He was wide awake now.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No,” sullenly.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
What can you do with a bird like that?
“Farr,” I said, “I want you to go down to headquarters with me.”
He moved like a streak and his sullen manner had me a little off my guard; but I turned my head in time to take the punch above my ear instead of on the chin. At that, it carried me off my feet and I wouldn’t have bet a nickel that my skull wasn’t dented; but luck was with me and I fell across the doorway, holding the door open, and managed to scramble up, stumble through some rooms, and catch one of his feet as it was going through the bathroom window to join its mate on the fire-escape. I got a split lip and a kicked shoulder in the scuffle, but he behaved after a while.
I didn’t stop to look at his stuff — that could be done more regularly later — but put him in a taxicab and took him to the Hall of Justice. I was afraid that if I waited too long Clane would take a run-out on me.
Clane’s mouth fell open when he saw Farr, but neither of them said anything.
I was feeling pretty chirp in spite of my bruises.
“Let’s get this bird’s finger-prints and get it over with,” I said to O’Hara.
Dean was not in.
“And keep an eye on Clane. I think maybe he’ll have another story to tell us in a few minutes.”
We got in the elevator and took our men up to the identification bureau, where we put Farr’s fingers on the pad. Phels — he is the department’s expert — took one look at the results and turned to me.
“Well, what of it?”
“What of what?” I asked.
“This isn’t the man who killed Henry Grover!”
Clane laughed, Farr laughed, O’Hara laughed, and Phels laughed. I didn’t! I stood there and pretended to be thinking, trying to get myself in hand.
“Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?” I blurted, my face a nice, rosy red.
You can tell how badly upset I was by that: it’s plain suicide to say a thing like that to a finger-print expert!
Phels didn’t answer; just looked me up and down.
Clane laughed again, like a crow cawing, and turned his ugly face to me.
“Do you want to take my prints again, Mr. Slick Private Detective?”
“Yeah,” I said, “just that!”
I had to say something.
Clane held his hands out to Phels, who ignored them, speaking to me with heavy sarcasm.
“Better take them yourself this time, so you’ll be sure it’s been done right.”
I was mad clean through — of course it was my own fault — but I was pig-headed enough to go through with anything, particularly anything that would hurt somebody’s feelings; so I said:
“That’s not a bad idea!”
I walked over and took hold of one of Clane’s hands. I’d never taken a finger-print before, but I had seen it done often enough to throw a bluff. I started to ink Clane’s fingers and found that I was holding them wrong — my own fingers were in the way.
Then I came back to earth. The balls of Clane’s fingers were too smooth — or rather, too slick — without the slight clinging feeling that belongs to flesh. I turned his hand over so fast that I nearly upset him and looked at the fingers. I don’t know what I had expected to find but I didn’t find anything — not anything that I could name.
“Phels,” I called, “look here!”
He forgot his injured feelings and bent to look at Clane’s hand.
“I’ll be—” he began, and then the two of us were busy for a few minutes taking Clane down and sitting on him, while O’Hara quieted Farr, who had also gone suddenly into action.
When things were peaceful again Phels examined Clane’s hands carefully, scratching the fingers with a finger-nail.
He jumped up, leaving me to hold Clane, and paying no attention to my, “What is it?” got a cloth and some liquid, and washed the fingers thoroughly. We took his prints again. They matched the bloody ones taken from Grover’s house!
Then we all sat down and had a nice talk.
“I told you about the trouble Henny had with that fellow Waldeman,” Clane began, after he and Farr had decided to come clean: there was nothing else they could do. “And how he won out in the argument because Waldeman disappeared. Well, Henny done for him — shot him one night and buried him — and I saw it. Grover was one bad actor in them days, a tough hombre to tangle with, so I didn’t try to make nothing out of what I knew.
“But after he got older and richer he got soft — a lot of men go like that — and must have begun worrying over it; because when I ran into him in New York accidentally about four years ago it didn’t take me long to learn that he was pretty well tamed, and he told me that he hadn’t been able to forget the look on Waldeman’s face when he drilled him.
“So I took a chance and braced Henny for a couple thousand. I got them easy, and after that, whenever I was flat I either went to him or sent him word, and he always came across. But I was careful not to crowd him too far. I knew what a terror he was in the old days, and I didn’t want to push him into busting loose again.
“But that’s what I did in the end. I ’phoned him Friday that I needed money and he said he’d call me up and let me know where to meet him the next night. He called up around half past nine Saturday night and told me to come out to the house. So I went out there and he was waiting for me on the porch and took me upstairs and gave me the ten thousand. I told him this was the last time I’d ever bother him — I always told him that — it had a good effect on him.
“Naturally I wanted to get away as soon as I had the money but he must have felt sort of talkative for a change, because he kept me there for half an hour or so, gassing about men we used to know up in the province.
“After awhile I began to get nervous. He was getting a look in his eyes like he used to have when he was young. And then all of a sudden he flared up and tied into me. He had me by the throat and was bending me back across the table when my hand touched that brass knife. It was either me or him — so I let him have it where it would do the most good.
“I beat it then and went back to the hotel. The newspapers were full of it next day, and had a whole lot of stuff about bloody finger-prints. That gave me a jolt! I didn’t know nothing about finger-prints, and here I’d left them all over the dump.
“And then I got to worrying over the whole thing, and it seemed like Henny must have my name written down somewheres among his papers, and maybe had saved some of my letters or telegrams — though they were wrote in careful enough language. Anyway I figured the police would want to be asking me some questions sooner or later; and there I’d be with fingers that fit the bloody prints, and nothing for what Farr calls a alibi.
“That’s when I thought of Farr. I had his address and I knew he had been a finger-print sharp in the East, so I decided to take a chance on him. I went to him and told him the whole story and between us we figured out what to do.
“He said he’d dope my fingers, and I was to come here and tell the story we’d fixed up, and have my finger-prints taken, and then I’d be safe no matter what leaked out about me and Henny. So he smeared up the fingers and told me to be careful not to shake hands with anybody or touch anything, and I came down here and everything went like three of a kind.
“Then that little fat guy” — meaning me — “came around to the hotel last night and as good as told me that he thought I had done for Henny and that I better come down here this morning. I beat it for Farr’s right away to see whether I ought to run for it or sit tight, and Farr said, ‘Sit tight!’ So I stayed there all night and he fixed up my hands this morning. That’s my yarn!”