THE CRIME CIRCUS MURDER CASE
A Gillian Hazeltine Court Room Mystery
By
GEORGE F. WORTS

A Deerstalker Classic – Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine
Copyright © 1929 – reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-062-X
All rights reserved
Special Contents Copyright © 2002 by Jean Marie Stine
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
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Renaissance E Books
P. O. Box 494
Clemmons, NC 27012-0494
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Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 - An Ultimatum
Chapter 2 - Gang Vengeance
Chapter 3 - The Frame Up
Chapter 4 - Red Hair
Chapter 5 - Fair Warning
Chapter 6 - The Showdown
Chapter 7 - Open Warfare
Chapter 8 - The Gun Mob
Chapter 9 - On the Offensive
Chapter 10 - The Fourth Degree
Chapter 11 - Starting the Ballyhoo
Chapter 12 - Fighting Against Time
Chapter 13 - In the Arena
Chapter 14 - Damning Evidence
Chapter 15 - A Last Resort
Chapter 16 - In the Balance
Chapter 17 - Last Act of the Circus

INTRODUCTION

Legal thrillers – especially those where an attorney risks her or his life to champion the cause of an innocent person who has become the target of conspiracy by a giant multinational corporation, or a powerful, corrupt politician, are all the rage today.  But they were a rarity in the 1920s and 30s when whitewashed, idealized portraits of America, complete with wholesome small towns and benign officials, reigned supreme – literarily speaking.  (That this pleasing façade was no more representational of actual circumstances then than it is today, must surely go without saying.) 
One of the few voices of dissent raised against this highly misleading image of the status quo was that of writer George F. Worts in a series of mystery novels featuring lawyer sleuth, Gillian Hazeltine.  In nearly half of the two-dozen Hazeltine stories, the "Silver Fox" (as the press dubbed the fortyish courtroom wizard) rides to the defense of average citizens "set up" as fall-guys (or fall-gals) by ruthless businessmen and government officials with vast resources at their command – and no compunctions about using murder as a tool of their trade.  In The Crime Circus Murder Case, for instance, Hazeltine tackles a web of political intrigue that spans from the local precinct to the mayor's office to the Governor's Mansion.  
However, author Worts' target here isn't political corruption per se – that's just incidental (or you might say, as with the work of Robert A. Heinlein, instinctive) – rather, it's the way the press and public turn murder trials into a "media circus."  As a result of the attention, attorneys and judges become, as Worts says, showmen, conducting "another court room farce! … We will see the State spending thousands and thousands of dollars…  We will see the newspapers harvesting riches.  We will see the telegraph companies harvesting riches.  We will see [attorneys] adding to [their] plunder and notoriety.  We will see [defendants], if … freed, going into the motion pictures at a fabulous salary.  We will see the deplorable spectacle, in short, of the State taxpayers footing the bill for a big show – for which it receives not a dollar of the millions of profits the big show makes – for others!"  (It is one of the many moments in this book that are likely to make contemporary readers conclude very little has changed over the past seventy years.)
But none of this is meant to imply that The Crime Circus Murder Case is an earnest tract against political corruption or a labored Aristophanean satire on the sorry state of American jurisprudence.  Instead, it's the author's usual fast-moving, breezy courtroom dazzler.  Chapter 1 kicks off with enough plot complications for two normal mystery novels.  As it begins, Gillian Hazeltine has fallen in love.  But the woman in question will have him only if Gillian promises to give up his current practice as, in her words, "defender of the underworld, the murderers, the crooks, the gunmen, the gamblers, the bootleggers," and become a "responsible," "respectable" attorney she could be proud of.  Gillian barely has time to swear he's through with murder cases forever, when a smalltime hoodlum bangs at the door.  He has just witnessed a gangland murder and seen an innocent young woman framed for the crime.  Before he can say more, the man is machine-gunned on Gillian Hazeltine's own doorstep.
Things become more complicated when the Governor's son begs the lawyer-sleuth to defend the young woman framed for the gangland murder; while the boy's father, the Governor, threatens to put Gillian out of business in the state if he does take the case.  When Gillian is ambushed on a lonely road by a carload of hoodlums, from which he barely escapes with his life, and his fiancée seems to have prior knowledge of the event, Gillian begins to wonder if there is anyone he can trust.  Add the fact that he is beginning to have disturbing daydreams about Violet Dearing, the intelligent, fearless woman who has been charged with the murder – and the plot becomes explosive.  
Before it's over, Gillian Hazeltine, true to form, will have transgressed several statutes, ferreted out the real killer and pulled an unexpected legal rabbit or two out of his hat.  First and foremost being that when the prosecution begins to turn the case against Violet Dearing into a media circus, Gillian gets a change of venue – to a Circus!
And those are only some of the delights of this captivating Gillian Hazeltine courtroom mystery, from the pen of master Golden Age detective novelist George F. Worts.  

Jean Marie Stine
December 15, 2001

Watch for the next Deerstalker Gillian Hazeltine release, and be sure to visit the Deerstalker Classics Home Page for free stories, articles, interviews, movie stills, rare book and magazine covers, and news of our forthcoming classic mysteries in e-book format.  URL: http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/DEERSTALKER.html/ 

CHAPTER 1
An Ultimatum

GLLIAN HAZELTINE considered the girl with immeasurable approval.  She stood with one elbow on the mantel above the fireplace in which logs smartly crackled and dissolved in flame and smoke, her cheek pillowed on a forearm, her eyes closed or dreaming into the fire.  Her tousled curly brown hair came to a downy point on her nape.  It was a lovely neck, surmounting beautiful slim shoulders.
"It is better, Dorothy," said the great criminal lawyer, "that ninety-nine guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be punished."
Dorothy Murphy, junior member of the firm of Madeline Sceurs, said nothing.  Gillian Hazeltine continued, in silence, to approve of her.
The cheek visible to him was bright with health.  She wore a boy's heavyblue sweater, khaki shirt, laced moccasins.  She was slender, but her slenderness was that of a gracious maturity.  Dorothy Murphy was, however, on the sunny side of thirty.  Perhaps ten years yawned between them.
As she turned from the fireplace, Gillian Hazeltine knew that her answer was going to be no.  Not a wavering, tone-qualified no, giving him grounds on which to base an appeal, but a no of distinctness and finality.
His years of practice in the criminal courts had taught him that trick of knowing a man's mind before the man knew it himself.  Women were more difficult; they were smooth liars, cleverer at the game of meaning one thing and saying another, of thinking one thing and saying just the opposite.
The girl's clear brown eyes considered him.
"No," she said distinctly – with finality.  And he knew that she wasn't thinking the opposite, or teasing him, or merely being coquettish.
He blurted: "It's because I'm almost forty.  If I were ten years younger–"
"Don't be silly," she stopped him.
"A man's age," he overrode her opposition, "has nothing to do with his years."
"Don't tell me, Gillian, that a man is only as old as he feels!"
"I won't!" he said sharply.  "A man is as old as his energy.  I have more energy than any man of twenty-four you can name!  I do more work, require less sleep.  Actually, by any kind of yardstick you want to use, I'm fifteen years younger than the average man of thirty-eight."
The girl's eyes again began to twinkle humorously.
"When I'm fifty, I won't be older than the average man of thirty-five," he asserted.
"If you had a shred of conscience, Gillian, you'd be seventy!  What made you decide you'd rather marry me than Marguerite"
"I love you," said the famous lawyer.
Dorothy Murphy laughed softly.  "I don't believe you know the meaning of the word.  You're a cold, calculating machine, Gillian – that's all you are.  We're both attractive girls.  It's taken you a year to decide which one us will be more of an ornament.  Did you flip a coin, Gillian?"
"I thought you liked me," Gillian said with the petulance of a boy of twenty.
"Darling, I do like you," the girl said.  "I'm really tremendously fond of you.  You're clever.  You're amusing.  I admire this marvelous energy that you're so proud of.  But you're not my type, as the modern girl says.  The old-fashioned girl would draw herself up haughtily and tell you she wouldn't have you if you were the last man on earth."
"Why," he persisted, "am I not your type?"
"Because," the girl answered, "you're a rascal.  You were probably quite as much a rascal at twenty-four as you are at thirty-eight.  The trouble is, I suppose – if we must analyze these things – I am hopelessly romantic.  I must be able to idealize the man I love.  Well, there aren't any ideals in you.  You are grasping, greedy, calculating, a trickster.  In short, you haven't any principles.  You coldly figure out what you want; then you turn on this energy of yours – and get it.
"A year or so ago, or sometime after your second wife died, you began getting lonely; you began looking around for some nice pretty girl to share your nice house and your nice cars and your, yes, nice millions with.  Your choice seemed to narrow down to Marguerite and me.  Somehow, you have eliminated Marguerite.  You must have, been awfully sure of me."
"I wasn't at all," the lawyer denied.  "I only wanted you more than I ever wanted anything in my life.  There wasn't any calculation about it.  I do love you!  Damn it, I do!  I need you.  I realize that I'm not by any means perfect.  A girl with fine ideals, with lofty purposes – a girl like yourself, Dorothy – would be a guiding star for me."
"The defense rests?" Dorothy laughed.
"You're cruel," said, the man.
"I know you so well," the girl told him.  "Everything you say is so cleverly calculated, Gillian.  You're so used to twisting facts to suit your ends; you're so used to swaying people by your logic – but I see clear through you, Gillian.  You're too persuasive.  You offer to share your worldly, all with me, and when I don't give in to that temptation, you attack every woman's weakness – by saying that you need me, that I am your shining ideal."
"It's true!" he proclaimed.  "You are!"
"Rot!" said the girl.  "You haven't a soul.  You haven't, in the sentimental sense, a heart.  You're cold, scheming, ruthless.  You're where you are, my dear, because of what you are.  Aren't most of us?  You're the greatest criminal lawyer in the State, perhaps the greatest in America – because you have absolutely no soul.
"Time after time, you've defended murderers with the blood of the kill fairly reeking on their hands.  You've got them off.  You've made fools of stupid district attorneys.  You've made fools of whole juries.  You've bought juries.  You've bought judges.  And when you haven't bought them, you've taken the greatest pride in your ability to sway them with your words – in making them believe black was white.  You've made yourself the shining hope of the underworld.  Why do people call you the Silver Fox?  Because you have a Christian soul and noble ideals?"
"People who aren't clever condemn cleverness," the Silver Fox grimly answered.  "I do nothing worse than other lawyers.  I only do it quicker."
Gillian Hazeltine was fighting as he had perhaps never fought in any courtroom.  If he had deliberately gone about winning Dorothy Murphy, it was only because he wanted her so much.  He loved her for her courage, her fine ideals; indeed, he loved her for the very qualities which made her despise him.  What he lacked, she had.  She was, he had known for a long time, a complement to his own brilliant personality.  She wasn't brilliant; she was sound, square, fine.
"You might have become a corporation lawyer," she pointed out.
"Corporation law is no cleaner than criminal law," he retorted.
"It seems cleaner."
"But it isn't.  Perhaps criminals appeal to me because they are under dogs."
"Murderers–" she murmured.
"Look here," said Gillian.  "A man who commits a murder is usually justified.  I mean, there is some good reason behind it.  I don't try to make juries believe a murderer is innocent of the crime.  I try to make them place themselves in the murderer's position, goaded as he was."
"You do?" breathed Dorothy Murphy with large round eyes of surprise.
"I do!"
"You do, you mean, when the evidence is against them.  I've seen you get murderers off scot-free on tricky testimony."
Gillian Hazeltine sighed.  "You make me feel guilty as the devil."
"Angel, you are guilty as the devil!" she laughed.
"You know there is no justice in American criminal courts," he urgently went on.  "A beautiful woman kills her husband with a hammer because she hates him – and the jury frees her.  A homely man kills his wife because he hates her – and hangs.  Is that justice?"
The girl made a little face at him.  "Are you really furious, Gillian, or is it merely your court room manner?  I mean, have you an honest emotion in your system?"
"Court rooms," the lawyer declared, are arenas.  Lawyers are gladiators.  The cleverest gladiator wins.  The merits of the case have very little to do with the verdict.  That situation existed when I was admitted to the bar."
"Did you try to reform it?"
"It took me a year or two to lose my illusions.  A court room is no place for an idealist.  So I became a realist.  I adapted myself to the conditions I found.  I made up my mind to win cases by every means at my disposal."
"Buying judges, bribing juries, using words as a smoke screen to hide the real issues," the beautiful girl stabbed at him.  "You've summed up precisely the reasons why I can't love you, Gillian.  You've chosen to walk with red-handed murderers.  'He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith,' or however it goes.  You shouldn't have tossed your ideals overboard.  You should have fought for them!"
"I should have starved."
"You are where you are because of what you are," the girl repeated.  "The spokesman of the underworld, the defender of the crooks, the gunmen, the gamblers, the bootleggers – the little friend of the great moral unwashed.  Why don't you tell me you will go your way and sin no more?"
Gillian Hazeltine, lounging on the arm of a chair with a cigar clamped in his teeth, looked at her dazedly.  This slip of a girl had turned aside the shafts of his energetic intellect as masonry would turn aside darts of straw.  A dozen women he knew would have jumped to possess him at a snap of his blunt fingers.  This girl not only did not desire him, or his position, or his wealth; she defied and ridiculed him.
He seldom lost his temper.  But when a show of temper was called for, he could give an excellent imitation of that emotion without losing a shade of his superb mental calm.  She had surprised him , baffled him so completely that he now honestly mad clear through.  Her eyes, after her challenge, reined innocently round and protesting.
"I want you to go straight, Gil," she added in a mockingly grim voice.
"Please stop being flippant!" he snapped.
Dorothy Murphy gravely attended him; eyes narrowed, lips apart, but not smiling.  
"I'm close enough to being in love you," she said quickly, "that, if you stopped your criminal practice and went in for something I could admire or respect, I'd be tempted to reconsider you."
"Give up my criminal practice entirely?"
"And instantly!  Decide between me and murderers!  Now!  And promise never to jilt me for a fascinating murderess!"
"You're asking me to throw overboard the biggest practice in five States!"
"I am!  Sell it!  I'm confident I can make you so happy you won't miss the murderers!"
"You are?"
"I am, Gillian!"
Gillian Hazeltine looked at her wildly as he came up from the arm of the chair.  He had desired many other women.  But he had never desired a woman to the point of such madness.  Throw away his practice – the fruits of fifteen years of energetic toil!
It momentarily occurred to Gillian that he must be getting old.  Men made fools of themselves over pretty women when they were no longer on the young side.  Old fools!  Was he at that age, or did the fighter in him merely demand her surrender on any terms?
He tried, in a space of seconds, to reason himself out of the dangerous mood.  Give up his life's work in exchange for her slim, soft perfection!  Admit he had been a knave, to banish that derision from her eyes!  He discovered that he wanted her at any sacrifice.
"I'll do it, Dorothy!" he suddenly exclaimed.
With all the clumsy ardor of love at twenty, he caught her in his arms; pressed kiss after kiss upon her soft, moist, responsive mouth; thrilled to the clinging delight of her; heard himself saying foolish, romantic things.
"We'll pack up and go abroad!  Darling, we'll cruise the Mediterranean!  We'll go to the South Seas and eat breadfruit under palm trees!  You adorable!"
She was starry-eyed; radiant with exultation in this proof of her power over him.
Marguerite Murphy, tall, stately, statuesque blond girl in a negligee of black, trimmed with white lace, came down the stairs, eyeing them with wonder and amusement.
"Gillian," she observed in a liquid golden voice, "I adore this camp of yours.  Roughing it de luxe is loads of fun.  The swimming has been wonderful.  Your Jap cook is perfect.  I am grateful for the hours of leisure you two have given me – I really did want to catch up on my reading.  I have enjoyed the pines and the hemlocks.  But, thank Heaven – thank Heaven, Gillian, we can now pack up and go back to town."
One lovely white hand trailed along the banister as she descended, talking.
"I was beginning to think you two never would stop snarling.  Gillian, I don't know whether to congratulate you or console you.  I don't think Dorothy appreciates you.  She will probably make you the worst wife the world has ever known.  She is extravagant, lazy and fickle."
Gillian, laughed boisterously as Marguerite, senior member of the firm of Madeline Sceurs, moved swiftly across the room – her grace that of a tigress – and enfolded her sister in her arms.  It had been, in truth, a most difficult choice to make.  Even now, he wondered.  Marguerite, in a black evening gown, with her white shoulders, her glorious golden hair, her pink delicate lips, was superb – elegant!
"Darling!" Dorothy was excitedly saying.  "He's promised to give up his criminal practice!  He's tried his last case!  No more – ever!"
Amazed blue eyes questioned Gillian.  
He nodded affirmation.  "She wouldn't consider me on any other terms."
"Any woman," announced the beautiful golden-haired girl, "is biting off a large chunk when she bullies a man into giving up his lifework."
"He won't regret it!" Dorothy confidently stated.
"But – so suddenly!"
"He promised," Dorothy added.
"But, Gillian, how can you get away with it?"
"I will!"
"You can't let people down!"
"It isn't necessary.  I haven't a case on hand of any importance."
"Can you really pull all your chestnuts out of the fire?"
"Let them burn!" he cried recklessly.
Marguerite Murphy gravely shook her sleek golden head.
"I don't think you know what you're saying.  I think you're drunk with love."
"If he can't, I won't have him," Dorothy declared.  "That's the bargain – murderers or me – now or never!"
"All I can hear," said her sister, soberly, "is a monkey wrench falling into a lot of delicate machinery.  Of course, I haven't your high ideals, Dorothy.  I am a ruthless woman.  Poor Gillian!  I hope she finds a halo that fits you."
Dorothy, with her arm around Gillian's broad, muscular back, looked into his face and said, sweetly: "You won't be sorry."
A heavy-fisted clamor at the door forestalled Gillian's answer.  The room, suddenly still, seemed to throb with the pummeling.  A man's muffled, excited voice cried: "Mr. Hazeltine!  Mr. Hazeltine!  Lemme in!  It's Click!"
Frowning, Gillian strode to the door and unbolted it.
A man came plunging into the room with head down; a white-faced man, with a flattened nose and wild black eyes.
He burst out: "Dey bumped off Big Ben Lewis!  Dey pinched the Dearing girl!"

