Phels turned to Farr.
“I’ve seen faked prints before, but never any this good. How’d you do it?”
These scientific birds are funny. Here was Farr looking a nice, long stretch in the face as “accessory after the fact,” and yet he brightened up under the admiration in Phel’s tone and answered with a voice that was chock-full of pride.
“It’s simple! I got hold of a man whose prints I knew weren’t in any police gallery — I didn’t want any slip up there — and took his prints and put them on a copper plate, using the ordinary photo-engraving process, but etching it pretty deep. Then I coated Clane’s fingers with gelatin — just enough to cover all his markings — and pressed them against the plates. That way I got everything, even to the pores, and...”
When I left the bureau ten minutes later Farr and Phels were still sitting knee to knee, jabbering away at each other as only a couple of birds who are cuckoo on the same subject can.
Crooked Souls
(Also published as “The Gatewood Caper”)
Originally appeared in The Black Mask, 15 October 1923
Harvey Gatewood had issued orders that I was to be admitted as soon as I arrived, so it only took me a little less than fifteen minutes to thread my way past the door-keepers, office boys, and secretaries who filled up most of the space between the Gatewood Lumber Corporation’s front door and the president’s private office. His office was large, all mahogany and bronze and green plush, with a mahogany desk as big as a bed in the center of the floor.
Gatewood, leaning across the desk, began to bark at me as soon as the obsequious clerk who had bowed me in bowed himself out.
“My daughter was kidnapped last night! I want the... that did it if it takes every cent I got!”
“Tell me about it,” I suggested, drawing up the chair that he hadn’t thought to offer me.
But he wanted results, it seemed, and not questions, and so I wasted nearly an hour getting information that he could have given me in fifteen minutes.
He’s a big bruiser of a man, something over two hundred pounds of hard red flesh, and a czar from the top of his bullet head to the toes of his shoes that would have been at least number twelves if they hadn’t been made to measure.
He had made his several millions by sandbagging everybody that stood in his way, and the rage that he’s burning up with now doesn’t make him any easier to deal with.
His wicked jaw is sticking out like a knob of granite and his eyes are filmed with blood — he’s in a lovely frame of mind. For a while it looks as if the Continental Detective Agency is going to lose a client; because I’ve made up my mind that he’s going to tell me all I want to know, or I’m going to chuck up the job. But finally I got the story out of him.
His daughter Audrey had left their house on Clay street at about seven o’clock the preceding evening, telling her maid that she was going for a walk. She had not returned that night — though Gatewood had not known that until after he had read the letter that came this morning.
The letter had been from someone who said that she had been kidnapped. It demanded fifty thousand dollars for her release; and instructed Gatewood to get the money ready in hundred dollar bills, so that there might be no delay when he is told in what manner it is to be paid over to his daughter’s captors. As proof that the demand was not a hoax, a lock of the girl’s hair, a ring she always wore, and a brief note from her, asking her father to comply with the demands, had been enclosed.
Gatewood had received the letter at his office, and had telephoned to his house immediately. He had been told that the girl’s bed had not been slept in the previous night, and that none of the servants had seen her since she started out for her walk. He had then notified the police, turning the letter over to them; and, a few minutes later, he had decided to employ private detectives also.
“Now,” he burst out, after I had wormed these things out of him, and he had told me that he knew nothing of his daughter’s associates or habits, “go ahead and do something! I’m not paying you to sit around and talk about it!”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Me? I’m going to put those... behind the bars if it takes every cent I’ve got in the world!”
“Sure! But first you can get that fifty thousand ready, so you can give it to them when they ask for it.”
He clicked his jaw shut and thrust his face into mine.
“I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life! And I’m too old to start now!” he said. “I’m going to call these people’s bluff!”
“That’s going to make it lovely for your daughter. But, aside from what it’ll do to her, it’s the wrong play. Fifty thousand isn’t a whole lot to you, and paying it over will give us two chances that we haven’t got now. One when the payment is made — a chance to either nab whoever comes for it or get a line on them. And the other when your daughter is returned. No matter how careful they are it’s a cinch that she’ll be able to tell us something that will help us grab them.”
He shook his head angrily, and I was tired of arguing with him. So I left him, hoping that he’d see the wisdom of the course I had advised before too late.
At the Gatewood residence I found butlers, second men, chauffeurs, cooks, maids, upstairs girls, downstairs girls, and a raft of miscellaneous flunkies — he had enough servants to run a hotel.
What they told me amounted to this: The girl had not received a phone call, note by messenger, or telegram — the time-honored devices for luring a victim out to a murder or abduction — before she left the house. She had told her maid that she would be back within an hour or two; but the maid had not been alarmed when her mistress failed to return all that night.
Audrey was the only child, and since her mother’s death she had come and gone to suit herself. She and her father didn’t hit it off very well together — their natures were too much alike, I gathered — and he never knew where she was; and there was nothing unusual about her remaining away all night, as she seldom bothered to leave word when she was going to stay overnight with friends.
She was nineteen years old, but looked several years older; about five feet five inches tall, and slender. She had blue eyes, brown hair, — very thick and long, — was pale and very nervous. Her photographs, of which I took a handful, showed that her eyes were large, her nose small and regular, and her chin obstinately pointed.
She was not beautiful, but in the one photograph where a smile had wiped off the sullenness of her mouth, she was at least pretty.
When she left the house she had worn a light tweed skirt and jacket with a London tailor’s labels in them, a buff silk shirtwaist with stripes a shade darker, brown wool stockings, low-heeled brown oxfords, and an untrimmed grey felt hat.
I went up to her rooms — she had three on the third floor — and looked through all her stuff. I found nearly a bushel of photographs of men, boys, and girls; and a great stack of letters of varying degrees of intimacy, signed with a wide assortment of names and nicknames. I made notes of all the addresses I found.
Nothing there seemed to have any bearing on her abduction, but there was a chance that one of the names and addresses might be of someone who had served as a decoy. Also, some of her friends might be able to tell us something of value.
I dropped in at the Agency and distributed the names and addresses among the three operatives who were idle, sending them out to see what they could dig up.
Then I reached the police detectives who were working on the case — O’Gar and Thode — by telephone, and went down to the Hall of Justice to meet them. Lusk, a post office inspector, was also there. We turned the job around and around, looking at it from every angle, but not getting very far. We were all agreed, however, that we couldn’t take a chance on any publicity, or work in the open, until the girl was safe.