“Poor little sis!” he said, softly. “Plucky little mother of the tenements! Taking a full-grown man’s place! But what a handicap!”
Her eyes opened. “Oh,” she fluttered, her thin, sensitive lips quivering in apology, “I fainted, didn’t I? How queer. I never fainted before. I cannot afford to give way like that. Sometimes, though! Oh, sometimes I wish I could! I wanted to in front of the detectives—my brain whirled and whirled and whirled with fire like pinwheels but I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction!” Her slight hands with their long fingers clenched; her eyes sparkled. “Harrigan. That is his name. He was the worst. The brute! oh, if I were a man! I would kill him for what he said to me!”
“Never mind Harrigan. Leave him to me,” said Lanagan. “You are only exciting yourself. Go home now and try not to worry. We are going to look into your brother’s case.”
“Thank you,” she said, with shining eyes. There were at no time any tears. She had been trained in a life where tears are inadequate.
Lanagan watched her as she hobbled on her one crutch down the hall to the elevator, her useless limb swinging loosely. She was a pathetic little figure, with her man’s brain, her grown woman’s pride, and her little misshapen body; a fourteen year old girl, wearing “long clothes” in grim earnest. A quick pang shot through him; cripples always saddened him. They have infinitely so much less than the meanest wastrel who has health.
“The judgment of a cold-blooded detective against the judgment of a loyal sister,” mused Lanagan. “Which is it?”
An hour’s study at police headquarters of the reports on all ten of the burglaries established in Lanagan’s mind one settled conviction: they were all committed by the same author, and whoever it was—whether an individual or a gang—had first become reasonably familiar with the interior arrangements of the houses entered, and with the daily routine of the households.
In the Robbins case, for instance, from the time the last member of the household left the bedroom, or second floor, to go down to the dining-room on the first floor for dinner, until a member of the household returning upstairs found the evidences of the burglary, only twenty-five minutes had passed; and yet in that time the thief or thieves had entered the house and had left it after cleanly ransacking three bedrooms. An open bathroom window and the drain pipe to the ground gave mute evidence of the burglar’s route.
In all of the cases only precious stones were taken: nothing monogrammed was touched, nor watches, silverware, trinkets or bric-à-brac. But this was of no particular consequence. The average expert thief prefers the precious stones. Removed from their settings they are difficult to identify and easy to negotiate.
“Professional work, all of it,” muttered Lanagan, arguing to himself. “But what about that message?”