CHAPTER 2
Gang Vengeance

Hazeltine quickly closed the door, the two girls, looking with startled eyes from the intruder to him, saw that his face had suddenly gone white; that small pearls of sweat had promptly gathered on his judicial brow.
The famous criminal lawyer mopped his forehead with a large blue-bordered handkerchief and said: "Pull yourself together, Click.  Just what happened?"
"Fer gossakes, grab yer kelly, Mr. Hazeltine, an' come along wit' me!  I'll spill it on de way back!"
"Spill it now," the lawyer curtly bade him.
"Not me," cried the excited young man.  "Dey've been trailin' me since I pulled outa town."
"Who?"
"A carload.  I dunno who.  And I ain't talkin' to anybody but you, see?"
Gillian gave the two sisters a weary, gray smile.  "Ladies, may I present Mr. Click Gorner – one of our most picturesque underworld characters?  He is known as Click because of an old habit of his of saying, 'Do you click wit' me?'  If you don't click with Click, he generally wears a gun under his left armpit to help you make up your mind.  What time was Lewis killed, Click?"
"Nine toity!"
"Where did it happen?"
"In his office."
"And they've arrested Violet Dearing?"
"Dey pinched her foist t'ing."
"Were there witnesses?"
"Mr. Hazeltine, I ain't sayin' nuttin' – not till we're in my sedan.  I ain't talkin' to anybody but you personal – see?  Will yuh grab, yer kelly and drive back wit' me?  I'll spill it all while we're drivin'."
Gillian frowned.  "You say you were followed?"
"I did better'n sixty all the way up.  Dey stuck close behind all de way to Dexter.  I shook 'em there, see?  But dey know where yuh live."
"It may be a load of cops, Click."
"Bulls don't t'ink dat fast, Mr. Hazeltine.  It's some of Rafferty's gang – dat's who.  I'll wait fer yuh in my sedan, Mr. Hazeltine."
The gunman shot a hostile glance at the beautiful sisters, put his mouth close to Gillian's ear and whispered: "There's a lot of people who want the Dearing dame railroaded fer this.  But she didn't shoot him.  I know who did the shootin'.  I saw it.  So did Nicky Anderson.  It looks bad, Mr. Hazeltine.  You gotta promise me absolute protection if I give my testimony."
"I'll meet you in the car," Gillian said.
Dorothy Murphy broke in: "Gillian, you're not going with this man!"
"I must find out what he knows, honey.  This is much more serious than it appears on the surface.  Big Ben Lewis was, in a way, the king of the underworld – a tremendous power politically.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that his death will be felt in every corner of this State.  Run along, Click, while I get a hat and coat."
He opened the door for the gunman and Click Gorner scuttled out into the night.  Gillian hastened to a small closet under the stairs, secured a felt hat and a fall coat and started for the door.
Dorothy impulsively ran to him, as if to detain him by force, but he brushed past her to the doorway, where he paused.
He saw the lights of an approaching car swing around the last curve from the village of Dexter at the end of the lake.  The lights now flooded the road and the narrow lawn which ran down from the porch to the lake, sharply etching the lean figure of Click Gorner against the blackness of a pine thicket.
A more powerful beam flashed on.  It played full and brilliantly upon the gunman, following him as a spotlight follows an actor on a darkened stage.  He was running now, as if the light had frightened him.
The car came plunging on and Gillian held his breath, tingling with sense of fatality.  With a screeching of brakes the car came to an abrupt halt.  Instantly the darkness behind it glaring lights was knifed by a stuttering strip of red fire.  This stabbing, intermittent blade of red flame was accompanied by a ripping crash of sound Click Gorner was tossed and spun about in the white drench of radiance as if by violent, destructive hands.
It was the first time Gillian had bee a witness to the swift and horrible effectiveness of a modern hand machine gun, and the shock of it suddenly sickened him.  In his own way he was fearless fighter, but the sight of death always filled him with a childlike terror.  The savage snarl of one of those new Browning hand-held machine guns ceased as abruptly as it had begun and Click Gorner lay limp and torn and broken on the roadside.
A hand in the room behind Gillian flashed off the lights as a woman screamed once.  The lawyer was energetically pulled back from that perilous threshold; he was turned about and firmly clasped in a woman's slender strong arms.
Which woman?
Dazed and shaken by the brutal assassination of Click Gorner, he could only, for the moment, clasp the woman to save himself from toppling over.
The quickness with which it had happened.
Dorothy or Marguerite?
As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness of the room – the red dimness of dying embers – he vaguely saw the form of a woman lying athwart the hearth.
One of them, he reasoned, had and fainted.  The other had leaped to the wall switch and pulled him from the doorway.  This one was now in his arms.
Dorothy or her sister?  
A glaring white beam flickered along the rafters as the death car backed, and sped off with a roaring of its exhaust.
Out there in the darkness, under the trees, crumpled, bullet-ridden, lifeless, lay Click Gorner.
The woman in his arms released herself.  The lights in the room flashed on.  
He croaked, "Dorothy!" even in his shocked state, he could be astonished that, in this acid test of character, the younger sister had proved braver and more resourceful.  
She was white with excitement and fear, but her eyes were dark, tender with concern for him.
"I thought they might be planning to get you, too, Gillian," she said. 
"Marguerite has fainted."
"She always does," Dorothy murmmered.  "I'll get her a drink.  You'd better have one, too.  You're as pale as a ghost."
"It was a terrific shock.  I'll 'phone the sheriff at Dexter," he said.
The 'phone bell began ringing before he had crossed the room.  Hazeltine picked up the receiver and shakily said, "Hello."
"Is this Gillian Hazeltine?" an unknown man's voice rasped.  
"It is," said the lawyer.
"Did you know that Ben Lewis has been killed and that Violet Dearing has been collared?"
"Yes.  Who is this?"
"Never mind who this is," the harsh voice returned.  "I'm just calling to a warning, Hazeltine, keep your hands off this case!" 
"Is this Rafferty?" Gillian snapped.  
"Never you mind who it is.  I'm telling you to keep your hands off this case–or you're going to get yours."
Gillian snarled: " Who's going to give it to me?"
The unknown man answered: "Try and find out!"
He hung up.  Gillian angrily jiggled the hook and presently secured the attention of Central.  He instructed her to trace the call.
"I'll hold the 'phone," he added.
The report came, in a few seconds, that the call had originated in Burke's pool room, on Center Street, in Greenboro.
"Call that number," he said grimly.
A deep bass voice presently answered.  Its owner confessed himself to be Tim Burke, the pool room's proprietor.  Gillian knew him well; believed him to be trustworthy.
"I don't know who it could leave been, Mr. Hazeltine," he said in answer to the lawyer's questions.  "We've got three 'phone booths here.  People are duckin' in and out from the street all the time, usin' them."
"Find out if Slim Rafferty has been seen by anyone there in the past fifteen minutes."
Tim Burke requested him to hold the line.  He returned to the 'phone presently and said: Rafferty was in here all evening, but no one seems to've seen him in the past half hour, Mr. Hazeltine.  Is anything wrong?"
"If you see Rafferty, tell him to get in touch with me any time after midnight, I'll be at my house.  That's all, Tim.  Good-by."
Gillian hung up and turned from the 'phone, to find Dorothy Murphy seated beside him.  She asked bluntly: "Who is going to give you what?"
"Some one," he gravely answered, "doesn't want me to mix into this case."
"Neither does some one else," said the girl.  "You don't intend to, do you?"
"Not if it can be avoided," Gillian assured her.
"It must be avoided, Gillian.  I supposed that, sooner or later, this issue would have to be met – a murder involving a combination of circumstances that you would find simply irresistible; but I didn't expect to see it happen so soon."
"Honey, it hasn't happened."
"Then you aren't going to monkey with this case?"
He hesitated before answering her.  "It isn't an ordinary murder case.  It's the result of a political upheaval that will set the State on its' ears.  There isn't a politician in the State who won't turn white when he hears that Ben Lewis was killed – by the Dearing girl."
"Who is this Dearing girl?"
Gillian's gravity increased.  "No one quite knows.  She was a nice girl who recently decided, by all accounts, that the primrose path is the easiest."
"Was she Ben Lewis's mistress?"
"No, dear – nor anybody else's.  She is Greenton's leading lady bootlegger.  She turned to that because she didn't seem to be able to hold any respectable job.  She's been making a great deal of money, and blowing it in on Ben Lewis's roulette wheel.  She is a beautiful thing and I don't believe she killed Ben Lewis.  I mean, putting together the things that I know – that I can't discuss with you just now."
"You're saying in so many words, Gillian, that you're interested in her case – you're tempted to defend her.  And I am telling you – in so many words, Gillian – that if you defend this girl –Dorothy stopped, as the telephone bell sharply began to ring.
A number of voices crowded in on the circuit when he said "Hello."  Quiet was succeeded by a crisp masculine voice saying: Mr. Hazeltine?  This is Governor Brundage's secretary.  The Governor wants to talk with you."
"Very well," Gillian acquiesced.
The deep, rough voice of Governor Brundage came booming down the wire.  "Gillian?"
"Yes, Governor."
"Have you heard that Ben Lewis is dead?"
"I heard about it a short time ago."
"Have you heard any of the details?"
"Only that Violet Dearing has been arrested."
"I understand that two eyewitnesses saw the shooting.  They have evidently a strong case against the girl."
Gillian said nothing.  The Governor, after a wait, inquired impatiently: "Are you still there, Gillian?"
"Yes, Governor, I'm here."
"It would be advisable, I think, if you came up here and had a conference with me as soon as you can make it, Gillian.  If you are asked to handle this case, I would consider it a favor if you deferred decision until you had seen me."
"I will drive to the capital to-morrow or next day," was Gillian's answer.
"Thank you, Gillian.  Good-by."
Gillian was frowning as he replaced the receiver.  
Dorothy exclaimed: "That was Governor Brundage!" 
Gillian nodded,
"He doesn't want you to touch the case!"
Gillian looked at her curiously.
"Why not?" she demanded.
"I don't know," he answered.  "I'm going to find out.  That's two people so far who don't want me to touch the case.  It's getting more and more interesting!"
"If you let yourself be drawn into it–" Dorothy began warningly.
He reached forward and patted her hand.  It was a slender, white, beautiful hand.  He had fallen in love with Dorothy's hands long before he had fallen in love with Dorothy.
"Darling, I won't be drawn into it.  Stop worrying.  I love you.  I don't intend to lose you."
She cried: "All this tonight proves just what I was saying.  A dreadful murder occurs in the underworld – and you are the first person every one turns to!"
He smiled.  "The friend of the under dog, Dorothy!"
She did not return the smile.  "The friend of gunmen and murderers!"
"The murderer hasn't so far called me up," he reminded her.
"How can she?  She's in jail!"
Gillian had nothing to say to that.  He lifted the receiver again and requested the Dexter operator to connect him with Sheriff Bolton.  When the gruff, familiar voice of his old friend came on the wire, Gillian said: 
"Pete, there's been a killing out at my camp here.  A gang of Greenton gunmen drove out in a car and polished off Click Gorner."
"How long ago'd this happen?" Sheriff Bolton demanded.
"I'd say twenty minutes."
"Where'd the car go?"
"They seemed to be heading back toward Greenton."
"That means they've gone through Dexter!" the sheriff exploded.  "Why didn't you phone me in time to head em off?"
"Because I didn't want you and your posse massacred," Gillian answered.  "The gang in that car is armed with at least one machine gun.  They are probably full of hop and would mow their way through hell and high water.  Big Ben Lewis was shot – killed – in his office at nine-thirty.  Click Gorner is no doubt the first of a number of victims."
There was a long silence at the sheriff's end of the wire.  He presently said "Phew!" as if he were suddenly uncomfortably warm.
"I'll be right out with the coroner," he added weakly.  "We'll hold the inquest immediately.  The coroner will bring along enough men for the jury.  We can count on you, can't we, Gil?"
"Not at a coroner's jury," Gillian said hastily.  "I hate dead men.  I won't look at a dead man.  You'll conduct your inquest on the lawn where the body is lying.  You're not going to bring it into this house!"
"All right, Gil, all right.  Who killed Ben Lewis?"
"They've arrested a girl named Violet Dearing."
"Never heard of her.  Well, we'll be right out, Gil."
They arrived – a carload of men, including Sheriff Bolton and the coroner – in about half an hour.  The inquest was held at the roadside, with Gillian standing on his front porch refusing to participate.
The coroner's jury, after counting thirty-two bullet holes in Click Gorner's body, gravely decided that the gunman had met his death in a violent manner.
Cause of death: Penetration of sundry vital organs, including heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach and intestines by bullets fired with deliberation and premeditation.  Assailant or assailants unknown.
The mortal remains of Click Gorner were lifted into the tonneau of the sheriff's car and driven away.
The telephone rang once more as Gillian, his Japanese servant and the Murphy sisters were making hasty preparations for departure.
At the end of the line was an old friend – or an old enemy – of Gillian's, his opponent in countless court room battles – Adelbert Yistle, the prosecuting attorney of Greenboro.  He excitedly wanted to know if Gillian had heard of the death of Big Ben Lewis.
"I have," said Gillian.
"Then you know that Violet Dearing has been arrested, charged with killing him."
"I do."
"Are you going to handle her case?"
"I haven't decided.  She hasn't asked me."
"Well, she will.  She is referring all questions to you already.  I'm simply warning you, Gillian, not to take that girl's case.  It's a prima facie case of first degree murder, and you can simplify matters for everybody by keeping out of it.  If you have any sense of justice, you will.  You've cost the State hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past couple of years for trials because of your damned tricky methods.  Be a sport, keep out of this case and – well, give me a chance to win one."
"The only promise I can give," was Gillian's answer, "is that I haven't decided to take this case."
You won't have a leg to stand on if you do take it," Mr. Yistle argued.  "Two witnesses saw her fire the shot.  The gun, with two cartridges discharged, was found concealed on her."
"I could find two hundred who didn't see her fire the shot," said the jocular Gillian.
"The newspapers," Mr. Yistle persisted, "will be unanimously against you.  Everybody is sore at the way you've been wasting the taxpayers' money on these court room farces.  Give me your word that you won't take this case, will you?"
"Who told you to call me up and me not to take this case?" Gillian demanded.
"Why-why–" the prosecuting attorney stammered.  "Nobody.  I-I'm asking you of my own volition."
"Good-by," said Gillian rudely.
The Silver Fox, replacing the receiver on its hook, was grave.  He had, as a matter of fact, not the slightest intention of defending the Dearing girl, or of having any hand in the trial, yet the temptation to leap into the fray was strong.  The request and threat he had received had fanned his interest to a blazing curiosity.  Being a fighter born, he loved opposition.
When the girls came downstairs, announcing that they were packed and ready to start for the city, he sternly surveyed them.
"Did either of you, by any chance, hear what Click Gorner whispered to me just before he went out the door and was killed?"
The sisters shook their heads: said they hadn't heard a word of that whispering.
"What did he say?" Dorothy wanted to know.
"That the Dearing girl did not kill Ben Lewis."
"Who did?"
"Click didn't tell me.  Some gang, as I see it, had orders to kill him so that he could not tell."
Dorothy asked anxiously: "You haven't decided to take that case?"
He shook his head.  He did not know what to do.  A personal responsibility had been, against his will, thrust upon him: to clear an innocent girl accused of murder.  If he defended Violet Dearing, he would automatically lose Dorothy Murphy.  If he did not defend Violet Dearing, she would in all probability go to the electric chair, railroaded by a sinister power whose influence he had felt twice tonight.  
He decided, before making up his mind on the course to be pursued, to interview Nicky Anderson, who could tell him what Click Gorner had vainly tried to tell him.

