This, however, was furnished the next morning, when Elizabeth Compton, white and heavy-eyed, was brought to the station to identify Jimmy. There was deep compassion in the young man’s face as he was ushered into the presence of the stricken girl, while at sight of him hers mirrored horror, contempt, and hatred.
“You know this man?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes,” she replied. “His name is Torrance. I have seen him a number of times in the past year. He worked as a clerk in a store, in the hosiery department, and waited on me there. Later I” — she hesitated— “I saw him in a place called Feinheimer’s. He was a waiter. Then he was a sparring partner, I think they call it, for a prizefighter. Some of my friends took me to a gymnasium to see the fighter training, and I recognized this man.
“I saw him again when he was driving a milk-wagon. He delivered milk at a friend’s house where I chanced to be. The last time I saw him was at my father’s home. He had obtained employment in my father’s plant as an efficiency expert. He seemed to exercise some strange power over father, who believed implicitly in him, until recently, when he evidently commenced to have doubts; for the night that the man was at our house I was sitting in the music-room when they passed through the hallway, and I heard father discharge him. But the fellow pleaded to be retained, and finally father promised to keep him for a while longer, as I recall it, at least until certain work was completed at the plant. This work was completed yesterday. That’s all I know. I do not know whether father discharged him again or not.”
Harriet Holden had accompanied her friend to the police station, and was sitting close beside her during the examination, her eyes almost constantly upon the face of the prisoner. She saw no fear there, only an expression of deep-seated sorrow for her friend.
The lieutenant was still asking questions when there came a knock at the door, which was immediately opened, revealing O’Donnell with a young woman, whom he brought inside.
“I guess we’re getting to the bottom of it,” announced the sergeant. “Look who I found workin’ over there as Compton’s stenographer.”
“Well, who is she?” demanded the lieutenant.
“A jane who used to hang out at Feinheimer’s. She has been runnin’ around with this bird. They tell me over there that Compton hired her on this fellow’s recommendation. Get hold of the Lizard now, and you’ll have the whole bunch.”
Thus did Sergeant Patrick O’Donnell solve the entire mystery with Sherlockian ease and despatch.
At Jimmy’s preliminary hearing he was held to the grand jury, and on the strength of the circumstantial evidence against him that body voted a true bill. Edith Hudson, against whom there was no evidence of any nature, was held as a witness for the State, and a net was thrown out for the Lizard which dragged in nearly every pickpocket in town except the man they sought.
Jimmy had been in jail for about a week when he received a visitor. A turnkey brought her to his cell. It was Harriet Holden. She greeted him seriously but pleasantly, and then she asked the turnkey if she might go inside.
“It’s against the rules, miss,” he said, “but I guess it will be all right.” He recalled that the sheriff had said that the girl’s father was a friend of his, and so assumed that it would be safe to relax the rules in her behalf. He had been too long an employee of the county not to know that rules are often elastic to the proper pressure.
“I have been wanting to talk to you,” said the girl to Jimmy, “ever since this terrible thing happened. Somehow I can not believe that you are guilty, and there must be some way in which you can prove your innocence.”
“I have been trying to think out how I might,” said Jimmy, “but the more I think about it the more damning the circumstantial evidence against me appears.”
“There must always be a motive for a crime like that,” said Harriet. “I cannot believe that a simple fear of his discharge would be sufficient motive for any man to kill his employer.”
“Not to kill a man who had been as good to me as Mr. Compton was,” said Jimmy, “or a man whom I admired so much as I did him. As a matter of fact, he was not going to discharge me, Miss Holden, and I had an opportunity there for a very successful future; but now that he is dead there is no one who could verify such a statement on my part.”
“Who could there be, then, who might wish to kill him, and what could the motive be?”
“I can only think,” said Jimmy, “of one man; and even in his case the idea is too horrible — too preposterous to be entertained.”
Harriet Holden looked up at him quickly, a sudden light in her eyes, and an expression of almost horrified incredulity upon her face. “You don’t mean—” she started.
“I wouldn’t even use his name in connection with the thought,” Jimmy interrupted; “but he is the only man of whom I know who could have profited by Mr. Compton’s death, and, on the other hand, whose entire future would have been blasted possibly had Mr. Compton lived until the following morning.”
The girl remained for half an hour longer, and when she left she went directly to the home of Elizabeth Compton.
“I told you, Elizabeth,” she said, “that I was going to see Mr. Torrance. You dissuaded me for some time, but I finally went today, and I am glad that I went. No one except yourself could have loved your father more than I, or have been more horrified or grieved at his death; but that is no reason why you should aid in the punishment of an innocent man, as I am confident that this man Torrance is, and I tell you Elizabeth if you were not prejudiced you would agree with me.
“I have talked with Torrance for over half an hour to-day, and since then nothing can ever make me believe that that man could commit a cold-blooded murder. Harold has always hated him — you admit that yourself — and now you are permitting him to prejudice you against the man purely on the strength of that dislike. I am going to help him. I’m going to do it, not only to obtain justice for him, but to assist in detecting and punishing the true murderer.”
