The Ear in the Wall Part 20

"Since you are so interested, Walter," laughed Craig, "we'll appoint you to take the first shift at watching. Meanwhile we may as well eat since we shall certainly have to pay. When you are tired or hungry I'll take a turn."

Kennedy and I had been taking turns at watching through the detectascope while Miss Kendall told us more about how she had come to be a.s.sociated with the organization to clean up New York.

"We have struck some delicate situations before," she was saying, "times when it meant either that we must surrender and compromise the work of the investigation or offend an interest that might turn out to be more powerful than we realized. Our rule from the start was, 'No Compromise.' You know the moment you compromise with one, all the others hear it and it weakens your position. We've made some powerful enemies, but our idea is that as long as we keep perfectly straight and honest they will never be able to beat us. We shall win in the end, because so far it has never come to a show-down, when we appealed to the public itself, that the public had not risen and backed us strongly."

I had come to have the utmost confidence in Clare Kendall and her frank way of handling a ticklish yet most important subject without fear or prudishness. There was a refreshing newness about her method. It was neither the holier-than-thou att.i.tude of many religionists, nor the smug monopoly of all knowledge of the social worker, nor the brutal wantonness of the man or woman of the world who excuses everything "because it is human nature, always has been and always will be."

"We have no illusions on the subject," she pursued. "We don't expect to change human nature until the individual standard changes. But we are convinced of this--and it is as far as we go and is what we are out to accomplish--and that is that we can, and are going to, smash protected, commercialized vice as one of the big businesses of New York."

"Sh-h," cautioned Kennedy, whose turn it happened to be just then to watch. "Someone has just entered the room."

"Who is it?" I whispered eagerly.

"A man. I can't see his face. His back is toward me, but there is something familiar about him. There--he is turning around. For Heaven's sake--it's Ike the Dropper!"

We had already recounted to Miss Kendall our experiences in following Dr. Harris to the black and tan joint and the meeting with Ike the Dropper.

"Then Ike the Dropper is the collector for the police or the politicians higher up," she exclaimed under her breath. "If we learned nothing more, that would be enough. It would tell us whom to watch."

Hastily we took turns at getting a good look at Ike through the wonderful little detectascope. Then Kennedy resumed his watch, whispering now and then what he saw. Apparently Ike had proceeded to make himself comfortable in the luxurious surroundings of the private dining-room, against the arrival of the graft payers.

"I wonder who the man higher up is," whispered Miss Kendall.

"Someone is coming in," reported Kennedy. "By George, it is that stenographer from the office downstairs. She is handing him an envelope. Good for her! He tried to kiss her and she backed away in disgust. The scoundrel!

"Isn't it clever, though? Not a word is said by anyone. I don't suppose she could swear to knowing anything about what is in the envelope.

There she goes out. He is opening the envelope and counting out the money--ten one-hundred-dollar bills. There they go into the fob pocket of his trousers. I imagined he learned something from my pick-pocket.

That is the safest pocket a man has. That little contribution, I take it, was from the Montmartre itself."

Then followed an interval in which Ike puffed away on his cigar in silent state.

"Here's another now," announced Craig. "Another woman. I never saw her before."

Both Miss Kendall and I looked and neither of us recognized her. She was slim and would have been young-looking if she had not made such obvious efforts to imitate the healthy colour of the cheeks which she probably would have had if she had lived sensibly and left cosmetics alone.

Kennedy was hastily jotting down some notes on the back of an envelope.

"They are going through the same proceedings again. I guess Ike doesn't like her. There she goes. Only two hundred this time."

Another wait followed, during which Ike smoked down his cigar and lighted another from the stub. Then the door opened again.

Kennedy motioned quickly to Clare to look through the detectascope.

Meanwhile he pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had written on and torn from the back of the menu at the Futurist.

"Marie!" exclaimed Clare under her breath.

"The same," whispered Kennedy. "Miss Kendall, you have the true 'camera eye' of the born detective. Now--please--let me see if I can get what occurs."

