Just then the man’s hands flickered in turning the pages of the newspaper.
“No question about it, Ed — two fingers of the left hand missing!” exclaimed Fitzpatrick triumphantly.
That had been the most striking detail in the headquarters description of the international safe-blower.
When Burgess and Fitzpatrick entered the Preston apartment the only individual in it who was all for “giving the bulls a battle” was little Johnny Walsh’s big collie. But Liverpool Jack called him off imperatively and chased him into a rear room.
He accepted matters quietly, as did his wife. At headquarters he was suave and dignified.
“I would like to oblige you by answering all your questions,” he told his inquisitors, “but you gentleman will understand that I would be very foolish to talk before consulting my lawyer. I think you will also understand that I am too experienced in these matters to be worth trying the third degree on. I should tell you the finest pack of lies you ever heard. So if you don’t mind, I’ll finish reading the newspaper till my lawyer arrives, not that I blame you for interrupting me as you did this morning of course.”
Deny it as they may, your metropolitan detective holds in secret respect such renowned law-breakers as Liverpool Jack Walsh. None knows better than the detectives the chances these men take, the daring they must display, the odds they battle against. They are fools, of course, but with a recklessness and an ingenuity that are sometimes incomparable.
Liverpool Jack was allowed to await the coming of his lawyer in peace. After all, it was a matter for the New Jersey authorities. Over there the notorious safe-cracker went swiftly to trial and was as swiftly found guilty. His advanced years got him no mercy. He was sentenced to a fifteen years’ stretch. But he didn’t serve it. The New Jersey State prison at Trenton was only able to hold him within its steel confines for two years. Then he escaped. How the prison authorities were so reluctant to tell the news that the dangerous Liverpool Jack was once more at large did not become public till long after the celebrated crook had vanished from prison yard, workshop, mess hall and cell.
Indeed, the particulars of the manner in which he effected his “French leave” were never really told. If you listen to the underworld, the explanation will be to the effect that it was simply a matter of a rather heavy financial transaction with one of the keepers.
But within less than six months after Liverpool Jack melted through the bars of Trenton prison, there occurred in the yard of a large factory in Brooklyn at eleven o’clock one night a desperate duel between a yegg and a policeman.
The policeman, a rookie, was on post near the factory when a citizen reported to him that from the window of his home near by he had seen intermittent flashes of an electric lamp in the factory yard. It appeared as if burglars were prowling about seeking a window by which to make entrance, the citizen thought.
The factory yard was surrounded by a high wooden wall. The young policeman obtained a tall ladder from a near-by garage and mounted it. As he looked over the fence the flash lamp flickered twice near the factory wall. The zealous young cop dropped over the wall into the yard and yelled:
“Come out of that!”
At the same time he leveled his own lamp in the direction where the light had shone and saw the face of a tall man staring at him. He noted a big, gray mustache.
The next instant an automatic pistol began spitting bullets at the rookie. He let go with his own. But when the battle was over the young policeman was on his back with four bullets in him, two of which had inflicted wounds bound to prove mortal.
He died only half an hour later in the hospital. But he was able to make a statement in which he said he was positive his own shots had struck their mark — that he had wounded his man at least twice.
But if his man had been wounded, the yegg had yet been able to escape. Of course, if he had comrades there had also been a waiting automobile to which they could have borne him. They had no need of climbing the tall factory fence, for they had jimmied the door in it which opened on a side street where their get-away car was doubtless parked.
On the fourth night following the deadly encounter of the rookie with the yeggs an hysterical woman ran into a Brooklyn police station. She was nearly incoherent, but finally the desk lieutenant was able to make out that in her apartment near by a man was lying unconscious and dying from the effect of three bullet wounds.
“He’s my brother,” she sobbed. “And— Oh, I may as well tell you — what’s the use of hiding anything now? He’s a... he’s Liverpool Jack Walsh!
“He came into my house the other night looking terribly pale and could hardly walk. He asked me to keep him for a few days. And... well, he’s my brother. So I put him to bed. Then I saw that his body was covered with blood. I saw he was terribly hurt. And I wanted to get a doctor. But he begged me not to do it. He said the minute I got a doctor it would mean the police would be on him, and that he really wasn’t so terribly hurt. But each day he got weaker. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t hold anything on his stomach. But when I’d speak again of a doctor he’d curse me with all the breath he had left in him.
“Then he went out of his head in a kind of delirium and then — now — he’s unconscious and I’m sure he’s dying!”
Liverpool Jack breathed his last in the ambulance. He had three bullets in him, one in his stomach, two in his right lung. A grim discovery the ambulance surgeon made was that Liverpool Jack had saved himself from bleeding to death within a few hours after the duel by plugging the bullet holes with wads formed of cigarette papers. And thus he had lain in a bed in his sister’s house till gangrene and fever assailed him. He must have realized that the murder of the young policeman could mean only one finish for him if he gave himself up and survived his wounds — the electric chair.
Connecticut Blackie and Bugs Reilly made good their get-away for the Lakewood affair. Bugs disappeared as an underworld habitué. Blackie, some three years later, was caught in a Long Island post office job and was sent away for a long term. Little or nothing of the Lakewood plunder was recovered.