“Listen carefully,” Verbeck told him, “for I am not going to repeat what I say or answer questions. This is very important, and if you disregard it you’ll be sorry. Have your secretary get on the phone extension and take down in shorthand what I am going to say.”
There was a short wait while the chief made the necessary arrangements, then Verbeck heard himself commanded to speak.
“I have run down and caught the Black Star,” he said. “I am holding him prisoner now. I cannot hand him over to you just yet, for, if I did, and the least news of it leaked out, you’d never catch one of his gang, and, without his gang, you never could convict him. Never mind how I know it—I am not talking nonsense. You’ve got that?”
An excited voice told him that the chief understood.
“Now, listen to this,” Verbeck went on. “I have arranged for all the Black Star’s band to be at a certain place at the same time, so you and your men can take them all. Keep quiet, chief, and don’t ask questions. I want you to send men enough to arrest them—eight men and two women are in the crowd. They are to be arrested just when and where I say. If you let as much as one of them escape all my work and yours probably will have been for nothing. When you get them you’ll find stolen property on every one. And as soon as I learn you have all of them under arrest I’ll turn over the Black Star to you, I’ll tell you where and how he met the members of his gang and gave them orders, and I’ll let you have the inside workings of one of the smoothest crooks’ schemes ever devised. But if you make one false move——”
A torrent of words over the wire stopped him for a moment.
“No questions, I said,” he went on. “You have understood so far? Very well! No, I’ll not tell you who I am or where I am! Very well, if you’ll not listen! I’ll call you up later, when you’re in a better mood, and explain where you are to make the catch. Good-by!”
And an irate Roger Verbeck strode from the telephone booth, went out to the street, and sprang into his car to drive furiously down the thoroughfare. No excited chief of police could bully him with a lot of mandatory questions, he told himself. Let them fuss and fume for a time, then they’d listen when he telephoned.
His actions had the desired effect. At police headquarters there was a spirited debate for five minutes between the chief and his secretary as to whether the telephone communication had come from some practical joker. The secretary was inclined to believe that it had. The chief insisted that some member of the Black Star’s band had turned against him and was engineering his downfall.
Verbeck drove on through the streets until he reached the Wendell apartment house. Faustina was waiting for him, and again Verbeck noticed that anxiety was stamped on her face, and now he thought there was a look of fear also.