“I don’t see, Harriet, how you can take any interest in such a creature,” said Elizabeth. “You know from the circumstances under which we saw him before father employed him what type of man he is, and it was further exemplified by the evidence of his relationship with that common woman of the streets.”
“He told me about her to-day,” replied Harriet. “He had only known her very casually, but she helped him once — loaned him some money when he needed it — and when he found that she had been a stenographer and wanted to give up the life she had been leading and be straight again, he helped her.
“I asked Sergeant O’Donnell particularly about that, and even he had to admit that there was no evidence whatever to implicate the girl or show that the relations between her and Mr. Torrance had been anything that was not right; and you know yourself how anxious O’Donnell has been to dig up evidence of any kind derogatory to either of them.”
“How are you going to help him?” asked Elizabeth. “Take flowers and cake to him in jail?”
There was a sneer on her face and on her lips. “If he cares for flowers and cakes,” replied Harriet, “I probably shall; but I have another plan which will probably be more practical.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
“THE ONLY FRIENDS HE HAS.”
So it befell that the next day a well-known criminal attorney called on Jimmy Torrance at the county jail. “I understand,” he said to Jimmy, “that you have retained no attorney. I have been instructed by one of my clients to take your case.”
Jimmy looked at him in silence for a moment.
“Who is going to pay you?” he asked with a smile. “I understand attorneys expect to be paid.”
“That needn’t worry you!” replied the lawyer.
“You mean that your client is going to pay for my defense? What’s his name?”
“That I am not permitted to tell you,” replied the lawyer.
“Very well. Tell your client that I appreciate his kindness, but I cannot accept it.”
/> “Don’t be a fool,” said the attorney. “This client of mine can well afford the expense, and anyway, my instructions are to defend you whether you want me to or not, so I guess you can’t help yourself.”
Jimmy laughed with the lawyer. “All right,” he said. “The first thing I wish you’d do is to get Miss Hudson out of jail. There is doubtless some reason for suspicion attaching to me because I was found alone with Mr. Compton’s body, and the pistol with which he was shot was one that had been given to me and which I kept in my desk, but there is no earthly reason why she should be detained. She could have had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“I will see what can be done,” replied the attorney, “although I had no instructions to defend her also.”
“I will make that one of the conditions under which I will accept your services,” said Jimmy.
The result was that within a few days Edith was released. From the moment that she left the jail she was aware that she was being shadowed.
“I suppose,” she thought, “that they expect to open up a fund of new clues through me,” but she was disturbed nevertheless, because she realized that it was going to make difficult a thing that she had been trying to find some means to accomplish ever since she had been arrested.
She went directly to her apartment and presently took down the telephone-receiver, and after calling a public phone in a building down-town, she listened intently while the operator was getting her connection, and before the connection was made she hung up the receiver with a smile, for she had distinctly heard the sound of a man’s breathing over the line, and she knew that in all probability O’Donnell had tapped in immediately on learning that she had been released from jail.
That evening she attended a local motion-picture theater which she often frequented. It was one of those small affairs, the width of a city block, with a narrow aisle running down either side and an emergency exit upon the alley at the far end of each aisle. The theater was darkened when she entered and, a quick glance apprizing her that no one followed her in immediately, she continued on down one of the side aisles and passed through the doorway into the alley.
Five minutes later she was in a telephone-booth in a drug-store two blocks away.
“Is this Feinheimer’s?” she asked after she had got her connection. “I want to talk to Carl.” She asked for Carl because she knew that this man who had been head-waiter at Feinheimer’s for years would know her voice.
“Is that you, Carl?” she asked as a man’s voice finally answered the telephone. “This is Little Eva.”
“Oh, hello!” said the man. “I thought you were over at the county jail.”
“I was released to-day,” she explained. “Well, listen, Carl; I’ve got to see the Lizard. I’ve simply got to see him to-night. I was being shadowed, but I got away from them. Do you know where he is?”
“I guess I could find him,” said Carl in a low voice. “You go out to Mother Kruger’s. I’ll tell him you’ll be there in about an hour.”
“I’ll be waiting in a taxi outside,” said the girl.
“Good,” said Carl. “If he isn’t there in an hour you can know that he was afraid to come. He’s layin’ pretty low.”
“All right,” said the girl, “I’ll be there. You tell him that he simply must come.” She hung up the receiver and then called a taxi. She gave a number on a side street about a half block away, where she knew it would be reasonably dark, and consequently less danger of detection.
Three-quarters of an hour later her taxi drew up beside Mother Kruger’s, but the girl did not alight. She had waited but a short time when another taxi swung in beside the road-house, turned around and backed up alongside hers. A man stepped out and peered through the glass of her machine. It was the Lizard.
Recognizing the girl he opened the door and took a seat beside her. “Well,” inquired the Lizard, “What’s on your mind?”
“Jimmy,” replied the girl.
“I thought so,” returned the Lizard. “It looks pretty bad for him, don’t it? I wish there was some way to help him.”
“He did not do it,” said the girl.
“It didn’t seem like him,” said the Lizard, “but I got it straight from a guy who knows that he done it all right.”
“Who?” asked Edith.
“Murray.”
