Within a few minutes we were sauntering with enforced leisure along Ninth Street, in a rather sordid part, inhabited largely, I made out, by a slightly better class of foreigners than some other sections of the West Side.
As we walked along, I felt Garrick tugging at my arm.
"Slow up a bit," he whispered under his breath. "There's the house which was mentioned in the maid's note."
It was an old three-story brownstone building with an entrance two or three steps up from the sidewalk level. Once, no doubt, it had housed people of some means, but the change in the character of the neighbourhood with shifting population had evidently brought it to the low estate where it now sheltered one family on each floor, if not more. At least that was the general impression one got from a glance at the cheapened air of the block.
Garrick passed the house so as not to attract any attention, and a little further on paused before an apartment house, not of the modern elevator construction, but still of quiet and decent appearance. At least there were no children spilling out from its steps into the street, in imminent danger of their young lives from every passing automobile, as there were in the tenements of the block below.
He entered the front door which happened to be unlatched and we had no trouble in mounting the stairs to the roof.
What he intended doing I had no idea yet, but he went ahead with assurance and I followed, equally confident, for he must have had adventures something like this before. On the roof, a clothesline, which he commandeered and tied about a chimney, served to let him down the few feet from the higher apartment roof to that of the dwelling house next to it, one of the row in which number 99 was situated.
Quickly he tiptoed over to the chimney of the brownstone house a few doors down and, as he did so, I saw him take from his pocket the cedar box. A string tied to a weight told him which of the flues reached down to the room on the first floor, back.
That determined, he let the little cedar box fastened to an entwined pair of wires down the flue. He then ran the wires back across the roof to the apartment, up, and into a little storm shed at the top of the last flight of stairs which led from the upper hall to the roof.
"There is nothing more that we can do here just yet," he remarked after he had hauled himself back to me on the higher roof. "We are lucky not to have been disturbed, but if we stay here we are likely to be observed."
Cautiously we retraced our steps and were again on the street without having alarmed any of the tenants of the flat through which we had gained access to the roofs.
It was now the forenoon and, although Garrick instituted a search in every place that he could think of where Mrs. de Laacey and Violet Winslow might go, including the homes of those of their friends whose names we could learn, it was without result. I don't think there can be many searches more hopeless than to try to find someone in New York when one has no idea where to look. Only chance could possibly have thrown them in our way and chance did not favour us.
There was nothing to do but wait for the time when Miss Winslow might, of her own accord, turn up to visit her former maid for whom she apparently had a high regard.
Inquiries as to the antecedents of Lucille De Veau were decidedly unsatisfactory, not that they gave her a bad character, but because there simply seemed to be nothing that we could find out. The maid seemed to be absolutely unknown. Her brother was a waiter, though where he worked we could not find out, for he seemed to be one of those who are constantly shifting their positions.
Garrick had notified Dillon of what he had discovered, in a general way, and had asked him to detail some men to conduct the search secretly for Miss Winslow and her aunt, but without any better results than we had obtained. Apparently the department stores had swallowed them up for the time being and we could only wait impatiently, trusting that all would turn out right in the end. Still, I could not help having some forebodings in the matter.
It was in the middle of the afternoon that we had gone downtown to Garrick's office, after stopping to secure the letter from the safe in the uptown hotel where it had been deposited for security during the night and placing it in a safety deposit vault where Garrick kept some of his own valuables. Garrick had selected his office as a vantage point to which any news of Miss Winslow and her aunt might be sent by those whom we had out searching. No word came, however, and the hours of suspense seemed to drag interminably.
"You're pretty well acquainted on the STAR?" Garrick asked me at last, after we had been sitting in a sort of mournful silence wondering whether those on the other side might not be stealing a march on us.
"Why, yes, I know several people there," I replied. "Why do you ask?"
"I was just thinking of a possible plan of campaign that might be mapped out to bring these people from under cover," he remarked thoughtfully. "Do you think you could carry part of it through?"
