They had had a worse time with Gatewood than I — he had wanted to put the whole thing in the newspapers, with the offer of a reward, photographs and all. Of course, Gatewood was right in claiming that this was the most effective way of catching the kidnappers — but it would have been tough on his daughter if her captors happened to be persons of sufficiently hardened character. And kidnappers as a rule aren’t lambs.
I looked at the letter they had sent. It was printed with pencil on ruled paper of the kind that is sold in pads by every stationery dealer in the world. The envelope was just as common, also addressed in pencil, and post-marked “San Francisco, September 20, 9 P.M.” That was the night she had been seized.
The letter reads:
SIR:
WE HAVE YOUR CHARMING DAUGHTER AND PLACE A VALUE OF $50,000 UPON HER. YOU WILL GET THE MONEY READY IN $100 BILLS AT ONCE SO THERE WILL BE NO DELAY WHEN WE TELL YOU HOW IT IS TO BE PAID OVER TO US.
WE BEG TO ASSURE YOU THAT THINGS WILL GO BADLY WITH YOUR DAUGHTER SHOULD YOU NOT DO AS YOU ARE TOLD, OR SHOULD YOU BRING THE POLICE INTO THIS MATTER, OR SHOULD YOU DO ANYTHING FOOLISH.
$50,000 IS ONLY A SMALL FRACTION OF WHAT YOU STOLE WHILE WE WERE LIVING IN MUD AND BLOOD IN FRANCE FOR YOU, AND WE MEAN TO GET THAT MUCH OR......!
THREE.
A peculiar note in several ways. They are usually written with a great pretense of partial illiterateness. Almost always there’s an attempt to lead suspicion astray. Perhaps the ex-service stuff was there for that purpose... or perhaps not.
Then there was a postscript:
WE KNOW A CHINAMAN WHO WILL BUY HER EVEN AFTER WE ARE THROUGH WITH HER — IN CASE YOU WON’T LISTEN TO REASON.
The letter from the girl was written jerkily on the same kind of paper, apparently with the same pencil.
Daddy—
Please do as they ask! I am so afraid—
Audrey
A door at the other end of the room opened, and a head came through.
“O’Gar! Thode! Gatewood just called up. Get up to his office right away!”
The four of us tumbled out of the Hall of Justice and into a machine.
Gatewood was pacing his office like a maniac when we pushed aside enough hirelings to get to him. His face was hot with blood and his eyes had an insane glare in them.
“She just phoned me!” he cried thickly, when he saw us.
It took a minute or two to get him calm enough to tell us about it.
“She called me on the phone. Said, ‘Oh, daddy! Do something! I can’t stand this — they’re killing me!’ I asked her if she knew where she was, and she said, ‘No, but I can see Twin Peaks from here. There’s three men and a woman, and—’ And then I heard a man curse, and a sound as if he had struck her, and the phone went dead. I tried to get central to give me the number, but she couldn’t! It’s a damned outrage the way the telephone system is run. We pay enough for service, God knows, and we...”
O’Gar scratched his head and turned away from Gatewood.
“In sight of Twin Peaks! There are hundreds of houses that are!”
Gatewood meanwhile had finished denouncing the telephone company and was pounding on his desk with a paperweight to attract our attention.
“Have you people done anything at all?” he demanded.
I answered him with another question: “Have you got the money ready?”
“No,” he said, “I won’t be held up by anybody!”
But he said it mechanically, without his usual conviction — the talk with his daughter had shaken him out of some of his stubbornness. He was thinking of her safety a little now instead of altogether of his own fighting spirit.
We went at him hammer and tongs for a few minutes, and after a while he sent a clerk out for the money.
We split up the field then. Thode was to take some men from headquarters and see what he could find in the Twin Peaks end of town; but we weren’t very optimistic over the prospects there — the territory was too large.
Lusk and O’Gar were to carefully mark the bills that the clerk brought from the bank, and then stick as close to Gatewood as they could without attracting attention. I was to go out to Gatewood’s house and stay there.
The abductors had plainly instructed Gatewood to get the money ready immediately so that they could arrange to get it on short notice — not giving him time to communicate with anyone or make any plans.
Gatewood was to get hold of the newspapers, give them the whole story, with the $10,000 reward he was offering for the abductors’ capture, to be published as soon as the girl was safe — so that we would get the help of publicity at the earliest moment possible without jeopardizing the girl.
The police in all the neighboring towns had already been notified — that had been done before the girl’s phone message had assured us that she was held in San Francisco.
Nothing happened at the Gatewood residence all that evening. Harvey Gatewood came home early; and after dinner he paced his library floor and drank whiskey until bedtime, demanding every few minutes that we, the detectives in the case, do something besides sit around like a lot of damned mummies. O’Gar, Lusk and Thode were out in the street, keeping an eye on the house and neighborhood.
At midnight Harvey Gatewood went to bed. I declined a bed in favor of the library couch, which I dragged over beside the telephone, an extension of which was in Gatewood’s bedroom.
At two-thirty the bell rang. I listened in while Gatewood talked from his bed.
A man’s voice, crisp and curt: “Gatewood?”
“Yes.”
“Got the dough?”
“Yes.”
Gatewood’s voice was thick and blurred — I could imagine the boiling that was going on inside him.
“Good!” came the brisk voice. “Put a piece of paper around it, and leave the house with it, right away! Walk down Clay street, keeping on the same side as your house. Don’t walk too fast and keep walking. If everything’s all right, and there’s no elbows tagging along, somebody’ll come up to you between your house and the water-front. They’ll have a handkerchief up to their face for a second, and then they’ll let it fall to the ground.
“When you see that, you’ll lay the money on the pavement, turn around and walk back to your house. If the money isn’t marked, and you don’t try any fancy tricks, you’ll get your daughter back in an hour or two. If you try to pull anything — remember what we wrote you about the Chink! Got it straight?”
Gatewood sputtered something that was meant for an affirmative, and the telephone clicked silent.
I didn’t waste any of my precious time tracing the call — it would be from a public telephone, I knew — but yelled up the stairs to Gatewood:
“You do as you were told, and don’t try any foolishness!”
Then I ran out into the early morning air to find the police detectives and the post office inspector.
They had been joined by two plainclothes men, and had two automobiles waiting. I told them what the situation was, and we laid hurried plans.
O’Gar was to drive in one of the machines down Sacramento street, and Thode, in the other, down Washington street. These streets parallel Clay, one on each side. They were to drive slowly, keeping pace with Gatewood, and stopping at each cross street to see that he passed.
When he failed to cross within a reasonable time they were to turn up to Clay street — and their actions from then on would have to be guided by chance and their own wits.