CHAPTER 3
The Frame Up

GILLIAN said good night to the Murphy sisters at their apartment doorway and drove on to his house in the fashionable Riverdale section.  He had built it during his brief romance with the second Mrs. Hazeltine; a mansion of fifteen rooms, one of the showplaces of Greenboro.
Its lonesomeness, as he let himself in, oppressed him.  The rooms struck him suddenly as huge, over formal, unfriendly.  He pictured Dorothy Murphy being here to greet him.  It was a delightful picture.  Her presence would fill this echoing solitude with brightness and warmth.
The lonely lawyer wandered upstairs to his office, which had been an invention of the second Mrs. Hazeltine – now a permanent expatriate on the Riviera.  He seated himself at the telephone and with a strong effort of will pulled his thoughts together.
Presently he lifted the receiver and called a number.  A woman with a high whining voice answered.  Gillian said very softly: "This is Mr. Hazeltine, Gillian Hazeltine.  I wonder if the mechanic who works on my cars is there?"
There was a silence.  He hoped that she would understand and that any one who chanced to be listening in would be deceived.  She whined: "I'll see."
Gillian waited a full five minutes.  Then the woman's voice again: "He don't want to come to the phone.  He ain't feeling good."  
"Did you tell him Mr. Hazeltine was calling?"
"I told him."
"Tell him again.  Tell him it's very important"
"All right, but he ain't feeling good."
After another five minutes' wait, his patience was rewarded.  A man's voice with a nasal twang came into his ear.  It was so similar in intonation to the voice of Click Gorner that the two could hardly have been told apart.
Nicky Anderson said: "What do you want?"
"I'm having ignition trouble on my Lincoln roadster," Gillian said, almost in a purr.  "I wonder if you could come right out."
"Not a chance.  I'm sick."
"The way you came last time would be shorter – and better," Gillian softly purred at him.  He was referring to a path through the woods back of his estate.  Nicky could come through those woods and enter the door unseen by any one watching the front or sides of the house.
"This night air is bad for me," said the man who, according to the dead Click Gorner, was the only remaining witness to the murder.
"Indoor air is just as bad," Gillian pointed out as significantly.
"I've got a bad headache," protested Nicky Anderson.
"But you'll come up," said Gillian.
"I'll think it over," said Nicky.
The lawyer hung up the receiver and crossed the room to the large window facing south.  It commanded a view of the immaculate lawn sloping off toward Maple Avenue.  Even at night the Hazeltine grounds were fairly well illuminated because of the profusion of street lights in the Riverdale section.
He saw a man lounging under a young elm tree.  The man seemed to be looking up at the window.  Perhaps it was his imagination, but Gillian was certain he saw something glitter in the man's hand.
Gillian pulled down the shade and rang for his butler.  When Toro appeared the lawyer said: "I am expecting a man who will come to the back door and walk in without ringing or knocking.  You are to wait in the kitchen and bring him directly to my office.  Go through the house now and see that all windows are fastened, all doors locked, all shades pulled down."
Toro acknowledged these instructions and departed.  The telephone bell began to ring.  It would be, Gillian foresaw, a busy night for him.
The agitated voice of a man came into his ear.  "Is this Gillian Hazeltine?"
"It is."
"This is Wally Brundage, Mr. Hazeltine," the man said, and added: "Thank God, I've found you!  Can I see you at once?"
"You can," said Gillian, wondering why the son of the Governor should want to see him.
"You know, don't you, that big Ben Lewis is dead?"
"Yes, I know."
"And that Violet Dearing has been arrested, charged with murdering him?"
"I heard that too, yes."
"I'll be right out, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Good-by."
Gillian heard a door close as he hung up the receiver.  Then soft footsteps on the back stairs.  Toro said in his precise English: "The gentleman walked in the back door, sir."
Behind the Japanese towered the lanky figure of Nicky Anderson.  He was unshaved.  His blue-gray eyes had that brilliant gloss which comes from cocaine.  His long, horse-like face was pale and oily from much perspiring.  His fingers at his side were twitching.
"Well," he said, "I got here."
"Sit down, Nicky," Gillian curtly instructed him.
Nicky glanced shrewdly about the room.  "No chance of this house bein' broken into, is there?" he anxiously wanted to know.
"All windows and doors are locked," Gillian assured him.
Nicky sat down on the edge of a chair, nervously lighted a cigarette, and asked huskily: "Where's Click?"
Gillian looked at him thoughtfully.  "Click is dead.  He drove out to my summer place immediately after Ben Lewis was bumped off.  A gang followed him in a car."
Nicky turned a shade paler.  "What did Click tell yuh?"
"He told me you and he had seen the murder; he insisted that the Dearing girl didn't shoot Lewis.  Who did?"
Nicky Anderson shook his head.
"Mr. Hazeltine," he said with husky-voiced gravity, "I don't know.  The Dearing dame didn't do it.  Click and me was standin' outside the door o' that room Lewis uses as his office.  We was waitin' to go in an' brace him fer a loan, see?  We was waitin' in that dark sort of alcove in the hall when we seen the Dearing dame come up the stairs to go into his office.
"The minute she put her hand on the doorknob we heard two shots inside.  I mean, she had her hand on the knob when the first shot was fired and she had the door maybe a foot open when the second shot was fired.
"We rushed into the room after her and there was Big Ben sprawlin' over his desk top with blood comin' out o' two holes in his forehead."
"Wait a minute," the lawyer stopped him.  "There's another door into that office, isn't there?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  There's a back door that leads into a hall goin' to a flight of stairs to the street that nobody but Ben Lewis himself ever used."
"Was the door closed when you went in?"
"Yes, sir; it was closed but not locked.  Click and me took one look and breezed."
"You were afraid of being pinched?"
"Sure we was!  Why not?  Ain't both of us got records as long as your arm?  You oughta know, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Go on with your story."
"There ain't much more to tell, Mr. Hazeltine.  We beat it down them stairs to the street and a black sedan was just pullin' away from the curb."
"A sedan?"
"Yes, sir.  I think it was an old twin-six Packard.  We didn't get the license number and we couldn't make out who was inside.  There wasn't anybody else in sight – I mean on the street.  Click says you ought to know about it right away.  I mean, we hung around while the wagon drove up and they took the Dearing dame down to the stir.  And Click says he was gonna drive right out to your summer camp and tell yuh what we seen."
"In other words," Gillian took him up, "there were no other witnesses to the fact that the Dearing girl did not kill Lewis but you and Click."
"She's a nice kid," Nicky added.  "I think it's a frame, cold as hell."
"Who would frame her?"
"I ain't in on that.  Who bumped off Click?  The Rafferty gang?  He's in with the mayor, ain't he?  I haven't even got a good guess.  Who do you think would frame the kid?"
"I don't know," said Gillian.
"And what a hell of a witness I'd make, to testify for the Dearing kid!" Nicky muttered.  "They'd laugh me out of court, with any record!"
"Your record spoils you as a witness," Gillian agreed.  "No jury in the world would believe you after a prosecuting attorney finished asking you about your past.  But you are, nevertheless, valuable, Nicky.  I know you're telling me the truth, and whoever defends the Dearing girl will know that she is innocent."
"What do you want me to do, Mr. Hazeltine ?  I oughta be hittin' the grit.  If the Rafferty gang got Click, they're gonna get me next.  They knew we was like brothers."
"I've been thinking of that," said Gillian.  He glanced at his watch.  "It's one fifteen, Nicky.  The Chicago Limited stops at Greenboro junction to change engines in about forty minutes;.  Get aboard at the junction and go to Chicago.  Go to the Weymouth Hotel and take a room under the name of – let me see – Jerry Conway.  Stay in that room.  Lay off booze and dope."
"I'll read the Gideon Bible," Nicky humorously suggested.
"It wouldn't do you a bit of harm.  Lay low.  Wait for instructions from me.  Something may develop.  If I wire I'll use code.  If I send you a wire saying 'Buy cotton,' you'll know that I have no further use for you and you can fade.  The other wire will be 'Sell cotton.'  That will mean several things.  It will mean that you are to round up a gang, come back to Greenboro, conceal yourselves and get in touch with me."
"Who you after – Rafferty?" the gunman grimly asked.
The Silver Fox said nothing.
"It'll cost you a pile of jack," Nicky hastened to add.  "There's nothin' in the world I wouldn't do fer yuh, Mr. Hazeltine, after what you done fer me, but a Chicago gang will cost jack.  Yuh want about seven good men besides me, don't yuh?  That'll set yuh back about five grand, countin' railroad expenses and hop.  Those guys don't work without hop.  Do you wanna let me have the five grand now, in case the deal goes through?"
Gillian smiled.  "I'll wire money if it's necessary.  It may not be necessary.  I hope it won't be necessary.  At present, a hundred will keep you going.  Here's a hundred."
He gave Nicky Anderson five twenty-dollar bills.  "Have you got the code straight in your head?"
Nicky grimly nodded.  "Buy cotton means yuh don't need me.  Sell cotton means, round up a gang, bring 'em here and report to you."
"Good luck," said Gillian.
He didn't trust Nicky Anderson.  He trusted no crook, although time after time he had saved some rogue from prison by impressing upon a sentimental jury the need of "giving this poor, misunderstood kid a chance to go straight."  The reformation and the gratitude of crooks, he had found, were popular fairy tales.  But he was sure Nicky would follow his instructions, not from gratitude, but because of certain specific things that Gillian knew about him; because he knew that Gillian was ruthless with double-crossers.
The Silver Fox tiptoed to the south window and peeked out through a crack between shade and sash.  The man under the elm tree had gone elsewhere.
Gillian waited, listening.  He would have been pained, but not surprised to hear at any moment a snarling staccato of shots, meaning that Nicky Anderson had been violently sent to join his pal, Click.  But there were no shots.  The night continued peaceful.
Under the gentle light of a rising moon, Riverdale and Greenboro slept, happily unaware of ugly, sinister forces at work at its very civic core.
A lean gray roadster whispered into the Hazeltine crushed bluestone driveway like a monster lizard with incandescent eyes.  Under the porte-cochere it stopped.  The glaring eyes winked out, and in the bowels of the house a bell rang loudly and musically.
Toro was presently ushering up into Gillian's study a pale, agitated young man.
Wally Brundage slung a crumpled hat and a light overcoat into a chair and effusively shook Gillian's hand.  He was of the athletic type; tall, broadshouldered and graceful, with thick, curling, golden-blond hair, live, sparkling blue eyes; strong, excellent teeth.  He might be the captain of a football team, or one of the new generation of gentlemanly pugilists.
Gillian knew him casually; he knew him only slightly better by reputation.  An unruly young man, given to larks.  Headstrong and a little wild, but decent.
"It's a dammed outrage to come barging in on you like this, Mr. Hazeltine!" he gushed, as he squeezed and pumped Gillian's hand.
"People come to me at all hours when they're in trouble," Gillian said cordially.
"God knows I'm in trouble, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Sit down and collect yourself, Wally.  We've got the whole night."
"But they're giving Vi the third degree!"
"They won't harm her.  She's a smart girl."
"You'll take her case, won't you?" the boy cried.
"Wally, I don't think I can."
Governor Brundage's son leaped up and clutched his head.  He was obviously in a state of tremendous tension.
"You've simply got to, Mr. Hazeltine!  There's not another lawyer in this town – in this – State – in the world who knows the political situation as you do.  It isn't a straight murder case.  I tell you it's politics."
He stopped.  He glared, panting, at Gillian.  He brought his big brown fist down with a smash on Gillian's desk.
"My father has told you not to!" he fairly shouted.
"There isn't a man in this State who can keep me away from a case if I want to take it," Gillian corrected him.  "You may think my reason is foolish, but look here, Wally.  You're in love, aren't you?"
"I am!  I certainly am!"
"Well, so am I.  And the girl I want won't have me unless I drop criminal practice – beginning now.  If I take Miss Dearing's case, I lose the woman I want."
"If you don't take her case, they'll railroad her through to the chair."
"You're asking me to make too big a sacrifice.  I'll get good counsel for you.  I'll stay behind the scenes.  I'll give them all the information, all the dope"'
"It won't work," the young man stopped him.  "There's only one way to clear Vi.  That's for you to go into court and do it.  Mr. Hazeltine," he went on, in a lower tone, "you don't know what's been going on.  Let me tell you just a little.  I met Vi a little over a year ago, when I was first out of college.  It may sound like kid stuff to you – but it was a case of love at first sight.  We simply fell for each other like a ton of bricks.
"My father was mad enough about it to kill me.  You know where he started in life – at the end of a pick on a railroad gang.  He's always been sensitive about his lowly beginning, and he's wanted to make a dog-goned lounge-lizard out of me.  He wanted me to marry 'way up in society. In fact, he picked the girl.  You know her, Beulah Hemmingway; rich, homely and dumb."
Gillian nodded.  He had heard this part of the story.
"When I told him I was crazy about Vi, he threw a fit and tried to knock me down.  When he saw that that stuff wouldn't work, he got busy on Vi herself.  At first, he tried five different times to frame her, compromise her some way.  But she outsmarted him each time.  Then he brought pressure to bear on her job.  If you'll remember, she was assistant librarian at the main public library at the time.  She lost that job and got one as a stenographer in the Whitley Construction Company.  Dad got her fired out of there.
"In his time he has used mighty rough methods in smashing men who stood in his way, but I don't think he ever used meaner methods than he's used on that poor kid.  He didn't realize how much spunk she has!"
"Too much spunk," said Gillian.
Wally Brundage stared at him.
"Too much spunk," Gillian repeated.  "'He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day,' as some old poet said.  She should have run away.  She's only made a bad name for herself by staying."
"Vi is red-headed and half Irish," the young man said sadly.  "She wouldn't run away from a charging grizzly."
"Can you explain her conduct since the last job your father forced her out of?" Gillian asked.
"Her conduct?"
"She's a bootlegger, isn't she, Wally?  It seems to me your father has proved his point.  At least, he's made a bootlegger out of her."
"I'm not so sure he forced her into bootlegging," Wally Brundage demurred, "I'll swear there's some mystery connected with that.  I know her principal reason for going into bootlegging wasn't the money, although she did need money.  But she only grins at me when I ask what she is up to.  She's ten thousand times smarter than I am.  I know she's square and decent."
"Even if she has gone down the scale from assistant librarian to bootlegger'?"
"I'll fight any man who insinuates she isn't square and decent!"
"You'll have plenty of fights on your hands in the next few days," Gillian assured him.  "What was she doing in Big Ben's tonight?"
"We were playing roulette."
"You, too, eh?"
The athlete nodded.
"Why?  I mean, has she honestly fallen for roulette?"
"She seems to enjoy it," the young man grunted.  "She's been playing there night after night, always for small stakes, and neither winning nor losing."  He added belligerently: "After all, nice people play roulette at Deauville and Monte Carlo and Biarritz, don't they ?"
"Nice people don't play roulette in Big Ben's," Gillian answered, "unless they do it under the guise of slumming.  Well, what happened, Wally?"
The young man stiffened.  "We were playing when that pale fellow, Malone, I think his name is – Ben's man Friday – came and whispered in Vi's ear, She told me she'd be back in a minute and hustled out of the room.  I'd never seen her so, excited."
"Scared?"
"No!  Excited.  Pale and eyes snapping.  You know.  Well, she almost ran out of the room, and next thing I knew everybody was yelling that Ben had been shot – twice.  You ought to've seen the rats beat it out of that dive!"
"You stuck."
"Certainly I stuck!"
"Then the police came," Hazeltine prompted.
"Yes."
"How long did it take the police to get there
"I don't know.  I was too excited.  It may have been five minutes – or forty.  About all I remember is seeing the place suddenly swarming with cops, and a big, red-faced man I never saw before in my life kept hollering, 'The girl shot Ben!  She killed Ben!'  I knocked him down!  I hit him as hard as I could in the mouth."
"He saw her shoot Ben?"
"He said he did."
"Did you find out his name?"
"It's Ezra Wallace.  He's a dirty liar.  He never saw her shoot Ben.  She didn't shoot Ben."
"Who did?"
"I don't know.  Nobody knows.  Vi doesn't know – and she was first in Ben's office after the shooting.  She says the smoke was still in the air – I mean, the smell of it.  But there wasn't a soul in the office."
"Who arrested her?"
"Police Captain Sorrenson.  His men herded us down into two patrol wagons to the police station.  When they let me go, I tried to get you by phone.  I kept trying till I got you."
"Did you talk to Miss Dearing?"
"I did.  In the wagon.  Sorrenson tried to push me in the other wagon, but I elbowed him out of the way and climbed in beside Vi."
"Was she scared?"
"At first she wasn't so much scared as dazed.  Then, as she really realized what was happening, she became furious.  About all she would say was that they had put banana peels under her at last.  And she told me to get in touch with you immediately."
Gillilan looked distressed.  "Wally, you will have to believe that I am being absolutely honest with you.  I hate to let this girl of yours down.  I would like to take her case.  Everything I have heard about Miss Dearing, makes me interested in her.  But in justice to myself, I cannot take her case.  "I'll gladly go down and talk to her.  I'll give her all the advice I can, all the help I can – but I will not touch this case!"
Wally Brundage had seized his coat and hat from the chair where he had slung them.  Now he poked a stiff brown forefinger at Gillian as if it were a pistol.
He said in a thick, choked voice: "I'm pretty dumb.  I never did amount to much.  I'm not very good at reading between the lines.  But there's one thing I know as surely as God made little apples: this whole thing is a frame-up.  Putting this murder on Vi caps the climax.  It's a cold-blooded frame-up.  My own father's back of it; and you're in it too!"
"We'll go down to the jail and talk to your fiancée," Gillian responded angrily.  "What you said in the beginning covered the situation: You're pretty dumb."

