was an hour and a half before he showed any sign of life, and three hours before I was able to leave him, tucked comfortably between blankets and fast asleep.
The next morning, the hall porter told me that MacDougall wished to see me. Inside his flat again, he was profuse in his thanks, and afterward he looked at me, I thought somewhat strangely, and asked:
“When you searched me, did you find any money?”
“No,” I answered.
“I had twelve or thirteen pounds on me when I left the ‘Old Ship,’ ” he explained. “Some one must have stolen it.”
Some one had — and that some one was Sam Crockett — “Slippery” Sam to his associates.
Sam is dead now, but in spite of that he remains to me what he was — the slyest, slimiest crook I ever knew. Usually there are redeeming features in crooks. Some of the worst of men from a criminal point of view are the most charming of individuals to meet when one is off duty — generous, good-natured, genial and irresponsible. One can often at least be amused by them, but there was nothing amusing about Slippery Sam.
When, later, as this story will relate, I had occasion to investigate the case of James MacDougall, I unearthed a story as mean and despicable as any of my career.
Sam Crockett had been a solicitor’s clerk in one of those offices which possesses an excellent knowledge of the law and how to dodge it, of fraud which is legally protected. It specialized in accident cases. It bribed hall-porters at hospitals to keep it informed of accidents; it had runners bringing in information from mean and splendid streets — all so that the office might get at the victim first and become empowered to act on his behalf in the matter of compensation.
That office was adept at concocting evidence; it had on its books the names and addresses of a score of professional witnesses — men and women who could swear to facts they had never seen and tell a primed story with an air of conviction.
Slippery had been chief clerk, and in course of time he had blackmailed victims of accidents whose cases the office had won for a goodly share of the damages awarded. Finally Sam, with two or three thousand pounds in his pocket, had retired from drudgery in London and taken himself, his money, and his wits to Brighton with the firm intention of using the last to augment the first and secure him an easy living.
Such is the man, whom later I found to be in the background on which was thrown the figure of James MacDougall, whom I left at Hove a week or so later, as I believed, restored to the same health he had ever possessed.
Six months elapsed. Then Hove had to be my home again for a time. I inquired and was given possession of a furnished flat in the same house as before. I walked into the hall and into the lift. The man in charge expressed pleasure at seeing me again — and before the lift stopped at my floor, he said:
“It’s a sad thing about Mr. MacDougall, sir!”
“Oh, what’s the matter with him?” I asked.
The lift stopped and he strode with me on to the landing.
“He goes into the workhouse tomorrow,” he explained — and went on when I showed surprise: “Yes, poor old chap, he’s lost his memory; he’s failing; he’s got no money; the bailiff’s have cleared his flat — he’s down and out, utterly broken — and to-morrow they are calling for him.”
Within my new abode, I digested this information over lunch. Then I called to the hall porter and told him to ask MacDougall to come up and see me. MacDougall came, though it was with difficulty that I got him to recognize me.
In place of the hale, well-set-up man, there was a decrepit individual who looked half insane and veritably on his last legs. He could answer no questions.
Formerly he had been a man with a good income, now old age was upon him and poverty.
I could not believe it. Some sixth sense told me that somewhere something was wrong. Perhaps the small adventure of the winter had made me more than usually interested in the man. Whatever the cause. I determined he should not die in the work-house.