How Many Cards?/Chapter 1

X-ROUNDSMAN TIMOTHY McCARTY was taking one of the nocturnal strolls so habitual with him as to have become almost instinctive since the far-off days when, as Officer 804 and one of the finest, he had pounded his beat.

It was a soft April night, starless, for the sky was still overcast from a recent shower, and the odor of wet earth and fresh, springing green things from the park across the avenue blended pleasantly with the smoke of the cigar which tilted upward from beneath his short, stubby, sandy mustache.

McCarty's meditations were pleasant, too, for earlier in the evening he had come off victor in a strenuous debate with his old crony, Dennis Riordan, of the fire department, over old versus new police methods, and the memory of it made his broad shoulders heave in a soundless chuckle.

All at once he paused in his measured, rhythmic tread, his teeth clamped down upon the cigar and his keen, twinkling blue eyes narrowed. A block ahead of him, keeping well in shadow, there slouched a figure whose type had been well known to him in the old days and among whose fraternity his own name had been mentioned blasphemously but with bated breath.

The figure was that of an undersized, narrow-framed man who moved with the slow, crouching poise of a cat. He wore no coat, but what appeared in the uttermost limits of the rays of a street lamp to be a sweater, and his cap was pulled so far forward over his eyes that the back of his small, bullet-shaped head was plainly visible.

McCarty clutched his stout umbrella more firmly and without obviously quickening his pace he nevertheless narrowed the distance between the slim, slinking figure and himself with every yard. Forgotten was the fact that he had long ago retired from the force to live on the comfortable inheritance from his saloon-keeping uncle; he was once again following his beat and there before his eyes was a crook out to pull off a job!

The houses on the broad avenue which faced the park were veritable miniature palaces, each one occupied by a family whose rank in the social and financial world was of almost national reputation, and before the richest of these in the center of the block ahead the figure paused.

Instantly McCarty flattened himself as much as his girth would allow against the wall of the house he was passing, mentally anathematizing the newer style of American basements which admitted of no protecting high entrances or areaways; but after a moment it was evident that his simple strategy had sufficed, for when he cautiously craned his neck around the slightly projecting cornice the figure had disappeared.

Save for the rumbling and lights of a 'bus approaching from the opposite direction the avenue was deserted and it was inconceivable that in that instant the crook could have made off around the corner.

Moving with almost miraculous speed and silence, McCarty sped to the house before which the figure had paused and one glance showed the meaning of his sudden disappearance. The house was of white stone, wider and more imposing even than its neighbors, but like them with a low, broad entrance door sunk three steps below the level of the street, a smaller tradesmen's entrance some distance away and between them a row of wide, ornate windows.

The second one from the main entrance was open slightly, just enough for a bit of the heavy lace of the curtain to have been caught in the crack and for the tiniest ray of subdued light to creep through.

"The carelessness of him!" McCarty grumbled to himself in disgust at this lack of thoroughness even in one of his sworn enemies. "That light's not moving; did he have the nerve, I wonder, to turn on—!"

His speculations came to an abrupt end and he dived down the shallow steps and crouched waiting to spring, for the heavy window had opened swiftly with no apparent effort at silence, the curtain was whisked aside and the sinuous figure wormed its way through and dropped the scant eight feet which separated the sill from the level of the pavement.

Instantly, before he could turn, a huge, stockily built form hurled itself upon him and in his complete surprise he was borne by sheer weight to the ground where he was held and expertly frisked.

The whole affair had been a matter of seconds and no sound had come from either man save the quick, sobbing breath of the captive and the heavier snort of McCarty, but as the latter stuffed into his own pockets with one hand the pistol, blackjack and skeleton keys which had been the result of his search the other whined:

"Let me go, Mister! Honest t'Gawd, I ain't done a t'ing but just sneak in an'—an' right out! I ain't got nothin' on me, youse knows that! Honest t'Gawd—"

McCarty's answer was to drag the squirming, writhing youth to his feet with a firm grip on the collar of his sweater and with his other hand to pick up the umbrella from where he had dropped it beside him and rap smartly on the pavement for assistance.