CHAPTER 4
Red Hair

HOWEVER faulty Wally Brundage's mental processes may have been, no criticism could be made of his taste in women.  Specifically: Violet Dearing was not only beautiful, but she had brains.
Gillian Hazeltine made this discovery before he had talked to her through the bars of her door for three minutes.  He was pleasantly shocked and stimulated.  She was petite.  Under her gleaming cap of bright red hair were large eyes of purest dark blue.  She had flawless white skin and beautiful hands.
The Silver Fox, gazing into her cell, had greeted her: "Redheads are born trouble makers!"
She had cried: "You are Gillian Hazeltine!  I can't tell you how glad I am to see you!  Did Wally get in touch with you?"
"He did.  You may be less glad when I've finished telling you, in perfect confidence, why I can't possibly handle your case."
Her expression did not darken with despair, as had so many faces when Gillian refused to lend his assistance.
She said, directly: "It's not because you think I'm guilty."
"I know," Gillian answered, "that you aren't guilty."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"A witness told me you didn't do the killing."
"Did he see the actual killing?"
"He did not.  All he saw was that you did not do it,"
The blue eyes glowed.  "That means the case against me is spiked!" she exclaimed.
"Unfortunately, Miss Dearing, it does not."
"But if a witness–"
"The witness, it happens, is not credible.  He has a criminal record as long as your arm."
Even now, he saw no despair in her face.  He wondered if she was the type of innocent who foolishly places unlimited trust in justice.  If she were, he had overestimated her intelligence.  She expelled his doubts with her next words.
"They won't electrocute me," Violet Dearing confidently declared.  "I know too much."
"About whom?" Gillian promptly asked.
She gave him a wise little smile.  "I'll tell that to the lawyer who defends me.  I'm as innocent as a newborn lamb.  Moreover, I was terribly fond of Big Ben Lewis.  He was a great rascal, a really great rascal, with a heart of gold.  From what I have heard of you, you and Big Ben must have been very similar."
Gillian's face was a poker face.
"We were old friends," he admitted.
"I know it," she told him.  "That's one of the reasons why I wanted you to take my case.  Then there would be, in addition to my innocence, a revenge motive.  I am surprised that you would not go into the court room to avenge the death of an old friend.  I am even more surprised that my case doesn't appeal to you."
"It appeals to me," Gillian corrected her; "but–"
"Listen," interrupted the beautiful redhead; "I told Wally to tell you, in case you hemmed and hawed, that this whole proposition is political.  The murder of Big Ben is only an incident; a big incident, but nothing to compare with the things that a smart lawyer like you can bring out in a properly conducted trial.  Why do you suppose it took the patrol wagons less than five minutes to reach Big Ben's from the Seventh Precinct Station after he was found dead?'
"I smelled a rat there, too," Gillian agreed.
"I could show you loads and loads of smellier rats.  Now, will you tell me what moral objection you have to handling my case.  Has Governor Brundage scared you off?  I thought you were too big to be afraid of that rat."
"I am," Gillian smiled.
"Too big or too afraid?"
"Big," he laughed.
"Then why won't you take my case?"
Gillian told her.  Simply and briefly, he dwelled upon his love for Dorothy Murphy and of the condition that Dorothy had imposed upon her acceptance of him.  Upon his conclusion, Violet Dearing sighed.
"I'll say," she said," without bias or meanness, that that girl is nothing but a darned fool.  She is toying with dynamite.  You love her, so I won't say anything more.  I'm sorry you won't take my case, because, in the past couple of hours, I've been looking forward to it with the greatest enthusiasm.  I've been hearing about you for years.  I've wanted to meet you.  I thought this would be a wonderful chance to see your brilliant brain in action.  I wanted to see it in action with mine.  The two of us, I thought, could put on a show that would make this State stand up on the seats."
She considered him, half smiling.
"I mean a show, Mr. Hazeltine.  Since I've been sitting here, with all sorts of ideas using my brain as a race track, I've worked out a beautiful scheme for a – a crime circus."
"A crime circus?"
"You see," she eagerly went on, "murder trials in this country have become more and more spectacular, haven't they?  A good, snappy murder trial is harder to get into nowadays than a king's coronation.  Great squads of reporters come and report the doings.  The whole country is on its tiptoes for Silly Willy to take the stand, or for Spineless Judd to tell his story.  Why not do it properly?"
Gillian was smiling indulgently.
"What would you suggest?" he asked.
"I would suggest that the State hire, say, the Lincoln Stadium.  It seats sixty thousand people.  Have microphones over the judge, the witness stand and the lawyers, connected to loud speakers sprinkled all over the stadium, so every one of the sixty thousand could hear clearly.  And let the lawyer for the defense and the state's attorney collaborate on publicity."
"Disgraceful," Gillian murmured, but she knew that he wasn't serious.
"For a popular murder trial, you need certain elements.  First of all, the accused should be young and beautiful.  Well, am I or am I not qualified?"
"You are touchingly young and distractingly beautiful," Gillian assured her.
"Second," went on the eager redhead, "the crime should have occurred in a sinister setting.  Well, didn't it?"
"A gambling den is sufficiently sinister," Gillian agreed.
"Third, it must have an element of real mystery.  Who killed Ben Lewis?  Did I?  If not, who did?  A man who shot and ran?  A woman who fired and fled?  The smell of burned smokeless powder was in the air when I rushed in and saw Ben lying, face down.  Isn't that sufficiently mysterious?
"It seems to me," was Gillian's comment, "that you are strangely light-hearted for a girl accused of murder and about to suffer the degradation of a murder trial, the notoriety of the scandal sheets, the battering-ram of a powerful political machine, and the actual possibility of electrocution."
Violet Dearing looked up soberly into his face.  "I'm not a coward, Mr. Hazeltine.  The past few months have taught me to mask my emotions, at least – thanks to the honored Governor of this State.  For the first hour in this cell, I was frantic with terror.  I don't deny it.  I thought those bullying detectives would give me the third degree.  I've heard they'll tear a woman's clothes off and insult her horribly if she doesn't confess to everything they want her to confess to.
"I think they intended to give me the third degree, but changed their minds when I told them you were my legal counsel.  Of course I was scared!  Then I took counsel with myself.  I didn't tell myself that heaven will protect the poor working girl – I'm not such a sap as that!  I merely told myself that Gillian Hazeltine would soon come to my rescue – a Saint George armed to slay the fire-spouting dragon, my persecutors."
She paused.  "I'll admit now that your refusal to play Saint George is going to give me a sleepless night.  Oh, why," she wailed, "did you have to fall in love with a girl who disapproves of criminal court practice?"
Gillian did not answer.  
Violet Dearing gazed up at him, then shook her head, as if baffled.  "You love a good fight.  I love a good fight.  What a fight we could have put up together!"
"What a fight!" Gillian murmured.
"And what a show!"
He chuckled.
"You might advise me what to do,"' Miss Dearing suggested.
"I'll have to think over the problem of legal counsel," Gillian said.  "I can't help them or work with them – but I'll gladly answer all questions."
"You're a peach," said the redheaded prisoner.  "And if I go to the electric chair, it'll be your fault!"

