Kennedy had firmly twisted her wrist until, with a little scream of pain, she let go the door handle. Then he gently pushed her aside, and the next instant Craig had his hand inside the collar of Dr. Coleman, society physician, proprietor of the Coleman Chemical Works downtown, the real leader of the drug gang that was debauching whole sections of the metropolis.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FAMILY SKELETON
Surprised though we were at the unmasking of Dr. Coleman, there was nothing to do but to follow the thing out. In such cases we usually ran into the greatest difficulty—organized vice. This was no exception.
Even when cases involved only a clever individual or a prominent family, it was the same. I recall, for example, the case of a well-known family in a New York suburb, which was particularly difficult. It began in a rather unusual manner, too.
“Mr. Kennedy—I am ruined—ruined.”
It was early one morning that the telephone rang and I answered it. A very excited German, breathless and incoherent, was evidently at the other end of the wire.
I handed the receiver to Craig and picked up the morning paper lying on the table.
“Minturn—dead?” I heard Craig exclaim. “In the paper this morning? I’ll be down to see you directly.”
Kennedy almost tore the paper from me. In the next to the end column where late news usually is dropped was a brief account of the sudden death of Owen Minturn, one of the foremost criminal lawyers of the city, in Josephson’s Baths downtown.
It ended: “It is believed by the coroner that Mr. Minturn was shocked to death and evidence is being sought to show that two hundred and forty volts of electricity had been thrown into the attorney’s body while he was in the electric bath. Joseph Josephson, the proprietor of the bath, who operated the switchboard, is being held, pending the completion of the inquiry.”