"Oh, don't do that! Let me go before de bull comes, mister, for de love o' Gawd! I swear it on me mudder dat I didn't have nothin' to do wit—wit—what's in dere!"

Mixed with the whine of fear there was a rising note of horror in the youth's tones which made McCarty drag him swiftly over to the nearest street lamp. The face which the culprit raised shrinkingly to his was weak and tremulous, with the shifting, rat-like eyes and pasty yellow skin of the typical gangster, but there was something more than the mere fear of being caught at housebreaking in his eyes; mortal terror looked out from them and McCarty's grip on his collar tightened.

"What's in there?" he demanded, giving the all but col- lapsed figure a violent shake. "I don't know where the devil is Clancy, but what did you leave behind you in that house?"

"I didn't have nottin' to do wit' it, I'm tellin' youse! I just give it one look an' beat it! De foist job I ever tried to put over, an' now—!"

But a tattoo of heavy footsteps came pounding along the sidewalk and in another moment a blue-coated figure dashed up to them.

"What's goin' on here? Somebody rapped. For the love of heaven, 'tis you, Mac! And what have you there?"

"What you should have had if you'd been on your beat, Clancy!" McCarty retorted grimly. "A fine young second-story worker that I've been trailing these four blocks and more, and nabbed just as he was scrambling out of the window of that white house there after he had finished his job."

"I didn't finish no job!" the youth cried desperately. "Honest, I wasn't in dere two seconds! If you was trailin' me, mister, you know dat! I just give it a look an' started to make my getaway. Don't send me to de chair!"

"Chair, is it?" McCarty gave the policeman a significant glance. "I've been trying to get out of him what he did do in there while I was waiting for you to show up."

"We'll take him along and find out," Clancy declared briefly.

"No! Don't take me back in dat house!" the wretched youth wailed. "I don't wanna look at it again! I can't—!"

Unheeding his protestations, they dragged him back the few steps to the house, where McCarty pointed to the opened window from which the subdued light filtering through the lace curtain fell in a delicately patterned square on the pavement.

"Who lives here?" he asked, as the policeman pressed the button at the entrance door.

"Creveling, the millionaire," Clancy responded.

"Not Eugene Creveling, the fellow who used to pull off all those wild stunts on Broadway a matter of ten or fifteen years ago?" McCarty demanded. "They used to call him Million-a-month Creveling!"

"I don't know anything about that," Clancy asserted. "Must have been before my time. All I know is he's got a grand looking wife and barring the big entertainments they give the house is the quietest on the block.—Here, you! Quit that or I'll give you a rap that'll put you to sleep!" This to the struggling youth who now, utterly unnerved, was sobbing wildly. "I wonder if they're all dead in here! Mac, go and try the other bell."

McCarty obeyed but with no result. Save for the low light glowing from the open window the huge house might have been indeed a tomb.

"There's nothing to it, Mac. We can't get anything out of this bird, either, now. You get a hold of him and I'll go in the way he did, through the window."

McCarty gripped the shabby sweater collar once more and Clancy jumped up, caught the sill and swung himself over it, sweeping the curtain aside. It fell again into place and for a minute there was silence.

A second 'bus rumbled past, a limousine or two and a prowling taxi, but none saw the two figures huddled tense in the shadows.

"Say, what are you, mister; a dick?" the youth whined, passing his sleeve across his slobbered face. "If you trailed me like youse said, you know you didn't hear nottin'! You know I wasn't dere long enough to croak him!"

"Croak who?" demanded McCarty.

"De guy in dere in de soup-an'-fish, wit' his chest all shot to pieces! You know I didn't do it! Dere ain't a pill gone from my gat! If youse an' de bull frames me—!"