CHAPTER 5
Fair Warning

GILLIAN left her and went out into the night court, where Wally Brundage was waiting.  The athlete sprang up with an eager grin.  He clutched Gillian's arm.
"How is she?"
"She is bearing up wonderfully," said Gillian dryly, and wondered how a girl as clever as Violet Dearing could possibly have fallen for a man as shallow-minded as Wally Brundage.
"You're going to take her case?" the young man persisted.
"I am not, Wally."
"Then," the young man declared, "I'll tell you just what I think of you, I think you're a rotten crook and a shyster!  I've a damned good mind to knock your block off!"
"As long as we're exchanging personal opinions," Gillian swiftly retorted, "I'll tell you, what I think of you.  I think you haven't brains or guts, or you'd have married that girl and taken her out of this town before she got herself into this mess!"
Wally Brundage did not strike him.  He started sputtering.  He was still sputtering when Gillian left him and, entering his roadster, drove to his house.
The tinkling of the telephone bell at his bedside wakened Gillian Hazeltine at a few minutes after eight.  Before answering it, he poured himself a tumbler of ice water from the thermos pitcher on the bedside table, swallowed it leisurely while the bell rang.  The cold drink completed his awakening process.
He crisply said "Hello!"
Dorothy Murphy – an angry, bitter Dorothy – was at the other end of the line.  "Gillian, you lied to me!"
"What, I lied to you, darling?"
"You told me you weren't going to handle this Dearing case."
"I told you the truth.  I am not going to handle the Dearing case."
"The papers say you are!" she cried.  "They all say you are!"
"How do they say it?"
"They say that Violet Dearing has consistently refused to see reporters and has referred all of them and all other inquiries to her lawyer, Gillian Hazeltine."
"I can explain that," he attempted to soothe her.  "Those papers were printed at midnight.  Until midnight Violet Dearing was certain that she could retain me to handle her case.  I went down to the jail and convinced her that I could not and would not handle her case."
"I wish you would read the things that Adelbert Yistle said about you!"
"He would say nasty things about me, dear.  But aren't you a little sorry for misjudging me?"
"I don't trust you," the girl answered.
"Don't trust me?"
"You-you're so sly!"
Cold pearls of perspiration formed on Gillian's broad, square forehead.  He could only say, "Why, Dorothy, Dorothy!"
"You are!  You're sly and calculating.  I don't think you love me.  I don't think you love anybody in the world but yourself – or ever will!"
He said gravely: "What you're saying in so many words, Dorothy, is that you aren't sure that you love me.  Isn't that about the size of it?"
There was a long silence at her end of the wire.  Finally: "I think we ought to consider each other a little longer before we do anything decisive."
"I thought we were going hunting for a ring this morning," said Gillian sadly.
"Not this morning," Dorothy decided.  "Good-by."
The line clicked; it was empty.  Gillian thoughtfully replaced the receiver on its hook; poured himself another glass of ice water and swallowed it.
Something, he decided, had happened to change Dorothy from the clinging passion of last night to cold and detached disapproval.
Being a logical man, he cast about for logical reasons.  His first response to this probing was to leap from the bed and pace across the room to the large mirror above his dressing table.  He let the shade up to the top, morning sunshine came flooding in.  He peered at himself; discounted the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin.
He didn't, he vowed, look a day older than thirty, even at this hour of the morning, when every one looks his worst.  His dark, rippling hair was sprinkled with gray, but that, he had repeatedly been told, merely heightened his distinction.  He was, as all men are, vain.  He knew, without being told, as he frequently was, that he was handsome – a strikingly handsome man.  His eyes were clear and bright and a-sparkle with youth.  His face was unlined, except for the deep saturnine grooves which extended downward from his nose, and they had been there since twenty.
He turned frowningly away from the mirror.  Why, he wanted to know, had Dorothy Murphy suddenly turned against him?
Gillian rang for Toro, and the butler presently appeared with the morning papers and a special delivery letter.
"You can get my bath ready," said Gillian.  And looked quickly through the papers.
In them, he believed, lay the explanation of Dorothy Murphy's distressing change of heart.
Headlines screamed that Ben Lewis had been killed by Bootleg Queen.  Drops asserted that Gillian Hazeltine had been retained by the beautiful murderess.
He looked carefully over the front page of the Greenboro Morning Journal, because he knew that that was the paper the Murphy sisters read over their breakfast.  And on the front page he found what he believed to be the explanation of Dorothy's sudden about face.
It was an interview given out by Adelbert Yistle, the prosecuting attorney.  Adelbert Yistle had, in Gillian's opinion, a mouth several sizes too large for his ears.  He had been Gillian's opponent in countless court room frays, and he had emerged from these battlefields a sadder but never a wiser man.
Occasionally, when such sensational events as this took place, he was the victim of a phenomenon which Gillian described as "another rush of nothing to the head."  Publicly he took such occasions as this to belittle and insult the Silver Fox.
On this occasion he said, among other things: "It has been brought to my attention that Gillian Hazeltine, sometimes known as the Silver Fox for a reason that requires no explanation to any intelligent man, has been retained to defend this notorious underworld figure, Violet Dearing.  I may say with all confidence that the case against the Dearing girl is so strong, so complete, that not even the trickiest kind of Hazeltine defense, than which there is nothing trickier, will save her from the electric chair.  
"A reputable citizen, commissioned by the mayor to investigate vice conditions in this city, chanced to, be in Ben Lewis's gaming establishment, the Silver Slipper Club, and was about to enter the office of Ben Lewis, when the Dearing woman rushed past him and fired the two shots which resulted in the death of the notorious gambler.  So familiar am I with the methods of the Silver Fox that I can, in spite of the damning case against her, hear him rising in court and saying, 'Defendant pleads not guilty!'
"Once again we are brought face to face with a condition so grave that the taxpayers of this State should be alarmed.  We are about to witness Gillian Hazeltine, the showman, conduct another court room farce!  It will be, of course, a long trial – the Silver Fox sees to it that his trials are always long.  We will see the State spending thousands and thousands of dollars, so that Gillian Hazeltine may cavort before the public.  We will see the newspapers harvesting riches.  We will see the telegraph companies harvesting riches.  We will see Gillian Hazeltine adding to his plunder and his notoriety.  We will see Violet Dearing, if by some miracle she is freed, going into the motion pictures at a fabulous salary.  We will see the deplorable spectacle, in short, of the State taxpayers footing the bill for a big show – for which it receives not a dollar of the millions of profits the big show makes – for others!"
Gillian read no more.  He had learned the source of inspiration behind Dorothy's change of heart; moreover, he was interested in that last paragraph.  It sent his mind back to a pair of deep-blue, fearless eyes under a shining cap of red hair.
"What a fight we could have put up; together."
In the light of the new day, and in the light cast by Adelbert Yistle's extremely unsportsmanlike interview, her suggestion of a crime circus did not seem so preposterous.  It tickled Gillian's sense of the ridiculous – staging a popular murder trial in the Lincoln Stadium; charging, say, ten dollars for ringside seats – a dollar in the bleachers!
He found himself chuckling.  Then his glance fell upon the special delivery letter.  He opened it and read: 

My Dear Mr. Hazeltine: I have bribed a guard for paper and pen and ink.  A thought occurred to me after you left: Any girl who would impose such unfair terms upon as great a lawyer as you are will be certain to crack under the strain of the next few days.  I will bet a box of superb cigars against a pair of pure silk stockings size-eight, lisle toes and tops not wanted – that you will take my case before a week has passed.
Why?  Because I interest you so much.
You are not the kind of man to fall in love seriously with a girl who would make you give up the great work you do.  She must be a terrible sap.
I await your reply with the most intense interest.
Cordially yours,
Violet Dearing
Greenboro Jail, October 10th

Gillian entered his office, which adjoined his bedroom, sat down at his typewriter, and laboriously picked out with two fingers the following brief composition: 

My Dear Miss Dearing: I will bet you a box of the best pure silk size eight stockings available in the civilized world against a Pittsburgh stogie that, before you are once again a free woman, you will have told Wally Brundage to roll his hoop.
Why?  Because you are too bright.  You've made your point!
Yours for the freedom of the shes– 

Gillian signed the letter "The Silver Fox," addressed and stamped an envelope, and gave it to Toro to be mailed immediately.
His phone began ringing while he shaved.  It continued to ring while he bathed.
He answered it when he had rubbed himself completely dry.
A reporter for the Greenboro Daily Pictorial wanted to know if he had anything to, say about Adelbert Yistle's scorching comments in the morning's Journal.
"Only that Mr. Yistle's comments were slightly premature" was Gillian's reply.  "You can tell your readers simply and sweetly that I am not going to handle the Dearing case; that I have not entertained the slightest intention of handling the case.  Do I make myself clear?"
"You do, Mr. Hazeltine," the reporter laughed.  "The papers all are going to rewrite that interview and play it up for all it's worth.  I guess he's put his foot in his mouth again."
Hardly had Gillian hung up the receiver when the bell began ringing again.  
He put it to his ear to hear the rasping voice that had so irritated him at his camp last night.  "Hazeltine?"
"Yes."
"I'm givin' yuh one more warnin'.  I told yuh last night to keep your hands off this Dearing case.  I see by the mornin' papers you're goin' to defend that girl.  I've found out yuh went down to the jail last night to see her."
"And I'm warning you, Rafferty," Gillian angrily interrupted, "that two can play this game.  One more word out of you and I'll have your gang mopped up.  I can do it, and you know it."
There was a somewhat lengthy silence at the other end.  Then: "Keep out of this, Hazeltine, or your name is mud.  You know what happened to Click Gorner.  Don't let it happen to you.  That's all."
Gillian jiggled the hook.  He presently obtained the attention of Central and put in a call for the residence of Chief of Police Bellows.  When the gruff voice of that prominent official responded, Gillian said: "Mr. Bellows, this is Gillian Hazeltine.  Twice in the past twenty-four hours I have had anonymous telephone warnings to keep away from the Dearing case."
The chief of police chuckled.  "Then why don't you keep away from it?"
"I've announced publicly," said Gillian, "that I do not intend to defend the Dearing girl.  I may change my mind.  Whether I do or not, I am requesting a police escort until this trouble simmers down."
"Mr. Hazeltine, I can't let you have one."
"Why not?"
"Tell me who's been sending these threatening messages and I'll make an arrest."
"His name," said Gillian, "is Mike Rafferty."
"I don't believe it," said the chief.
"Why don't you believe it?"
"Why-why–" Mr. Bellows sputtered.  "It's preposterous.  Mike Rafferty–"
"It chances," Gillian wearily interrupted him, "that I know probably as much of what is going on under the crust in this city as you do.  I know Mike Rafferty's gang got Click Gorner last night.  I know Mike Rafferty has just been talking to me.  Twice, now, he has threatened my life.  Are you going to give me a police escort?"
"The safest thing for you to do, Mr. Hazeltine," responded Greenboro's highest police official, "is to duck out of town until the smoke clears.  No; I won't give you a police escort.  This killing of Ben Lewis has stirred up trouble in that section that may turn into a volcano.  I can't spare a man.  Sorry."
Gillian rudely jiggled the hook.  When the operator answered, he called Western Union.  He was presently dictating a message, which ran: 

Jerry Conway, Hotel Weymouth,
Chicago, Ill.
Sell cotton.

