Lanagan, Amateur Detective

by Edward H. Hurlbut

The extraordinary boldness that had marked all the crimes culminated in the Robbins case when a man, with smoked glasses, heavy moustache, soft hat pulled down and ulster turned up, gave a small boy ten cents to carry an envelope to the Robbins home, but a block from where the man stood. Enclosed in the message, which offered to return the jewelry for $5,000 cash, was a brooch that had been among the articles stolen. It was sent as proof that the offer was genuine. The message said the police were not to be notified. If the family desired to negotiate, they were to send the boy back with the single word, “Yes,” and they would be communicated with later.

In the excitement of receiving the message under such singular circumstances a member of the family, forgetting or disregarding the caution, telephoned the police, holding the boy in the house. The police misunderstood the call, and a patrol wagon load of reserves clattered up to the door within ten minutes, under the impression murder was being done.

Naturally, the man on the corner had ample time to escape. No further offers to negotiate came to the family. On the second day the police placed under arrest the Ward boy. He was employed as a helper with the Phoenix Vacuum Cleaning Company, which had been engaged a few days before at the Robbins home.

“And at the start he made a bad case, superficially, by his contradictions,” reflected Lanagan, reviewing the case.

In their investigations the detectives, examining the two men and the helper, Jimmie Ward, who had operated the cleaning apparatus at the Robbins house, learned that the boy had been noticed that morning examining a diamond ring. Asked where he got it, he had replied he found it on the floor of the washroom at the establishment. No one claimed the ring. The matter was called to the attention of Cutting, the proprietor and manager of the company, but he knew of no customer having reported such a loss.

The detectives—Harrigan and Thomas—took the boy to headquarters for further questioning, and he had there said he found the ring on the sidewalk. On that contradiction he was placed under arrest and locked up in detinue.

Further, the police regarded as damaging the fact that a robbery a week previous had been committed in the same neighbourhood in a home where the cleaning apparatus had been engaged, the Ward boy serving as the helper in that house also. He had worked with a different crew of men than had been on the Robbins house, and this fact, in the police theory, eliminated the remaining employees of the company as it was highly improbable that they were all in a “second story” ring. They redoubled their efforts to find the supposed connections of Ward on the theory that he operated with an outside gang.

“‘Jimmy said he found the ring and if he said he found it he did find it,’” said Lanagan, repeating the sister’s earnest declaration. “Well, for her sake—I hope he did.”

Hour after hour Lanagan, tirelessly, kept at his rounds, visiting in turn each of the ten homes in the western addition that had been robbed during the last three months.

Long before he reached the Robbins home, the last of the ten, he had formed his startling theory. In nine of the cases he had discovered that which he set out in search of: a constant condition present in them all. There was just one question that he wanted to ask at the Robbins home.