“I thought he knew a lot about it,” said the girl. “That’s why I sent for you. You haven’t got any love for Murray, have you?”
“No,” replied the Lizard; “not so you could notice it.”
“I think Murray knows a lot about that job. If you want to help Jimmy I know where you can get the dope that will start something, anyway.”
“What is it?” asked the Lizard.
“This fellow Bince, who is assistant general manager for Compton, got a letter from Murray two or three weeks before Compton was killed. Murray enclosed a threat signed I.W.W., and his letter instructed Bince to show the threat to Compton. I haven’t got all the dope on it, but I’ve got a hunch that in some way it is connected with this job. Anyway, I’ve got both Murray’s letter and the threat he enclosed. They’re hidden in my desk at the plant. I can’t get them, of course; they wouldn’t let me in the place now, and Murray’s so strong with the police that I wouldn’t trust them, so I haven’t told any one. What I want is for you to go there to-night and get them.”
The Lizard was thinking fast. The girl knew nothing of his connection with the job. She did not know that he had entered Compton’s office and had been first to find his dead body; in fact, no one knew that. Even Murray did not know that the Lizard had succeeded in entering the plant, as the latter had told him that he was delayed, and that when he reached there a patrol and ambulance were already backed up in front of the building. He felt that he had enough knowledge, however, to make the conviction of Jimmy a very difficult proposition, but if he divulged the knowledge he had and explained how he came by it he could readily see that suspicion would be at once transferred from Jimmy to himself.
The Lizard therefore was in a quandary. Of course, if Murray’s connection was ever discovered the Lizard might then be drawn into it, but if he could keep Murray out the Lizard would be reasonably safe from suspicion, and now the girl had shown him how he might remove a damaging piece of evidence against Murray.
“You will get it, won’t you?” asked the girl.
“Where are these papers?” he asked.
“They are in the outer office which adjoins Mr. Compton’s. My desk stands at the right of the door as you enter from the main office. Remove the right-hand lower drawer and you will find the papers lying on the little wooden partition directly underneath the drawer.”
“All right,” said the Lizard; “I’ll get them.”
“Bless you, Lizard,” cried the girl. “I knew you would help. You and I are the only friends he has. If we went back on him he’d be sent up, for there’s lots of money being used against him. He might even be hanged. I know from what I have heard that the prosecuting attorney intends to ask for the death penalty.”
The Lizard made no reply as he started to leave the taxi.
“Take them to his attorney,” said the girl, and she gave him the name and address.
The Lizard grunted and entered his own cab. As he did so a man on a motorcycle drew up on the opposite side and peered through the window. The driver had started his motor as the newcomer approached. From her cab the girl saw the Lizard and the man on the motorcycle look into each other’s face for a moment, then she heard the Lizard’s quick admonition to his driver, “Beat it, bo!”
A sharp “Halt!” came from the man on the motorcycle, but the taxicab leaped forward, and, accelerating rapidly, turned to the left into the road toward the city. The girl had guessed at the first glance that the man on the motorcycle was a police officer. As the Lizard’s taxi raced away the officer circled quickly and started in pursuit. “No chance,” thought the girl. “He’ll get caught sure.” She could hear the s
taccato reports from the open exhaust of the motorcycle diminishing rapidly in the distance, indicating the speed of the pursued and the pursuer.
And then from the distance came a shot and then another and another. She leaned forward and spoke to her own driver. “Go on to Elmhurst,” she said, “and then come back to the city on the St. Charles Road.”
It was after two o’clock in the morning when the Lizard entered an apartment on Ashland Avenue which he had for several years used as a hiding-place when the police were hot upon his trail. The people from whom he rented the room were eminently respectable Jews who thought their occasional roomer what he represented himself to be, a special agent for one of the federal departments, a vocation which naturally explained the Lizard’s long absences and unusual hours.
Once within his room the Lizard sank into a chair and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, although it was by no means a warm night. He drew a folded paper from his inside pocket, which, when opened, revealed a small piece of wrapping paper within. They were Murray’s letter to Bince and the enclosure.
“Believe me,” muttered the Lizard, “that was the toughest job I ever pulled off and all I gets is two pieces of paper, but I don’t know but what they’re worth it.”
He sat for a long time looking at the papers in his hand, but he did not see them. He was thinking of other things: of prison walls that he had eluded so far through years of crime; of O’Donnell, whom he knew to be working on the Compton case and whose boast it had been that sooner or later he would get the Lizard; of what might naturally be expected were the papers in his hands to fall into the possession of Torrance’s attorney. It would mean that Murray would be immediately placed in jeopardy, and the Lizard knew Murray well enough to know that he would sacrifice his best friend to save himself, and the Lizard was by no means Murray’s best friend.
He realized that he knew more about the Compton murder case than any one else. He was of the opinion that he could clear it up if he were almost any one other than the Lizard, but with the record of his past life against him, would any one believe him? In order to prove his assertion it would be necessary to make admissions that might incriminate himself, and there would be Murray and the Compton millions against him; and as he pondered these things there ran always through his mind the words of the girl, “You and I are the only friends he has.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 744