The commissioner returned a blank stare.
“You are observant, Reilly,” he admitted at length.
“I try to be that, sir.”
“Where did you get all this dope about the wife and the daughter?”
Reilly hesitated.
“Come, come, man! Out with it! Where did you get it?”
“From… from Mary O’Brien, a girl that works at the house—”
“Humph. All right. Go back and finish what you’ve started.”
“Thank you — I will, sir!”
When Reilly had gone, the commissioner seized the telephone and called his chief of detectives.
“Morgan, I’ve changed my mind. Put Reilly back on that case! And send Garrity to work with him, instead of Gray.”
Chapter XI
Some Startling Disclosures
Reilly and Steele had been working along entirely different lines all day. Fate decreed that the results of their efforts should appear simultaneously.
Shortly before nine in the evening, the police commissioner was called at his residence and was informed that important action had been taken in the Stewart case.
His secretary made the call, and was unable to state just what action had occurred. A man had come to the office informing him that an arrest had been made, and desiring to speak with the commissioner in person.
The commissioner sent for his car and rode at once to headquarters. Climbing the stairs laboriously, with his cigar dropping ashes on his dinner jacket, he stopped short when he found himself facing Malcome Steele. He nodded a cool salutation.
The commissioner did not like Steele. He hadn’t anything personal against him; but, being of a peculiar temperament, he was inclined to regard any independent investigator as a potential enemy.
He passed on into his office, where his secretary waited.
“What the devil — is it Steele who’s got action on the Stewart case?”
“Mr. Malcome Steel, of the National Detective Agency; yes, sir. I understood him to say that an arrest has been made.”
The commissioner sat down heavily and uncomfortably.
“Damn!” he muttered. “Who — where was the arrest?”
“He didn’t say, sir. Reilly is here, too, Mr. Commissioner; and he says he has something very important.”
“Send them both in. And you stay. I won’t talk to Steele alone.”
The secretary complied. The two investigators entered — Reilly flushed with suppressed excitement; Steele surveying the others thoughtfully with his deep gray eyes, his face expressionless.
“Well, Mr. Steele,” the commissioner challenged abruptly, “what’s on your mind?”
The director of the private agency returned a faint smile.
“I thought, Mr. Commissioner, that it might interest you to read a statement made this evening at police headquarters in Springfield.”
The official scowled. “In Springfield? What statement? Who made it?”
Without further comment, Steele laid a paper on his desk: “Statement made to Captain Burgess, Office of the Chief of Police, Springfield, in the presence of James Keliher, Stenographer.
“Yes; I planned to get Roscoe Stewart the blackguard! He defrauded me of shares worth two hundred and fifty thousand in Denver. It was a ‘legal robbery.’ You know what that is, probably. The law can’t touch him for it.
“But it was a swindle, and I made up my mind that both he and his partner, Fraim, would pay.
“Yes; I’m telling you: I planned deliberately to murder Stewart and to make Fraim pay for it. For a year I’ve had detectives watching them, trying to get one or both of them legally. But they were too influential and too clever.
“I learned of their quarrel, and I came East, ready to act. It was my chance to make one pay for the other’s death. No one in this part of the country knew that I had reason to injure Stewart or Fraim.
“In New York I hired an assistant, for really a very small sum — a crook who is well known there. He impersonated a fictitious Valentine Morse and made certain that Fraim could have no alibi for the hour of Stewart’s death, although he would think he had a good one.
“My purpose was to make Fraim tell a story which would be absolutely unbelievable. So I took his car from in front of his door, drove it to a place on tire Arborway not far from Stewart’s, and waited there in it until I felt sure Stewart’s chauffeur had gone to supper.
“I had already eliminated Johnson by a telegram. In the car I attired myself in a way that I thought would keep Stewart from recognizing me until the last instant, if he should catch sight of me. I knew he was there in the house, alone, waiting to confer with a supposed client whose name he thought was Fothergill.
“At the right time I got out and pushed Fraim’s car over the edge of the embankment, to make it look like an accident. It was snowing hard, and I knew there’d be no footprints.
“I went at once to his grounds, carrying an automatic pistol with a silencer, a set of skeleton latchkeys, and a jimmy. The keys, however, proved useless, as Stewart had bolted the doors.
“The house was all dark except the study downstairs. I approached, and saw Stewart sitting at his desk. For a moment I was on the point of plugging him through the window, then and there.
“But an automobile had stopped on the Arborway near the grounds, and I didn’t want to risk the crashing glass. It would give the lie to the Fraim theory later.
“Stewart looked up suddenly; and I was mortally afraid that he had seen and recognized me. There was terror in his face. I went at once in search of the telephone wires, and cut them. It seems now that I wasn’t quick enough in finding them.
“With my keys useless, I picked one of the dining room windows and tried to force it. But the lock was unusually strong. Anyway, I’m not used to forcing windows.
“The first thing I knew, there was a flash of fire inside and the roar of a gun. I looked in — and right where the light from a street lamp fell on the floor I saw Stewart, lying mortally wounded.
“Before God I swear that I don’t know who shot him. It was no accomplice of mine. I threw away my pistol and jimmy and started to run, for I was afraid the shot would attract attention.
“As I ran, some one began blowing a whistle and shouting for the police, and near the gate I was seen by three officers and captured.
“I thought it was all up then. But soon I reflected that my disguise was good, that no one knew I had any motive, and that I might get away with it yet and implicate Fraim. I gave my name as John Egan and sat tight.
“I did get away with it, too, until you arrested me to-night. Had Fraim been brought into my presence, it would have been all off. But he wasn’t, and the police there let me go.
“I am making this statement now because Captain Burgess tells me it will save me from the charge of murder. I swear solemnly that I didn’t murder Stewart, although I fully intended to.
“Signed — FREDERICK WESTHAVER.”
The commissioner glanced up from the paper, his lip sagging.
“Have you read this, Reilly?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Steele showed it to me.”
“Humph,” said his superior, in a dull way. “How did you happen to have this man rearrested, if I may ask, Mr. Steele?”
The private investigator smiled faintly again. “He changed his clothes.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I suspected him because of one remark that he made while impersonating a tramp at station eighteen. He wasn’t familiar with a well-known expression among hobos. Every genuine tramp in the country must know that ‘breezing it’ means stealing a train-ride, but John Egan didn’t.