There came a rattling of bolts and chains on the inner side of the huge entrance door and it divided and swung slowly inward revealing Clancy standing grave-faced in the aperture and behind him the wide marble staircase and rug-hung gallery of an imposing rotunda.

"Come in," he invited laconically. "I switched on these hall lights myself, but there was some already going in this room back here; come and see what I found."

He led the way across the marble hall, rich in the mellow, subdued colorings of the rugs and draperies under the soft lights, but funereal with the huge, carved chairs ranged in mathematical precision against the walls. McCarty followed with the lagging, handcuffed youth in tow.

The door of a room beside the staircase was open and as they reached it all three paused for a moment on the threshold. It was spacious in itself although small in comparison with the vastness of the hall and was furnished as a study, with two davenports facing each other projecting from either side of the fireplace and a long Jacobean refectory table between. Bookcases lined the walls, a massive writing table stood between two windows at the rear and deeply upholstered chairs were scattered here and there, each with a smoking stand beside it, but McCarty's eyes took in the details with a mere glance.

His attention was riveted on the long figure clad in the perfection of dinner clothes which lay stretched upon the floor. The feet in their glistening pumps were upturned and a gleam of white showed where waistcoat and shirt-front met, but all the upper part of the body was stained crimson.

Clancy's own face was white, and inured as he was to sights as hideous as this, McCarty felt a wave of nausea sweep over him, while their captive put his manacled hands over his eyes and moaned.

"Is it Creveling himself, do you think?" McCarty asked in a lowered tone.

For reply Clancy knelt beside the body and slipping his hand in the stained waistcoat pocket pulled out a platinum cigarette case as thin as a knife blade, the top of which, barely protruding, had caught his eye.

He held it up for McCarty to see and the latter plainly read the initials upon it: "E. C. C."

"I remember now," he observed soberly. "I saw the name in the papers often enough, years past, to bring it back to me; Eugene Christopher Creveling."

Clancy replaced the cigarette case carefully and pointed to something which lay beside the body. It was a huge army pistol and it lay almost within touch of the finger tips of that limp, nerveless right hand.

"I'll have a word with you, Clancy." McCarty turned and shoved his captive into the nearest chair. "Sit there and if you stir I'll blow the head off you."

But there was plainly no thought of either resistance or flight left in the boy; he half turned and, resting his arms upon the wide-spreading ones of the chair, he buried his face in them.

McCarty drew his confrère to the other end of the room and with an ever watchful eye upon the thief he whispered:

"He never had a hand in it, Clancy. I saw he was up to mischief and I trailed him for four or five blocks, as I told you. I wasn't more than a block away when he skinned in that window and I didn't lose any time reaching the outside of it. There was no shot fired in the meantime and I'd hardly got here when he came squirming out again. I grabbed him and dragged him over to the light of that street lamp and I saw then that he was scared clean through; he looked as though he had seen a ghost! He's telling the truth, all right; that rat wouldn't have the nerve to stick up a kid coming home from the grocery on an errand for its mother!"

"Did you frisk him?" asked Clancy.

"I did, and found a gat on him that's like a toy cap pistol compared to that gun lying there. Here it is."

He produced the keys, pistol and blackjack which he had taken from the thief and after one look at them Clancy announced:

"We'll send for the wagon and have him held as a material witness; that junk he was carrying will send him up for a stretch, anyway."

After some search they located a desk telephone on the writing table, concealed beneath a bell-shaped bronze ornament and the policeman called up his precinct station house and had the satisfaction of knowing that the message was relayed to the borough headquarters.

"It's too big entirely for them to handle," declared McCarty contemptuously when the other had hung up the receiver. "I'll put a call through myself to general headquarters and tip them off. Maybe my old friend Inspector Druet might be there and could happen along up here before the gumshoes from the bushes have a chance to ball up the game. It's highly irregular, but I'm only a private citizen now, by the grace of my uncle—may God rest his soul—and I'm free to do as I please."

To Inspector Druet, seated at his desk in the homicide bureau, there presently came over the wire a well-known voice, husky with ill-suppressed excitement.