CHAPTER 6
The Showdown

HE DRESSED with deliberation.  Soberly he consumed his large breakfast.  His conversation with Chief of Police Bellows had confirmed all his suspicions.  The Ben Lewis murder was the crux of a frame-up, and the Dearing girl was the goat.  The scheme was being so cunningly engineered that even he had been included in the calculations.  Rafferty had been told to frighten him.  The chief of police had been told to frighten him.  Who, he wanted to know, was doing the calculating?
Gillian decided to visit Governor Brundage at once.
It was a three-hour drive from Greenboro to Springton, the State capital, and Gillian was sufficiently prudent to make the drive in his coupe equipped with windshield and windows of triplex glass, which is bullet-proof.  He had had the bullet-proof glass installed a year ago when, during a murder trial, he had received many anonymous threats.  It gave him a feeling of great security to know that he was, while in the coupe, safe from one of those hand machine guns.
Shortly before noon he parked his coupe in the area in front of the State Executive's mansion and was presently making his presence known to a sallow, icy-eyed secretary.
Half an hour elapsed before he was ushered into the private office of Governor Brundage.
The Governor, seated under a great window at his spacious walnut desk, did not look up for several minutes; and Gillian was reasonably sure that the delay in admitting him and the Governor's present preoccupation were intended to put him in his place.  He was not, it chanced, of the Governor's political party.
He was at liberty to make certain discoveries.  Governor Brundage's hair had grown a shade grayer and perceptibly thinner in the year since he had last seen him.  His face was as red as ever; the mark of the day laborer was still somehow stamped upon him, although he had tried, in every way, to erase that mark.
In Gillian's estimation, he was simply a living proof of the theory that it takes three generations to make a gentleman.  Or is it six?
From all of which it may be gleaned that Gillian did not like Governor Brundage, did not appreciate Governor Brundage, and rather believed that Governor Brundage was out of place in the gubernatorial mansion.
At long last, the Governor's reddish, hot blue eyes were lifted from the absorbing documents he was reading.
He looked up and saw Gillian standing there, hat in hand.
He did not rise to greet him; made no move to offer Gillian his hand.  He merely said, rudely: "What's on your mind, Gillian?  You see I'm pretty busy."
To which Gillian briskly retorted: "I imagine that three of you would sometimes be almost as busy as one of me!"
Governor Brundage started to glare; he reddened.  He switched off his natural reaction into a hearty burst of laughter.
He said: "I forget how important you are.  I'm pestered by so many nuts.  Of course, you're not a nut."
"I think I am," said Gillian, "or I wouldn't be wasting my time talking to you.  Curiosity drove me here."
He, too, laughed heartily.
Governor Brundage frowningly lighted a fat blond cigar without offering one to Gillian and said: "Let's stop being nasty.  I said last night I wanted to see you.  Since then, I've learned on excellent authority you don't intend to defend the Dearing girl.  If that's the case, you've made your visit for nothing.  That was what I wanted to see you about."
Gillian lighted a long slender brunette cigar.
"All right," said Gillian.  "Let's stop being nasty after I say that you've got a hell of a nerve trying to order me here or there or wherever.  You're a tin Governor, and you know I know it.  Stop being so pompous.  I knew you when you wore red underwear.  You're cocky.  You think you've scared me off the Dearing case.  Word has gone forth from imperial headquarters to scare Gillian Hazeltine off the Dearing case.  I was staying out of the Dearing case for purely personal reasons."
Governor Brundage chuckled, as if deeply amused.  "I don't care why you're staying out of it.  I only want you to stay out.  Now that that's off your chest, what can I do for you?"
"I just, wanted to look you over," Gillian answered, "to decide which part of you I wanted to hit first."
The governor straightened up in his chair.
"You're getting rough, Hazeltine," he growled.
"I'm going to get rougher before I get any smoother," Gillian calmly warned him.  "The fact of the matter is, Governor, I am absolutely fed up with your dirty work.  Specifically, I'm talking about the Dearing girl."
"Ah!" cried the Governor.  "The stanch defender of virtue!"
"Your son dropped in on me last night," Gillian went on.  "He told me some things I had become well acquainted with before.  How you had the poor kid hounded simply because Wally had fallen for her, when you had higher ambitions for him.  How you drove her into becoming, at last, a bootlegger.  He even intimated that this murder charge against her is the very neat result of a deliberate frame-up – with you pulling the strings."
"Don't be a fool all your life!" Governor Brundage roared.  "You ought to know better than that."
"Why didn't you want me to take this case?" Gillian snapped.
The Governor did not answer.  His glare, however, was eloquent: in truth, it was murderous.
"Because you knew I'd raise hell?"
The Governor drew a deep breath.  "Gillian, let's be reasonable."
"Very well," Gillian agreed.  "Where shall we begin?  I think you're a skunk of the first water and you think I'm a dangerous trouble maker.  We're both right.  Big Ben knew too much about you.  You hated the Dearing girl because she was making a fool out of you.  By having one of Rafferty's gang kill Ben and framing the girl, you killed two birds with one stone – I mean, with two bullets.  That's what I know.  Now, you be reasonable."
"Try and prove it," the Governor snorted.
"I will prove it!"
"How can you?  You've said you aren't going to handle the case?"
Gillian did some fast thinking.  One of two people must be lost.  But one might not be hopelessly lost.
"What a fight we could have put up together!" said a clear, brave voice in his memory.
"I don't trust you!  You're sly!" said another.
Gillian concluded his thinking.  
"I'm going to change my mind," he announced.  "I've decided to defend the Dearing girl!"

CHAPTER 7
Open Warfare

GOVERNOR BRUNDAGE clamped down his teeth on his fat blond cigar and contemplated Gillian with frank, cold hate.
"You can't do it," he finally ground out.
"Why not, Governor?"
"Because I won't let you!"
"You mean that you'll try to stop me?"
"I mean, Hazeltine," said the Governor with deadly slowness, "by touching this case, you're jamming your hand into a hot mangler.  You don't realize what's going on under the surface.  Hell is popping."
"And you, Governor, are sitting on the lid – trying to hold it down.  How hot that lid is!"
"I'm warning you not to take this case.  I'm warning you that by taking it your life won't be worth a nickel.  You'll never reach the court room alive."
"You ought to know me well enough not to make threats," Gillian answered.  "I love a fight.  Threat on!"
"I'll make a deal with you," the Governor surrendered.  "Take her case.  Go ahead!  Put in a straight defense on the grounds of self-defense.  Any defense you want.  I'll have the state's attorney go easy.  I'll have the jury bring in a verdict of guilty, second degree homicide.  I'll have the judge let her off with ten years.  She can halve that with good behavior."
"You'll hand-pick the jury?"
"Sure!  We'll hand-pick the jury."
"Is that the best deal you can offer?"
"Isn't it fair enough, when I can railroad her through to the chair whether you defend her or not?"
"You're sure of yourself, aren't you?" Gillian growled.
"You bet I am!  Are you going to play – or aren't you?"
"Whatever way I decide I'll have to try the case before a fixed judge, won't I?"
"You ought to know you will, Gillian!"
"Well, I'll have to bear it," said Gillian.  "I'm just full of enough wild cat to tell you that I'm going to kick you off that lid you're sitting on-and let hell pop!"
"You won't play ball?"
"Nope.  I'm going to fight.  I'm going into that court room and when I get through with my bag of tricks, that girl is going to walk out of there a free woman!"
"You can't do it!"
"Want to make a little side bet, Governor?"
"I'll bet you a five thousand dollar marble monument," answered the Governor, "that I attend your funeral before you attend mine!"
"I'll take that," said Gillian promptly.  "And I'll make another.  I'll bet you a solid bronze casket with sterling silver handles and a genuine plate glass window that you're not sitting in that chair or anywhere near it in six months!  Speaking of playing ball, I'll make that bet include you playing with a ball and chain inside of a year!"
The Governor bent forward and pressed a pearl button.
The door opened and the sallow, cold-eyed secretary appeared.
"Show this fellow out!" snarled the Governor, and his anger so blurred his pronunciation of "show" that it sounded suspiciously like "throw."
Gillian retired from the office with the gratifying feeling a man has when he has said the nastiest things his tongue can summon to a man he heartily and justly detests.
Gillian drove rapidly through the streets of Springton to the State Capitol building.  He was presently having lunch in a near-by restaurant with no less a power than the Speaker of the upper House of the State Legislature, a lanky, cadaverous man with bulging black eyes: Senator Angus McMorrow.
Amiably Gillian discussed the topics of the day with the Senator until they had had their coffee and chocolate eclairs.  Over cigars, in muted tones, the Silver Fox began: "Mac, I want a bill rushed through for the Governor's signature by to morrow noon.  The Governor will veto the bill whether or not he knows that I'm the author of it.  As a matter of fact, I'm not the author.  The author is an authoress.  Both Houses, meeting in joint session, are to pass my bill over the gubernatorial veto.  Do I make myself clear?"
"As clear as mud," said Senator McMorrow.
"As I see the situation," Gillian explained himself, "you have ably gathered unto yourself control over not only the majority of votes in both Houses, but more than three-quarters of the votes.  In short, you can put through any measure that tickles your fancy.
"You are, if you wish to assert your power, a stronger man in this State's, affairs than that second-story man occupying the executive mansion.  You are, if I may mix poesy with religion, a modern Messiah about to lead the helpless people of this great State out of the jungles of graft and political corruption."
