They advised Mr. Leg to advertise a reward of five thousand dollars for Patrick Cummings, since he had expressed his willingness to spend ten times that sum if necessary, and Mr. Leg himself favored the idea. But Dan, who had surprised the lawyer on his return from the commissioner’s office by not being surprised at what the commissioner had said, vetoed it, saying that it might be all right to offer a reward if the police were on their side, but utterly futile under the circumstances.
“Besides,” argued the youth, “the first time Cummings saw the reward posted he would fly to cover, if he isn’t there already. Public rewards are never any good, except to stimulate the police. And, besides that, I have a reason of my own.”
Dan was the busiest of all. He spent a whole day going inch by inch through the basement where Cummings had lived, though he had previously searched it; he interviewed the Scotchman next door several times; he found and talked with everyone in the neighborhood who had ever seen the missing man; he pursued vainly a thousand avenues of information. It seemed that Patrick Cummings had come from nowhere and gone back to the same place.
His first appearance in the discoverable world had been the day when, nearly three years back, he had called at the office of Levis & Levis to ask for a job as janitor; his last, the evening of the murder. It got so that one thing, one name, one person, occupied Dan’s mind like a mania; he thought, ate, slept, and breathed Patrick Cummings.
He forgot to open Miss Venner’s desk for her of mornings; he forgot to comb his hair; he forgot to look when he crossed the street.
He came near having cause to regret this latter neglect when one afternoon, hearing a warning honk, he jumped in the wrong direction and was knocked flat on his back by a touring car as it whizzed by. He scrambled to his feet in time to see the well-dressed figure of Judge Fraser Manton in the tonneau.
Finally, when there appeared to be nothing else to do, Dan would walk the streets for hours at a time, cudgeling his brain for a scheme to find a man that evidently didn’t want to be found, and meanwhile watching the passersby. He had followed many a gray-haired man with a scraggly mustache in the past three weeks; once he had found one named Cummings, but not Patrick.
The number of suspects rounded up by the detectives mounted into the hundreds, so eager were they, for Mr. Leg had let it be known that the successful man would get a good-sized check.
Late one afternoon, a week before the date set for Mount’s trial, Dan was walking down Eighth Avenue, tired, dejected, and ready to give up, but, nevertheless, with his eyes open. As he passed the tawdry front of a motion picture theater he stopped to glance over a group of men standing near, and then half unconsciously began to glance over the flaring posters displayed at the entrance to the theater. “The Scotchman said Cummings was a movie fan,” he was thinking. Suddenly he gave a start, stopped still, as if transfixed by a sudden thought, and uttered an ejaculation of discovery.
“I never thought of that!” he exclaimed aloud, so that the girl in the ticket booth looked over at him with an amused grin. He stood for several minutes, lost in consideration of the scheme that had entered his mind. Suddenly he pulled himself together, dashed into the avenue, and hopped on a downtown trolley car.
Fifteen minutes later he was in the office, explaining his plan to Mr. Leg with eager tongue. His enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by his employer’s lack of it.
“All right,” said the lawyer indifferently; “try it if you want to, though I don’t think much of it. I’ll foot the bill and stand for the reward if you find him. Write the letter yourself.”
Dan went into the other room to ask Miss Venner for permission to use her machine. She granted it politely; she had had very little to say to Dan lately, since he had begun to neglect the thousand little attentions he had always paid her. He sat down with a frown and began to click.
Half an hour later he submitted the following letter to his employer:
MANAGER OF THE EMPIRE MOTION PICTURE THEATER,
2168 Eighth Avenue, New York.
Dear Sir:
I am trying to find a man whom I need as witness in an important case. I make you the following proposition:
You are to flash on your screen at every performance the words: “Patrick Cummings, formerly of 714 West 157th Street, is wanted on the telephone.” If Cummings appears in response, tell him that the party rang off after asking that he wait till they call again. Then telephone at once to my office, 11902 Rector, and report that Cummings is there; and you are to hold Cummings, if possible, until someone from my office arrives. If it is impossible to hold him, have him followed by one of your employees when he leaves.
In case I find Cummings with this assistance from you, I will pay you five thousand dollars cash. As to my reliability and integrity, as well as ability to pay that amount, I refer you to the Murray National Bank of New York.
I am enclosing a detailed description of Cummings.
This offer is good for only ten days from the date of this letter.
“It’s a pretty good idea,” admitted Mr. Leg when he had finished reading it; “but what makes you think that Cummings will be fool enough to walk into the trap, provided he sees the bait?”
“That’s just it,” explained Dan. “I’m counting on his being somewhat of a fool. Put yourself in his place, sir. Here he is, sitting in the movies, when suddenly he sees his own name thrown on the screen, and, so that there may be no mistake about it, even the address where he lived. It won’t occur to him that it is merely an attempt to find him; he will immediately conclude that whoever is asking for him must already know where he is, and the chances are that he’ll be mighty anxious to find out who the call is from. At any rate, it’s worth trying. It won’t cost much unless we find him, and you won’t care then.”
“I certainly won’t,” agreed the lawyer grimly. “I didn’t tell you, Dan, that I went to see Hammel again yesterday. Nothing doing.”
“Of course not, sir.” Dan took back the letter. “I’m going to take this right downstairs and have them run off ten thousand copies on the multigraph. Then I’ll telephone to the Trow people for a list of motion picture theaters, and to an agency for ten or twelve girls to come and help us send them out. I think it would be best, sir, if you would sign the letters. If the signature were multigraphed perhaps they wouldn’t feel so sure of the reward.”
“By Jove, you’ve got it all down,” observed Mr. Leg. “Yes, the letters ought to be signed, but you can do it as well as I. They won’t know the difference.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to be uptown for dinner.”
Thus was Dan’s scheme set to work. Somewhat to his surprise, Miss Venner volunteered to stay and help; and, with the assistance of some dozen girls sent in by an agency, they had the ten thousand letters signed, addressed, sealed, and stamped by midnight. Dan carried them to the main post office, after which he escorted Miss Venner home.
Meanwhile, Mr. Leg was acquiring a fresh stock of indignation. His dinner engagement uptown was only half social; it was an informal meeting of a special committee of one of the most exclusive clubs of the city to arrange for a dinner to be given in honor of one of their members on the occasion of his return from a high diplomatic position abroad. The membership of the committee included James Reynolds, the banker; Alfred Sinnott and Corkran Updegraff, capitalists; Judge Fraser Manton, and two or three others.
Although Mr. Leg had met Judge Manton several years before, and had of course seen him many times since, they had never got beyond a bowing acquaintance. So when, after dinner was over and they retired to the club library, Mr. Leg approached the judge with a view to conversation, there was a slight tinge of formality in his manner. They talked a little on a topic that had been discussed earlier in the evening, on which they had disagreed.