Lanagan wheeled on the Englishman.
“How much money have you already paid Leighton?”
“One thousand pounds for producing this girl. He was to get four thousand more when final proof of identity was accepted by my principals in London.”
Leslie and Lanagan exchanged glances. It was big pickings for Larry Leighton. Twenty-five thousand dollars in all; properly handled by Fogarty, it would go a long way to grease the wheels of justice in the police court.
Leighton arose, shaking like a palsied man, and tottered, rather than walked, to the Chief. He extended his wrists.
“Put on the bracelets, Chief,” he said, in a voice that was but a shadow of his rich voice. “I took my chances, I’ll take my medicine. The girl hasn’t done anything yet you can hold her on. She knows nothing about the other thing. The doctors had given me two years to live—kidneys gone—and I saw a chance for a big clean-up and the German springs. It might have saved me.”
“Big!” interrupted the Englishman, awed, “one hundred and fifty thousand pounds!”
“That’s all, Chief,” resumed Leighton. “I did the trick with the child myself, I wouldn’t trust anybody else. The night was pitch black and there are no houses right near there, you know. I waited till the old lady went out. After I finished the child, I was going to get the mother, but the front gate slammed. It was Peters coming home. I slipped out the back door again. I wanted the husband out of the way, on general principles. I did not know what his wife might have told him and he was better off, in case any publicity attended the restoration of the girl here, where he couldn’t squeak, in case his wife had ever told him her real name and story.
“This girl here, a Tenderloiner, that I picked up because she looks a good bit like Mrs. Peters, seemed to have nerve enough for the deal, and she was to collect the estate and give me half. It was a big gamble. You’re right about the scaffold, Chief. I never took any such chance before, but this was a ‘get-away’ stake for life for me, and I took it.
“I had no direct dealings with Bannerman. There’s nothing on him. I had talks with Fogarty but paid no money. In a general way he gathered I wanted the man across, and I guess he gathered, too, that there would be a big clean-up all around at the end of it. There’s no case on anybody except myself.”