"Good! A man with a mania, a prosecutor with a pet criminal! But he didn't mention the criminal? Allow me—the Arm of Justice!"
Herrick's pulse gave a mad leap and he slowly raised his head.
"You've taken that business, all along, as just a mask for some desperate amateur. Then, too, you were all thrown off the track—and small wonder!—by those literate, unbusinesslike letters in idiomatic English. A lady's letters, in fact!—My dear fellow, a very real and definite 'Arm of Justice,' a low-lived little gang that sunny Italy knew how to get rid of, has made its living at blackmailing certain gutters of ours for a generation. What nobody but your humble servant has believed is that this more stylish business, using our language and dwelling very evidently in our midst, has any connection with the original A. of J. beyond borrowing its title from the police reports. Not for the first time! See here! The Arm of Justice started life as the humblest little blackguard gang, extorting money from low-class Italians. It was like all its class, strictly minding its own business in its own nationality and considered worth nobody's while to catch. But to my mind about four years ago this violet by a mossy stone burst out like a sunflower. To my mind, it was this very same Arm of Justice which abandoned every precedent by entering, with one bound, into American life."
His look seemed to ring with triumph, but his voice kept a cold edge.
"No Italian gang, real or bogie, big or little, had ever thrown its shadow there. But the Arm of Justice flew high, carried the new territory at a rush, and struck at the very proudest families in New York, the most powerful individuals!"
"But how? How?"
"Ah, if I knew! What's its source of information? How does it get hold of those unhappy secrets that its owners guard like Koh-i-noors? Well, men will tell a good deal to a woman—and those were a woman's letters, Herrick! Once it gets its secret it starts a correspondence. How often it has succeeded, grabbed its hush-money and retreated, of course I don't know. But when its advances are rejected it abandons its typewriter and calmly prints a scant edition of a dirty little rag calling itself The Voice of Justice and telling the blackmailing story. It then mails marked copies through various New York post offices to the family, friends and enemies of its victims—the three before Ingham were all of Knickerbocker standing. What a revenge! What a prestige for next time such a threat gave it! The desire of my life is to smash that printing-press!"
"But it followed up the Ingham business with letters alone?"
"There you are—the whole Ingham business is a departure! Observe that until Ingham's death the English-speaking branch of the business never committed itself to violence; it caused four tragedies in four years, but it simply pressed the button of exposure and its vengeance came off automatically. The first time a young girl went crazy. The second there was a divorce and the wife shot herself. And the third time a bad stumble, lived down for twenty years by a fine old friend of mine, a judge of the highest standing who had made himself an honorable character, was exposed to such relentless political foes that this office had to prosecute. Well, Mrs. Deutch's father isn't the only gentle soul who's died in jail!"
Kane's voice had risen in hot anger. "Perhaps you think I ought to be grateful—thank them for doing my work! Am I to do theirs, then? Execute their orders, their sentences? Make my office the tool of cowards and criminals worse than those I convict? Ah, my boy, that did turn me into a monomaniac! Is there anything I wouldn't give to break that particular bone in the Arm of Justice?—to lay hands on the real villain of that little evening party in these rooms that night—not the one who fired the shot but who prompted it! Believe me, the death of Ingham was a slip, an accident, bitterly repented. Some last new element got in this time and got in wrong. The Arm was using a new tool and pushed it farther than it dreamed the tool would go. The English-speaking branch, always so careful not to commit murder—I could almost be thankful for this time—it's put a definite, popular crime into my hand! And now the poor fools've lost their heads! They that were so cautious, they're following one sensation with another. They've tried anything, everything, to get clear! They've only floundered further and further in! And now they're wild as rats in a trap!"