Lanagan, Amateur Detective

by Edward H. Hurlbut

It was Sampson’s voice. When Sampson shot that curt call in his ugly voice through the swinging doors of his office I felt as though the warden was calling me from the condemned cell for the drop. Only the able-bodied newspaper man who has been trimmed hard by the men of the opposition papers can understand the sensation. It belongs in its exquisite misery solely to such as speak the language of the tribe. For the head in the Enquirer—my story—had been only a three-column:

POLICE ARE BAFFLED IN MONTEAGLE MYSTERY!

Sampson contemplated me coldly and long; he fairly brooded over me. But there was no outburst, and that, after all, hurt worse than if he had put me on the irons for a broiling.

Ralph Monteagle, broker, millionaire, well-known, popular, and engaged to the equally well-known and popular Helen Dennison, had been found in his office on the fourth floor of the Sutton Building, stabbed to death. No weapon was found, the door was locked, the window shut. Neither money nor valuables were taken. The knife, curiously, had been sliced once across each cheek, evidently done after death, with deliberate intent to mar the features. Monteagle had entered his offices at 9:15 o’clock on Monday evening. The watchman had discovered the crime at midnight. The system in the Sutton Building permitted an absolute check on all persons entering the building after 8 o’clock, when the outer doors were locked. Any person coming in after that hour was admitted by the watchman, Murray, who until 12 o’clock was stationed in the lobby. The night elevator man kept a record of each person entering the building and to which room he went. It was a building given over to brokers, capitalists, and large law firms, and several robberies of magnitude had brought about this particular system of keeping a check on all persons in the building after night.

The elevator man, on going off duty at midnight, turned his book over to the watchman, who thereupon made the rounds of each of the offices where there were still tenants or visitors. It was in this manner that the crime had been discovered after Murray had rapped repeatedly on Monteagle’s door and had finally admitted himself with his master’s key.

Only three other tenants had been in the building during the evening, and they were able to clear themselves of all suspicion. The police turned their attention to the attachés of the building. Suspicion fell on a janitor, Stromberg, who had the fourth and fifth floors. Apparently clinching proof of the police suspicions had been afforded when Stromberg’s jumper, blood stained, was located at his laundry. It was in the arrest of Stromberg, which had taken place late the night before, that I had been “scooped” through my zealousness in leaving the detectives uncovered while I followed a lead that subsequently proved entirely wrong.

Stromberg claimed to have cut his hand with a scraper while cleaning the mosaic tiling, and had a deep gash on the ball of his thumb. The police theory was that he had gashed himself purposely, and in answer to his defence that it would have been an insane thing for him to have sent his jumper to the laundry if he had committed the crime, held to the theory that he had taken precisely that method, in combination with the self-imposed gash on his hand, to divert suspicion by seeming frankness.

With the commendable faculty of the American police in usually working to fasten the crime upon whomsoever they may happen to have in custody, the officers were devoting their energies to “cinching” their case on Stromberg.

When Sampson had completed his disquieting survey of me, he finally said:

“I am giving this story to Ransom and Dickson to handle to-day.” I could see that he had it all figured out in his cold-blooded way; that nothing else was to be expected of me than to be scooped, and that any remarks would be superfluous. But it ground me. “What I want you to do,” he continued nastily, “is to find Lanagan. Possibly you can succeed in that at least. I wouldn’t be sorry at that if some more of you fellows drank the brand of liquor Lanagan drinks once in a while. I might get a story out of the bunch of you occasionally. Instead, the Times and the Herald give it to us on the features of this story three days running—three days. It’s the worst beating I’ve had in a year. You find Lanagan and tell him I want him to jump into the story independent of Ransom and Dickson. I would like to get the tail feathers out of this thing, anyhow.”