"Stop, this gush, Gillian, and get down to cases."
"The reason for this deplorable state of affairs in this great State," Gillian amiably ambled on, "is that we have a crook in the executive mansion – a crook who has rotted the entire political structure of the State.  In you, we have an honest man making laws and doing everything in his power to undo the wrong the other one does.  But you aren't doing enough.  You aren't kicking the crook out of the executive mansion!"
"Get to your point, Gillian; this is my busy day."
"You have waited," Gillian proceeded, "ever since the Governor grievously disappointed you by being reelected, for an opportune moment to knock his pins out from under him.  Do you still hanker to knock the pins from under him, Mac?"
"You know damned well I do," said Senator McMorrow fervently.
"Actually you can do it," Gillian said.  "But, regrettably, I am apt to get all the credit;"
"I don't care a hoorah for credit," said the Senator grimly.  "I want that crook out of there!  What's your proposal?"
"You've heard of Big Ben Lewis' murder?"
The Senator nodded.  "He was a tough egg, but a square shooter.  Did the Dearing girl kill him?"
"She did not."
"You defending her?"
"I am."
Senator McMorrow grinned.  "She needn't worry."
Gillian smiled.  "Thank you, Mac.  The point is who did kill Ben?  This is straight stuff.  It's a political job, with Brundage pulling the strings."
"Frame up?"
"Ice-cold Mac."
The Senator nervously lighted a cigarette.  Gillian proceeded to give him as much information as he was reasonably certain of.  He was eventually interrupted by Senator McMorrow's impatient: "I know that most of that is true, but where do I cut in?"
Gillian fished from his pocket Adelbert Yistle's interview which he had clipped from the Morning Journal.
"Read that," he requested.
The Senator quickly read the interview.  Several times he smiled, wanly.  He handed it back to Gillian,
"It's true, Gillian.  You are a showman.  Barnum, had nothing on you.  The people like to be fooled, and you're an artist at fooling them.  You are amusing and dangerous.  But so is Darrow.  So are a lot of other fancy-priced criminal lawyers.  I enjoy following your trials in the papers more than going to theatres.  Why don't you reform?"
"I have," said Gillian, gravely.
Senator McMorrow stared at him.  "Gillian, let's make this a jokeless Thursday!"
"I am in earnest," Gillian insisted.  "I have been shown the errors of my ways."
"By a woman?"
"Of course!"
"You're through buying judges, bribing juries and introducing crooked evidence?"
"All through."
"How about surprise witnesses?"
"I must draw the line there.  I depend on surprise witnesses for drama.  But let's get on to this bill I want you to put through.  Don't laugh until I have finished.  This is jokeless Thursday.  What Yistle, says is true enough.  The State, the taxpayers groaning under their burden, foot the bill while the performers wax rich and famous.  I want a bill introduced whereby the State will receive huge returns from popular murder trials."
"How can it be done?"
"Don't smile, Mac.  It's still jokeless Thursday.  I want the State to lease the Lincoln Stadium at Greenboro for the Dearing trial.  By clever press agenting, we can pack it for every performance – sixty thousand people.  Ringside seats will sell for ten dollars.  Prices will grade off to one dollar for the worst bleacher seats.  We'll install microphones over the judge, the witness stand and the lawyers, and loudspeakers throughout the stadium so that every whisper can be heard.  We'll lease the radio, rights to the highest bidder.  We'll charge a stiff fee for newspaper representation.  At lowest estimates, the State should take in at the gate a hundred and seventy thousand dollars a day, over all expenses."
Gillian stopped.  Senator McMorrow was softly chuckling.  He looked like a bird of prey when he laughed.  Actually, he was the ablest and most honest politician in the State.
"You think it's funny, do you?" the Silver Fox growled.
"It's positively overwhelming," laughed the Senator.
"Finish your laugh and then react," suggested Gillian.
Senator McMorrow stopped laughing.  "It's a glorious idea, Gillian.  It comes directly under the heading of idealistic legislation.  The taxpayers will be delighted.  It's non-political, in a way."
"My suggestion is that you tell reporters that it grew out of Adelbert Yistle's brain.  He needs credit, poor devil.  It would make him so popular with the people he could have anything in the State – including the Governorship.  Why not?  He's honest and dumb.  You could put a ring in his nose and lead him wherever you wished.  He'd make a perfect Governor."
"He would," agreed the Senator.  "I'll act on that suggestion, too.  Any others' Gillian?"
"As far as I'm concerned," Gillian replied, "the stadium will give us, through me, precisely the opportunity we wish for laundering Brundage's political linen in public.  We'll have a changing mob daily of sixty thousand voters; we'll have radio listeners all over the State, all over the country!"
"Don't forget, Gillian, he'll have the judge fixed."
"I've taken that into consideration," said Gillian.
The Senator arose.
"I'll start the machinery moving," he said.  And looked at Gillian with hawkish eyes.  "How would you like to be the next Governor yourself
"When next election comes around," Gillian amiably answered, "I firmly intend to be eating breadfruit under a palm tree in the South Sea Islands with the lady of my, choice!  No, thanks, Mac.  I wouldn't look well with a ring in my nose!"
"You know damned well," the Senator barked, "you'd have your own free will in all matters.  We'd work together in the most perfect harmony."
"It doesn't appeal to me," said Gillian.  "I'd rather be the slave of a beautiful red-haired woman.  I mean," he hastily amended, "of a glorious brown-haired woman."
"You and the ladies!" sniffed the Senator.
"Life would be a desert without them," Gillian sighed.
Gillian generated several hundred horsepower of thinking on his return drive to Greenboro.  He devoted high-powered thought to the Dearing case.  He devoted high-powered thought to Governor Brundage.
At times, it was true, his mind flittered away from these ponderous subjects and lingered gayly amid romantic fancies.  There was the kiss that Dorothy Murphy had given him last night.  Dorothy was alluring.  She had beautiful hands and she used some scent in her hair that exerted a compelling influence upon him.  Marguerite, too, was charming.  She had, perhaps, the most beautiful ankles in Greenboro; her slim blond perfection was more than provocative.  When she pouted her red, beautiful mouth, a man's heart accelerated madly.  Yes; Marguerite was adorable.  Hair of brown and eyes of brown or hair of gold and eyes of blue?
Impishly, a third head intruded.  It was red.  The eyes beneath it were that rarest shade of dark blue-violet.
Gillian found himself frowning.  He wasn't fickle.  He could swear that he wasn't fickle.  Or did he merely love them all with a nice, wholesome, brotherly love?  Yet he persistently saw himself lunching upon breadfruit under a South Sea palm, first with a laughing, brown-haired girl, next with a laughing golden-haired girl, and again with a laughing, red-haired girl.
Still, in fondest fancy, he trapped himself in the mental act of kissing each of the three.  Was this brotherly love?
"I am a dirty dog," Gillian addressed himself.  "I have the makings of a first class polygamist.  But what is a man to do?  What a sap I am!  As if I could ever fall for that Dearing brat!"
That reasoning comforted him.  He stepped on the gas; plunged his mind into a consideration of smelly State politics and was deep in concentration, clipping along at forty-five miles an hour, when a shabby black Packard sedan of ancient vintage dashed out of a side road and fell in behind his coupe.
Gillian eyed it carelessly in the mirror above his windshield, and paid it no heed.
He was reviewing Governor Brundage's long record of misdoings when the sedan shot up alongside him with the evident intention of passing.
Not until it was abreast did Gillian come fully awake to the evil identity of that car.  A sedan of that age and model had followed Click Gorner to Dexter last night!  A sedan of that age and model had pulled away from Ben Lewis's back entrance a few seconds after his murder, according to Nicky Anderson's testimony!  
Gillian, forced to the right side of the road, shot a side glance to the left and saw that the curtains of the sedan were lowered.  Then the curtain of the rear door was raised a dozen inches.  An ugly black muzzle was poked out.  Behind it, for a brief period of breathless horror, Gillian saw the red face, the low forehead, the greasy, silver blond hair of Mike Rafferty.
The gang leader was grinning.  It was a grin of death.
The muzzle of the machine gun was pointed fairly at Gillian's body.
There was suddenly a splattering of sound.  In the triplex window on that side of the coupe appeared an intricate white cobweb of many centers.  The black sedan shot ahead down the road.  Gillian, holding his breath, slowed to a stop.  He held his breath until his lungs threatened to burst.  Certainly, certainly, that pane of glass had not stopped that entire burst of bullets.  Certainly, an examination must prove that at least one of the missiles had found its way into some vital spot of him.
He waited for the messenger of pain to come from that certain wound.  He waited.  No pain carne.
Gillian expelled his breath.  With extreme delicacy he lifted his coat on the left side and examined it.  There were no holes.  He lifted his hand and delicately felt of his cheeks, of his head.  There were no holes.
Now he examined the window which had so miraculously stopped that burst of bullets.  Three of the bullets, flattened, were sticking in the holes they had bored.
He wished he had a lovely, sympathetic, understanding wife at home to show that window to.  He could hear her pretty squeals of dismay; could feel the delightful pressure of her arms about his neck, where she would impulsively throw them in a gesture of thanksgiving that he was safe.
A brown-haired wife was quickly followed by a golden-haired wife who, was as swiftly displaced by a red-haired wife – all throwing their arms about Gillian's neck, all hysterical with joy that he had been saved from the bullets of the Rafferty gang!  Oh, these mental marriages!  He was fickle in the face of death!
"How simple it would be," Gillian sighed, as he drove on, "if I had only been born a Turk!"