I said I would try and Garrick proceeded to unfold a scheme which he had been revolving all day. It consisted of as ingenious a "plant" as I could well imagine. "You see," he outlined, "if you could go over to the Star office and get them to run off a few copies of the paper, after they are through with the regular editions, I believe we can get the Chief started and then all we should have to do would be to follow him up--or someone who would lead us to him."
The "plant," in short, consisted in writing a long and circumstantial story of the discovery of new evidence against the ladies' poolroom, which so far had been scarcely mentioned in the case. As Garrick laid it out, the story was to tell of a young gambler who was said to be in touch with the district attorney, in preference to saying the police.
In fact, his idea was to write up the whole gambling situation as we knew it on lines that he suggested. Then a "fake" edition of the paper was to be run off, bearing our story on the front page. Only a few copies were to be printed, and they were to be delivered to us. The thing had been done before by detectives, I knew, and in this case Warrington was to foot the bill, which might prove to be considerable.
At least it offered me some outlet for my energies during the rest of the afternoon when the failure to receive any reports about the two women whom we were seeking began to wear on my nerves.
It took some time to arrange the thing with those in authority on the Star, but at last that was done and I hastened back to Garrick at his office to tell him that all that remained to do was the actual writing of the story.
Garrick had just finished testing an arrangement in a large case, almost the size of a suitcase, and had stood it in a corner, ready to be picked up and carried off the instant there was any need for it. There was still no word of Miss Winslow and Mrs. de Lancey and it began to look as if we should not hear from them until Violet Winslow turned up on her visit to her former maid.
Together we plunged into the preparation of the story, the writing of which fell to me while Garrick now and then threw in a suggestion or a word of criticism to make it sound stronger for his purpose. Thus the rest of the afternoon passed in getting the thing down "pat."
I flatter myself that it was not such a bad piece of work when we got through with it. By dint of using such expressions as "It is said," "It is rumoured," "The report about the Criminal Courts Building is," "An informant high in the police department," and crediting much to a mythical "gambler who is operating quietly uptown," we managed to tell some amazing facts.
The fake story began:
"Since the raid by the police on the luxurious gambling house in Forty-eighth Street, a remarkable new phase of sporting life has been unfolded to the District Attorney, who is quietly gathering evidence against another place situated in the same district.
"A former gambler who frequented the raided place has put many incriminating facts about the second place in the hands of the authorities who are contemplating an exposure that will stir even New York, accustomed as it is to such startling revelations. It involves one of the cleverest and most astute criminals who ever operated in this city.
"This place, which is under observation, is one which has brought tragedy to many. Young women attracted by the treacherous lure of the spinning roulette wheel or the fascination of the shuffle of cards have squandered away their own and their husband's money with often tragic results, and many of them have gone even further into the moral quagmire in the hope of earning enough money to pay their losses and keep from their families the knowledge of their gambling.
"This situation, one of the high lights in the city of lights and shadows, has been evolved, according to the official informant, through the countless number of gambling resorts that have gained existence in the most fashionable parts of the city.
"The record of crime of the clever and astute individual already mentioned is being minutely investigated, and, it is said, shows some of the most astounding facts. It runs even to murder, which was accomplished in getting rid of an informer recently in the pay of the police.
"Against those conducting the crusade every engine of the underworld has been used. The fight has been carried on bitterly, and within less than twenty-four hours arrests are promised as a result of confessions already in the hands of the authorities and being secretly and widely investigated by them before the final blow is delivered simultaneously, both in the city and in a town up-state where the criminal believes himself unknown and secure."
There was more of the stuff, which I do not quote, describing the situation in detail and in general terms which could all have only one meaning to a person acquainted with the particular case with which we were dealing. It threw a scare, in type, as hard as could be done. I fancied that when it was read by the proper person he would be amazed that so much had, apparently, become known to the newspapers, and would begin to wonder how much more was known that was not printed.
"That ought to make someone sit up and take notice," remarked Garrick with some satisfaction, as he corrected the typewritten copy late in the afternoon. "The printing of that will take some time and I don't suppose we shall get copies until pretty late. You can take it over to the Star, Tom, and complete the arrangements. I have a little more work to do before we go up there on Ninth Street. Suppose you meet me at eight in Washington Square, near the Arch?"