The Voice on the Wire | Page 2

weakness by
employing the brains of others.
Montague Shirley was as antithetical from the veteran detective as a
man could well be. A noted athlete in his university, he possessed a
society rating in New York, at Newport and Tuxedo, and on the
Continent which was the envy of many a gilded youth born to the
purple.
On leaving college, despite an ample patrimony, he had curiously
enough entered the lists as a newspaper man. From the sporting page he
was graduated to police news, then the city desk, at last closing his

career as the genius who invented the weekly Sunday thriller, in many
colors of illustration and vivacious Gallic style which interpreted into
heart throbs and goose-flesh the real life romances and tragedies of the
preceding six days! He had conquered the paper-and-ink world--then
deep within there stirred the call for participation in the game itself.
So, dropping quietly into the apparently indolent routine of club
existence, he had devoted his experience and genius to analytical
criminology--a line of endeavor known only to five men in the world.
He maintained no offices. He wore no glittering badges: a police card, a
fire badge, and a revolver license, renewed year after year, were the
only instruments of his trade ever in evidence. Shirley took
assignments only from the heads of certain agencies, by personal
arrangement as informal as this from Captain Cronin. His real clients
never knew of his participation, and his prey never understood that he
had been the real head-hunter!
His fees--Montague Shirley, as a master craftsman deemed his artistry
worthy of the hire. His every case meant a modest fortune to the
detective agency and Shirley's bills were never rendered, but always
paid!
So, here, the hero of the gridiron and the class re-union, the gallant of a
hundred pre-matrimonial and non-maturing engagements, the veteran
of a thousand drolleries and merry jousts in clubdom--unspoiled by
birth, breeding and wealth, untrammeled by the juggernaut of
pot-boiling and the salary-grind, had drifted into the curious profession
of confidential, consulting criminal chaser.
Shirley unostentatiously signaled for an encore on the refreshments.
"You're nervous to-night, Captain. You've been doing things before you
consulted me--which is against our Rule Number One, isn't it?"
The Captain gulped down his whiskey, and rubbed his forehead.
"Couldn't help it, Monty. It got too busy for me, before I realized
anything unusual in the case. See what I got from a gangster before I
landed here."
He turned his close-cropped head, as Montague Shirley leaned forward
to observe an abrasion at the base of his skull. It was dressed with a
coating of collodion.
"Brass knuckled--I see the mark of the rings. Tried for the
pneumogastric nerves, to quiet you."

"Whatever he tried for he nearly got. Kelly's nightstick got his
pneumonia gas jet, or whatever you call it. He's still quiet, in the station
house--You know old man Van Cleft, who owns sky-scrapers down
town, don't you?--Well, he's the center of this flying wedge of
excitement. His family are fine people, I understand. His daughter was
to be married next week. Monty, that wedding'll be postponed, and old
Van Cleft won't worry over dispossess papers for his tenants for the rest
of the winter. See?"
"Killed?"
"Correct. He's done, and I had a hell of a time getting the body home,
before the coroner and the police reporters got on the trail."
Shirley lowered his high-ball glass, with an earnest stare.
"What was the idea?"
"Robbery, of course. His son had me on the case--'phoned from the
garage where the chauffeur brought the body; after he saw the old man
unconscious. Just half an hour before he had left his office in the same
machine, after taking five thousand dollars in cash from his manager."
"Who was with him?"
"Now, that's getting to brass tacks. When I gets that C.Q.D. from Van
Cleft, I finds the young fellow inside the ring of rubbernecks,
blubbering over the old man, where he lies on the floor of the
taxi--looking soused."
"He was a notorious old sport about town, Captain."
"Sure--and I thinks, it sorter serves him right. But, that's his funeral, not
mine. Van Cleft, junior, says to me: 'There's the girl that was with
him.'"
"Where was the girl?"
"She was sitting on a stool, near the car, a little blonde chorus chicken,
shaking and twitching, while the chauffeur and the garage boss held her
up. I says, 'What's this?' and Van Cleft tells me all he knows, which
ain't nothing. Them guys in that garage was wise, for it meant a cold
five hundred apiece before I left to keep their lids closed. Van Cleft
begs me to hustle the old man home, so one of my men takes her down
to my office, still a