She yielded her place to him.

"Three hundred more," he murmured. "Marie must be in the game, though.

He didn't wait for her to leave before he tore open the envelope. Now they are burning the envelopes in the ash tray. And still not a word.

This is clever, clever. Think of it--fifteen hundred dollars of easy money like that! I wonder how much of it sticks to Ike's hands on the way up. He must have a capacious fob pocket for that. Say, he's a regular fellow with the ladies, Ike is. Only this one doesn't seem to resent it. By George, I wonder if this fellow Ike isn't giving the police or the politicians the double-cross. He couldn't be on such intimate terms with one who was paying graft to him as collector otherwise; do you think so?"

Craig looked up without waiting for an answer. "You will excuse any levity, but that was some kiss she just gave him."

Kennedy resumed his position for looking through the detectascope, occasionally glancing down at the notes he had made the day before and now and then making a slight alteration.

"There. She is going away now. Well, I guess the collection is all over. He has his hat on and a third cigar, ready to go as soon as somebody signals that the coast is clear. That was a good day's work for Ike and the man higher up, whoever he is. Ah--there he goes. It was a signal from the waiter he was after. Now we may as well finish this luncheon. It cost enough."

For several minutes we ate in silence.

"I wish I could have followed Ike," observed Craig. "But of course it would have been of no use. To go out right after him would have given the whole thing away."

"Who is that dark-haired, dark-skinned woman, Marie, do you suppose?"

asked Clare. "Sometimes I almost think she is part negro."

"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you were right. If you have any investigators to spare, they might try to find out who she is and something of her history. I will give them a copy of these notes which I intend to turn over to the Department of Justice men who have been making the white slave investigation for the Federal Government."

Kennedy had laid the notes which he had made on the menu before us and was copying them. Both Clare and I leaned over to read them. It was Greek to me:

Nose--straight, base elevated, nostrils thick, slightly flaring.

Ears--lobe descending oval, traversed by a hollow, ant.i.tragus concave; lobe separated from cheek.

Lips--large.

Mouth--large.

Chin--receding.

There was much more that he had jotted down and added to the description.

"Oh," exclaimed Clare, as she ran through the writing, "that is this new portrait parle, the spoken picture, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Kennedy. "You may know that the Government has been using it in its white slave inquiry and has several thousands of such descriptions. Under the circ.u.mstances, I understand that the Government agents find it superior to finger-prints. Finger-prints are all right for identification, as we have found right here, for instance, in the Night Court. But Bertillon's new portrait parle is the thing for apprehension."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, take the case before us. We have had no chance to finger-print that woman and what good would it do if we had? No one could recognize her that way until she was arrested or some means had been taken to get the prints again.

"But the portrait parle is scientific apprehension, the step that comes before scientific identification by finger-prints. It means giving the detective an actual portrait of the person he is sent after without burdening him with a photograph. As descriptions are now given, together with a photograph, a person is described as of such a weight, height, general appearance, and so on. A clever crook knows that. He knows how to change his appearance so that there are few even of the best detectives who can recognize him. This new system describes the features so that a man can carry them in his mind systematically, features that cannot be changed.

"Take the nose, for example," explained Kennedy. "There are only three kinds, as Bertillon calls them--convex, straight, and concave. A detective, we will say, is sent out after a man with a concave nose or, as in this case a woman with a straight nose. Thus he is freed from the necessity of taking a second glance at two-thirds of the women, roughly, that he meets--that is, theoretically. He pa.s.ses by all with convex and concave noses.

"There are four cla.s.ses of ears--triangular, square, oval, and round, as they may be called. Having narrowed his search to women with straight noses, the detective needs to concern himself with only one-fourth of the women with straight noses. Having come down to women with straight noses and, say, oval ears, he will eliminate all those that do not have the mouth, lips, chin, eyes, forehead, and so on that have been given him. Besides that, there are other striking differences in noses and ears that make his work much easier than you would imagine, once he has been trained to observe such things quickly."

"It sounds all right," I agreed haltingly.