I shook my head. “That isn’t Lanagan with a story on,” I said. “He does his drinking when the story is turned in.” Nevertheless I took a quick skirmish to Connor’s, Fogarty’s and “Red” Murphy’s; looked up “Kid” Monahan and some of Lanagan’s intimates in the upper office. I could find no trace of him.
Toward evening I dropped back to the Enquirer after a final round-up of the ends of the story at police headquarters, and there Lanagan sat with his heels on Sampson’s desk, with that pulseless individual shooting questions at him with the speed and precision of an automatic revolver.
“I’ve given you all I am free to give just now,” said Lanagan, shutting down on the questioning. “You’ve got a good enough scoop to hold the story for to-morrow. Let me handle the rest in my own way, will you?” He was nettled. “Don’t be so didactic. Do you think I’ve been spending the last three days with a dry nurse?” He was the only man on the Enquirer who could take that tone with Sampson and hold his job.
“No. I know you’ve been on your toes hard, Jack, and I appreciate it. Only the news-call gets the best of me and this story has us all on edge,” replied Sampson.
“You’re not to go near the prison,” continued Lanagan. “I need Norton to-night. Let Martin write the story from here. Stockslager is absolutely out of it. He has been a trusty at the city prison for about six months, which clears him up. Name he goes under is ‘Swede’ Stockley. The police have known it all along but they have kept it dark for certain reasons which I am not at liberty now to state.
“Lend me that nice, new mackintosh of yours, Sampson. It’s raining like blazes and the enthusiastic Mr. Norton and myself will have a hard stand to-night. Take your raincoat, Norton. We are going out looking for ghosts around the Stockslager cottage. There’s a real ghost of the old lady out there and I’ve wanted for a long time to have a run-in with a genuine spook. She was seen on the cliff last night as the train stopped. McCluskey, the conductor, thought he heard a sort of moaning. He’s a pretty nervy chap and the moans, coming it seemed from the hut, didn’t scare him much. He walked over that way and silhouetted at the edge of the cliff he swears he saw the old lady herself. It was too much even for McCluskey and he ran back to the train.
“He and the engineer, Roberts, went back with a couple of crowbars although he didn’t say what good crowbars would do in tackling a bonafide ghost. They just got one glimpse of the thing and it disappeared and they both swear it couldn’t have had time to get any place before they reached the scene. It was a fairly clear night, during a break in the storm, and they wasted five minutes and then went back to their train.
“I was out there to-day and McCluskey told me the yarn. They’ve kept it quiet around the car barn for fear of being ridiculed. I have them pledged to secrecy. Don’t use that angle of the story to-morrow, though, as I want to do some ghost hunting before the whole town hears about it and flocks out there.
“Come on, Norrie. Got your gun?”
That ghost talk gave me all sorts of forebodings. With a black night ahead and a driving rain, ghost hunting on the scene of the murder, in an environment sufficiently forbidding on a wintry night in any event, failed to stir me to any particular height of enthusiasm.