Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 134: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

924 would get all the credit, so I made Ethel help me hustle Joe up that alley and through another that I was wise to, till I could get him to Pink-Eye Mike’s where we kept him till the morning of the homicide hearing. ‘Ethel rushed off to the hospital where they'd taken you, Cliff, and as soon as she’d found out you only had a nicked rib from Joe’s shot she came and told me, and then beat it away somewhere. That’s all I had to do with it.” “It was more than any of the rest di to help Cliff!” Lucian Baynes remarked. “ T feel like a crass idiot! —Cliff, tell us now what put you on the right track about the real phone number written there on the wall.” “Ethel did that!” Cliff smiled. ‘“ That was why I took her into partnership with me, but I might have known I couldn’t handle her!” He told them in detail all that had oc- curred since Ethel’s discovery, to the mid- night hour when he had followed the mur- derer from the lonely Dobson farm by way of trolley and ferry to one after another of his old friends and accomplices until he found a temporary shelter at Al’s illicit saloon. “Then you appeared on the scene, Phil, trailing Lucy when she came Wednesday evening to take Joe down to Lazarus’ cel- lar,’ Cliff added with a laugh. “ You trailed them and I brought up the rear, but when you two halted in the alley after she had reappeared I slipped past you and went into the cellar after Joe. The rest you know, but I made one bonehead play and I’m going to confess it. Do you remember, Phil, when we first examined the Monckton house I asked you to jimmy the desk in the room where the murder took place and bring me whatever papers you found there that contained anything except ordinary ac- counts?” Phil Howe nodded. “I did. I brought you some that just had figures and dates written on them, and the initials ‘R. W.’ and an ‘R’ by itself here and there. You never said anything about them after I gave them to you.” “* Because I forgot them completely! I never even examined them until George ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. learned from that private detective that the old man had hired him to follow Richard and queer his financial game. Then I found those papers were a record of Radway Wicks’ reports and expense account, to- gether with the various sums De Puyster Monckton had spent in his different at- tempts to break his son. Richard had to be told, of course, after he was set free and his father’s own lawyer Raymond Sanders supplied the motive. “The old man was determined to ruin Richard in Wall Street in the hope that it would break his pride and Richard would come to him for a reconciliation, willing at last to carry on the banking _ institution which his ancestors had founded. It hadn’t anything to do with the crime, but it com- plicated the investigation rather seriously for us. Did Wicks explain to you why he went to the Manor late that Saturday night?” Cliff turned to George, who nodded. “He trusts to our appreciation of the ethics of our calling not to give him away, but he went to get possession, if he could, of the very memoranda which Phil had found and given to you. He’d been paid good money, but he’d lent himself to a pretty rotten game of the old man’s even if it was from a clean motive, and it would put him and his agency in a shady light . and injure his business.” George paused and added: “ It all seems clear enough now, especially with Joe’s confession. Cliff had doped out how the murder occurred accurately, hadn’t he?” “Yes.” Rex took up the typed sheets from the table. ‘“‘ Here’s the verbatim re- port on it. Let me see—Joe tells about the Regnier woman being ready to quit and line up another crib to crack, but they thought they’d make a clean sweep of that one by grabbing whatever valuables were left unguarded in the town house. Joe found it a cinch—he was working alone on Lucy’s tip—and when he’d finished search- ing old Mr. Monckton’s room he noticed the phone on the wall and couldn’t resist calling up Charlie, who was waiting for him at Al’s. ‘* Here’s what he says himself: ‘ I thought it would be a hell of a joke and when I got comniiclooo! S (©