"Mac, you old scoundrel!" he exclaimed in affectionate banter. "Where have you been keeping yourself, and what are you doing this time of night?"

"I'm mixing in high society, sir." McCarty's tones were cautious. "I'm in a grand private house up on the Avenue facing the park just above the third side entrance—of the park, I mean, sir—and there'll be quite a little party here soon, I'm thinking. Maybe you'd like to get in a little ahead—"

"What is it? Where are you?" The inspector's own tones had crisped. "Mac, have you tumbled headforemost into another—?"

"'Tis the house of Mr. Eugene Creveling, sir; him they used to call Million-a-month. Jim Clancy is here with me and a young crook we copped by the way, but none of the family seems to be at home except himself, and we found him with a bullet in his heart from an army gun."

"I'll be with you," the inspector said briefly and the two receivers clicked in unison.

"It would never have been known until heaven knows when if you hadn't nabbed this bird here." Clancy spoke with reluctant but irrepressible honesty. "By the keys of Saint Peter, Mac, you've pulled off more stunts since you left the force than when you were on it! First that girl who was flung out the window of the Glamorgan and then the other one that was strangled in the crime museum—"

"'Twas Terhune, the great scientific detective, that got at the truth in the first case and the inspector himself who did the work in the other," McCarty remarked with dignity. "I just poked around like the old has-been I am.—But there comes the 'bus from the borough headquarters, and you'll be doing me a favor, Clancy, if you'll just forget I'm here until you're asked to tell what you know of it all. I'd like to snoop around a bit on my own account till the inspector gets here."

"How do we know it isn't suicide, anyway?" demanded Clancy, as the clatter of the police gong grew louder on the air and his companion made for the door.

"Because there are no powder marks that I saw," McCarty replied succinctly. "If he'd held that cannon against his breast and fired it the powder would have been sprinkled all over the front of him."

As the automobile from the borough headquarters drew up before the door McCarty dodged into the room next to the study. It proved to be a breakfast room, and the ex-roundsman whistled softly to himself as he cautiously closed the door after finding and turning on the wall switch, which made the single low light over the table burst into a golden glow.

The table was laid for two and the remains of a supper were spread upon it, while an empty quart champagne bottle stood upon the floor and a second one reposed in the cooler, in the bottom of which a small quantity of ice still remained unmelted.

McCarty's brows knit at the sight of it, and he pulled out his watch.

"Quarter to three!" he muttered, then turned his attention to the table itself.

The food upon one plate was scarcely touched, but bread-crumbs were scattered all about it and the wine glass was empty. On the other hand, the second plate had been cleaned save for fragments, half a roll lay beside it and the glass was half full of dead champagne. Near at hand was an ash tray containing the stub of a cigarette and another unsmoked but broken in two lay in the center of the table.

McCarty was turning away when almost imbedded in the heavy pile of the rug just beneath the end of the cloth close to the champagne bucket something shining caught his eye. It was a broken bit of amber from the mouth-piece of a cigarette holder. He picked it up and shamelessly put it in his pocket.

The subdued purring of a second motor came to his ears and he left the breakfast room and, hurrying across the rotunda, flung open the house door. Inspector Druet was descending the steps.

"Come in, sir," McCarty urged superfluously. "The men are here from borough headquarters and they are holding a grand session in the room where Mr. Creveling was killed—if it was Mr. Creveling himself."

He led his former superior into the breakfast room and pointed to the table.

"Wherever the servants and the rest of the family have got to, there was two people had supper here to-night, as you can see, sir. One of them was contented and pleased, too interested to bother much with his wine, but ate a good meal, though something interrupted him before he finished smoking his cigarette and if he left the room then he didn't take it with him. The other was nervous or angry or scared; couldn't eat, crumbled his bread, drank his wine to keep up his courage but broke his cigarette in two and maybe his holder.—One of them is lying dead in the next room and the other has gone. What's the answer, sir? It's up to you."