“Sure,” said Carter. He placed the ladder, mounted it, reached the roof.
Oakes turned his attention to Frank Spinner.
“As I was saying, I figure that you croaked your old man because you liked to fly high, and the old man had lots of cash that he hung on to pretty tight. This here place wasn’t good enough for you to live in — you had to live in a classy dump like the Albert Manor.”
The young man laughed derisively.
“Why,” he said, “my father had disowned me, only a day or two ago—”
“You mean,” Oakes retorted, “he destroyed the will making you his heir. But he hadn’t made another one yet. And as long as no new will was made, you would inherit the estate.”
Mallory grunted, and shifted his position closer to young Spinner.
“My secretary,” Oakes proceeded, “was just over to the office of your father’s lawyer, Harlan Mears, and she brought me a copy of a letter which Mears wrote your father two days ago. This letter says that Mears was to be out of town for a few days, but that as soon as he returned he would call and fix up a new will. Doubtless you saw the original of that letter, young man, and—”
“Of course I saw it,” broke in Frank Spinner, suddenly savage. “My father was mean, cold—”
“Yeah,” said Oakes. “And his son ain’t much different. Selfish and coldblooded.”
Carter appeared at the edge of the garage roof. He was just pocketing a magnifying glass. Carefully he descended the ladder.
“Find anything?” queried Oakes.
“Yes, sir,” said Carter. “Traces of-varnish on the end of one of them long boards—”
“From the arm of the chair,” put in Oakes.
“And some paint,” Carter went on, “along the bottom of the board, where it rubbed against the window sill, I guess.”
“You guess right,” said Oakes. “Anything else?”
“Sure,” Carter grinned happily — he was always happy when given an opportunity to demonstrate what a good eye he had. “Shreds of glove — some processed material — on the board, too. Also some shreds of cloth — gray — caught on a nail on the roof.”
“Uh-huh. Know where the cloth came from?”
“Sure. From a pair of pants belonging to this young man.” And he pointed at Frank Spinner.
The young man indicated suddenly sat down on the door step, and his face dropped into his shaking hands. Cool enough in the commission of a crime, his nerves were speedily shattered when he was caught.
“Inspector,” Oakes explained, “I took the liberty of sending Carter across the street to the Albert Manor, where young Spinner lives, a little while ago. And I believe Carter discovered something.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carter. “I expected to get into the young fellow’s apartment to see if I could find the gloves and pants, like Mr. Oakes said. But when I got over there I spotted him coming out of the side entrance and going around the back of the building. I waited until he came back and crossed the street. Then I went back there and batted around until I had a hunch to look in the old waste barrel. Buried under a lot of stuff in the barrel was a newspaper package, and in it was a pair of gray pants and a pair of gloves — I’ve got ’em inside.”
Carter finished his recital breathlessly, pride fully. For a moment there was silence, except for a moan from young Mr. Spinner.
“The pants, sir,” Carter added presently, “were torn near the knee.” Mallory stood over the young man.
“So you croaked your own father?” he demanded sternly.
“He deserved it!” the young man cried, a little hysterically. “He had money, lots of it, but he was hard with me! Why, he even had me doing janitor work around the building sometimes!”
“Tough!” murmured Oakes, not very sympathetically.
“That was what gave me the idea,” Frank Spinner went on. “He told me that I was to fix that garage roof. I would do it at night, anyway, so that no one would see me — the light from the window and the alley lamp was sufficient for the job. I knew that old Jerry Sutter would be working in number eleven. I knew that Miss Sutter was down at the library. I knew that there would be no one in the two back apartments, so that I would be unobserved—”
“But you did not know,” Oakes supplemented, “that your father was going to laugh.”
“Yes,” said the young man bitterly, staring up at Oakes, “he laughed!”
“He laughed!” said Oakes, “when you slipped on the roof — and tore your pants on a nail?”
“Yes,” lamented Frank Spinner. “He always laughed when anything like that happened — to some one else!”
“I thought it was something like that,” Oakes said, “that made the old man die laughing.”
“Well,” said Mallory to the young man, heavily, “you’ll be dying yourself before long.”
“But not laughing,” concluded Hugo Oakes.
A Daring Breakaway
by James B. M. Clark
It is seldom that the officials of Sing Sing let a man slip through their fingers, but once in a while the impossible is achieved, and some criminal succeeds in making a get-away. The escape of two notorious crooks, Pallister and Rohlf, some years ago is possibly the most remarkable case in the annals of the institution in recent times.
Both had been condemned to die in the electric chair for the brutal murder of a farmer in a lonely district, a man who had shown them hospitality and whose kindness they had rewarded by killing him. But Pallister was a clever man, and in this desperate corner his wit did not desert him. Rohlf simply followed the lead of his chief.
The problem of a break at the out-. set looked hopeless. But they knew well enough there was no hope of a reprieve, and that their only chance of life lay in escape from the walls. In addition to the formidable bolts, bars, locks and walls of this renowned jail, extra guards had been placed on duty, on account of the bad records of the prisoners, and the fact that Pallister had once before succeeded in breaking out of a State prison. Nothing was being left to chance, and nothing seemed more certain than that the hours of the pair were numbered. But Pallister’s busy brain was always at work, and before the fatal day arrived he had concocted a scheme.
For some days in advance of the date on which the attempt was to be made Pallister played sick. On the night chosen for the attempt, at 10 P.M., he dressed underneath the bedclothes. Then he called out to the warder on duty. The warder immediately came to the spy-hole in the cell door and asked what the trouble was. Pallister explained that he was very sick with a dreadful pain in his stomach, and asked if it would be possible to get a glass of hot milk. As condemned men are generally humored, the warder consented to see what could be done and called to the guard stationed at the other end of the corridor to go and get the milk from the kitchen. The second guard went off, and after a short interval returned with the milk, which he gave to the guard who had called for it.
This guard unlocked the door and entered Pallister’s cell, whereupon Pallister, a powerful man, seized him by the throat in a terrible grip, preventing him from crying out and giving the alarm. Then he gagged him and bound him, and laid him on the bed, took the man’s keys, and, watching his opportunity, stole out into the corridor and released Rohlf and three other convicts in adjoining cells. Pallister had deemed it safer to take several other desperate men into their confidence so that, if it came to a fight with the guards, they would have plenty of forces. But once clear of the prison he meant to let these men shift for themselves.