“Well?” I asked, vaguely. Then I had an inspiration. The Chinese burial ground was only an eighth of a mile away. Lanagan obviously had some theory connecting Chinese with the crime, the bit of paper evidently having dropped from a Chinaman’s blouse. I told him so. He laughed immoderately but indulgently and carefully put the bit of paper away in his pocket.
“You’re a stem-winder when it comes to writing fancy leads for my police stories,” he said, still chuckling, “but I guess I’ll have to give up for keeps trying to make a detective out of you. I have shown you in perspective as it were, during the past twenty minutes, the solution of this entire crime—if my theory is not altogether wrong—and you can’t see it. Let’s get busy. Your legs can at least be of service to me.
“I want you to stick around here for a couple of hours. Tackle everybody in sight for a knowledge of Mrs. Stockslager; how long she has been out here, her past, who her family are if any, who her visitors have been; if she had any particular idiosyncrasies or hobbies. Take in all the houses within a radius of a mile—there are only four or five—and try to get some kind of a line on her. Don’t overlook the small boy. In out-of-the-way regions like this he is the pioneer of civilisation and you may tumble on to more through some roving urchin than all the grown-ups in the county. I will leave instructions at the office where to meet me later. I anticipate lively entertainment ahead.”
When we got back to the cottage the coroner’s deputies had gone, as had Phillips and Castle. Camera men were taking the house from many angles; artists were busy sketching the interior—that was the heyday of “yellow journalism”—marking the “spot” with the old familiar cross. Reporters were still cluttering around. A crowd of morbid persons, attracted out of the very sky like vultures, were already gathered.
“Suppose you’ve got it all cleared?” remarked Bradley of the Times to Lanagan. He was Lanagan’s nearest approach to a rival as a police reporter.
“Clear as print can make it,” replied Lanagan as he turned for the train.
He ran for the car, leaving Bradley secretly uneasy. He had a wholesome regard for Lanagan and knew that he was of few words and not given to wasting them. I slipped the rest of the newspaper men and tramped the sandhills “covering” all the houses, “buzzing” an occasional small boy. The best I could get for two hours’ hard work—and the first “tip” came from an unwashed, sling-shooting young American—was a vague story that no one could substantiate, that Mrs. Stockslager had a worthless son who infrequently visited her for money. I hugged this information close until I could see Lanagan. It so happened he ordered me to keep it quiet for that day, giving no reasons.
I was chagrined the next morning to awaken and find that Bradley had the same piece of information and had “flashed” it on the front page for an exclusive double-leaded feature to his story.
The search then turned to the son. He could be traced to within six or seven months of the murder. I had to lumber along as best I could in handling the story without Lanagan’s assistance. The stories in all of the papers became monotonously uniform. On the third day the interest was thinning. There had not been a single new fact discovered; nor, so far as the Enquirer was concerned, had there been a word from Lanagan.
“He must have something,” Sampson said to me irritably on the third day. “But take a flier through his hangouts on the chance that he might have gone off again.”