Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

The drivers of the waiting cars stared after the hatless guest.

The other detective, the beefy man who had traced him to his hotel, spoke. “Now look-a-here, bo, you come clean and maybe we can do you good,” he began amicably. “But you gotta come across, see?”

Orrin digested this and concluded that no reply was required of him, for they were already crossing the street.

“You gotta come across,” repeated the big man, with more insistence.

“Quite so,” agreed Orrin, and fell silent.

“You come clean,” wheedled Orrin’s friend; “for the State, eh? Self-defense or something, wasn’t it? You’re a friend of the prosecutor. That ’ll help.”

“My dear fellow,” Orrin said patiently, “sometimes words make sense when there is no real thought conveyed or intended like in nonsense rimes. Just what do you mean?”

“He’s a nut, Swarts,” volunteered the other detective.

“One more chance,” said Swarts, halting and speaking slowly as to a child. “Maybe you’re a foreigner that don’t understand English good. Here’s what’s what.

“After you give the driver the works you hop the load of bootleg and lam down the street a coupla blocks, and then park and walk away. We find your hat in the garage and look for a bareheaded man walking across town for a subway, not forgetting to ask in hat stores. You was sap enough to tell the hat store clerk you wanted to get to the Belmont Hotel.

“I go to the Belmont and ask. That was easy because your name was in your hat all the time. When I flag you what do you do? Send me running after an empty taxi, and walk off again.

“Smooth, ain’t you? But the telephone girl keeps a record. I try the hospital and draw a blank. Then I get to whatsisname Jones’s and find you have left there and gone to the prosecutor’s own house. What for? I ask you. To give yourself up, or did you think that was the last place we would look for you?”

Through the mist of strange words Orrin was beginning to get a very clear understanding of the delicate position in which he found himself, but he kept silent and maintained his pose of bewilderment.

The other man said with impatience, “Aw, come on, Swarts. It’s too cold to stand here talking. The captain’s across the street looking over the job and he said to bring this guy to him as soon as you made the pinch.”

“I was going to take him to the Ten Eyck Avenue station and book him,” said Swarts, “but it’s all one to me so long as I get the credit for it. It’s my pinch, and the first time I’ve had a murder.”

They walked Orrin up the drive, circling the gloomy house, to the farther side and under the porte-cochère beyond which was the garage, its wide doors open.

There was an atmosphere of repressed excitement about them, the glittering buttons of uniformed officers striking flashes of fire in the light of lanterns, several police cars, some of them with engines chugging, men in citizen’s clothes who looked at Orrin professionally, and younger men — reporters Orrin thought — who asked personal questions.

A policeman said to Swarts: “The chief is inside razzing Honest Gus Ginsberg. You better go right in.”

He made way for Orrin and the detective, but blocked the doorway, grinning, in the face of the reporters.

Inside, a white-haired, red-faced man in police captain’s uniform sat at a flattop desk, at his left sat a stenographer intent on his notebook. In another chair on the opposite side of the desk, lounging with an air of good humor, an overfed citizen smirked and gesticulated as he protested, “And I don’t know another thing about it, cap. Don’t you believe me?”

“Sure I believe you, Ginsberg. Ain’t you called Honest Gus?” snarled the captain. He paused to glare at Orrin, motioning Swarts to herd his prisoner into a corner and wait.

“You was just looking in, Gus, to pass the time o’ day with your old pal, Mike Laffy, and everything happened before you came in. You just walked into trouble by chance, Gus. But I’m going to hold you just the same! Go outside now.”

“Oh, all right. Captain O’Down,” agreed Honest Gus, amiably; “you know your own business best — and you’ve got your job to look out for.”

In spite of Ginsberg’s oily, smooth manner his last words suggested a veiled threat.

A fourth man, a clear-eyed, quiet, observant man, with the air of a scholar rather than of a policeman, half-seated on a low bookcase a little behind the captain, was pulling thoughtfully on a cold brier.

“Am I right, chief?” asked O’Down, substituting respect for his truculent manner.

The quiet man, who had been casting-swift, appraising glances at Orrin, replied only with an indifferent lift of eyebrows and one shoulder and strolled out. The detective, Swarts, must have caught a private signal, for he followed, leaving Orrin alone in his corner.