CHAPTER 8
The Gun Mob

GILLIAN'S heart missed two beats when he entered the kitchen of his house.  He generally entered his house via the kitchen, because he was generally hungry.  Against one kitchen wall stood an electric refrigerator of the size usually associated with flourishing butcher shops.  This was kept stocked with a variety of tidbits pleasing to Gillian's palate.  He used up huge amounts of energy; therefore, he consumed huge amounts of food.  He liked everything.  He was not a gourmet; he was a gourmand.
But he did not approach the refrigerator when he entered the kitchen after his long drive from Springton, fresh from his experience with Rafferty's gang.
He thought he had been trapped.  The kitchen was full of young toughs, sprawling about on chairs and table, smoking cigarettes, drinking Canadian ale which they had filched from that selfsame refrigerator.
The kitchen, with all doors and windows closed, shades drawn, and hundred-watt tungstens glaring, smelled to him like a fox cage.
His terror dropped away from him in a sigh of relief when he saw the lean ugly face of Nicky Anderson.
Said that worthy: "Here they are, Mr. Hazeltine."
There were eight of them, not counting Nicky; as representative a collection of big city bad men as could have been selected from a month of police dragnetting.
As Gillian's fears abated, he glanced quickly from face to face.  And in each face he found at least two of those three characteristics common to the countenances of all out-and-out crooks: close-set eyes, long noses, receding chins.
Nicky said: "We've got our rods parked out in the bushes.  What's the lay, Mr. Hazeltine?  When do we slaughter Rafferty's mob?  We're rearing to go.  These boys are all high-class shots.  I handpicked the Loop to find 'em."
Gillian looked the gunmen over carefully.  He seated himself on the edge of the long, porcelain-topped kitchen table and faced them.  He said: "I don't think a tougher gang than this has ever been brought together in the history of American crime.  I'll bet I know every last, one of you.  You," he said, jabbing a finger at a long-faced young man with oystercolored eyes, "are Frisco Joe.  You're Hop Smith.  You're Slug Lenihan.  You're Dopey Levine.  You're Loop Larry.  You're Benny the Knife.  You're Kip Murphy.  And you're Snake Harris.
"A fine bunch of yeggs you are!  A bunch of stir-bugs!  A bunch of hopheads!"
The choice little group laughed boisterously.
"I'm going to give you a piece of big news," Gillian went on.  "If any one of you came down here with the idea of gypping me, blackmailing me, slipping me the double-cross in any shape, form or matter, you'd better knock the idea out of your heads quick.  I know your records.  You know mine.  I'm a gentleman, but there's a tough streak in me.  I'd walk through hell in my bare feet after any man who played dirty with me.  Get that, you yeggs?"'
There was a respectful murmuring of assent.
"Stand up, you brims.  You've got your nerve poking into my icebox and messing up my kitchen.  I suppose that box looked like a crib and you just had to crack it!
"Now, listen to me.  You're down here to follow orders.  This isn't a killing bee.  I'm going to pay you well.  I'm going to need you for a considerable time.  I'm going to pay you a hundred dollars a day apiece for pulling off a long, hard job.  If you fumble it, you don't get a dime.  It's a POD job – pay on delivery.  Get that?"
Snake Harris growled: "How de hell do we eat?"
"Not out of that icebox," snarled Gillian.  "You'll get expenses.  I'll allow you ten dollars a day apiece for expenses.  Now don't go throwing it away on booze and snow.  Eat something once in a while."
"What's the racket?" Slug Lenihan impatiently put in.
"It's this," said Gillian, staring into one pair of shifty eyes after another until he had reached Dopey Levine and the end of the line.  "You're to round up Rafferty's gang.  There are seven of 'em.  You're to drive out with them – alive, not dead!  – to my summer camp on Lake Largo, and keep them there, prisoners, as long as I say.  When you've got them out there I'll tell you what to do with them."
"What if they fire on us?" whined Loop Larry.
"You'll have to figure on some way of pulling it off so they won't fire.  For important reasons not one of them must be killed.  I've got a dozen pairs of bracelets upstairs.  I'll get them for you.  You've got to figure on a way of capturing the gang, getting them out to Lake Largo without being detected, and keeping them there without being discovered.  It's a big job.  If you pull it off without a hitch I'll give each of you, at the conclusion of the contract, five hundred dollars bonus.
"You'd better let Nicky take charge.  He knows the lay here.  He knows the lay at Lake Largo.  I don't want to know a thing that's going on until you've got them safely at my camp.  Then, Nicky, you can phone me.  Come up to my office and I'll give you the bracelets and some expense money, also a code to use in phoning me.  I wouldn't trust this gang with that code."
He and Nicky ascended to the Silver Fox's office.  Gillian said: "If you get Rafferty and his gang locked up at Lake Largo, call me up and say anything that comes into your mind.  I'll understand anything about plumbing as meaning you pulled off the job successfully.  Seven faucets or seven leaks or seven of any plumbing fixtures you mention will mean you've got seven men.  You used to be an electrician.  Put in a switch on the phone wire, hidden somewhere, so no one but you can use the phone.  To play absolutely safe, post one of your men at the phone – keep a twenty-four hour guard over it – to prevent any of Rafferty's gang from getting at it.  We must keep that phone open, but if one of Rafferty's men should get at it – the whole scheme is cooked."
"I'll do my best, Mr. Hazeltine," Nicky promised.  "Say I wanted to tell yuh yuh made a bad boner down in de kitchen.  Dat ain't Dopey Levine.  Dat's Dopey's brother, Freighter!"
"All right," Gillian chuckled, "Tell Freighter I mentioned my mistake to you.  Freighter?  He was mixed up in that Seventeenth National Bank stickup job, wasn't he?"
"He was de outside man, Mr. Hazeltine.  Who wised yuh?"
Gillian grinned.  "If anything big is pulled off in yegg circles that I don't sooner or later know all about, just mention it to me, will you, Nicky?  Do you think you can handle that bunch of cutthroats?"
"Wit' you behind me, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Drill it into their heads that hell will be an icebox compared to what will happen to any of them that double-crosses me."
"I won't have to.  Dey're scared stiff of yuh."
"Nicky–" The Silver Fox looked thoughtfully at the crook.  "I've always thought you were a pretty good egg.  The record I've been keeping of you for the past ten years says that you've tried to go straight three times.  Why'd you slip?"
The gunman stared at Gillian's shoes.
"The gang brought so much pressure to bear on you, you had to go crooked each time?"
Nicky nodded.
Look here, Nicky, why don't you cut out the dope?"
The crook lifted his head and looked Gillian in the eye.  "I ain't had a sniff of de stuff in better'n a year!"
"I'm no Sunday school teacher," Gillian went on.  "I've helped a lot of you guys go straight, because I seem to know the answer better than you do.  Sooner or later you end up with a life stretch – and pretty soon you're a cuckoo old man pottering around the prison yard.  That's a hell of a way to end your life.  My opinion of you is that you are not an incurable criminal – talking straight from the heart, Nicky.  You're a clever kid.  You ought to know the next time they nail you, you go up for life."
"I been framed–" Nicky began.
"Can that stuff!" Gillian snapped.  "I'm no reformer.  Part of my job has always been to help fellows like you who deserve it.  Click Gorner was an incurable criminal.  He was the last man standing in the way of your going straight.  The old gang is gone.  You're going to have a nice piece of change out of this job I've turned over to you.  It ought to net you ten thousand dollars, because I'm going to pay you double what I'm paying those yeggs downstairs.  What are you going to do with it?"
Nicky lifted his eyes again.  He said nothing.
"That's honest money," Gillian went on.  "You're helping in one of the biggest political clean-up jobs that's ever been pulled off in this country.  If you get away with it you'll have broken at least three criminal statutes – carrying a gun, banditry and kidnapping.  But it won't be for any crooked purpose.  I'm not gypping anybody.  You are acting, actually, as my personal police.
"That Rafferty mob tried to get me this afternoon, Nicky.  They pulled up alongside my car on the turnpike and gave me a burst from a Browning machine-gun – but I happened to have bullet-proof glass in the automobile I was driving.
"If you don't kidnap them they'll get me sure.  Aside from that, in kidnapping them you'll be working with the law and not against it.  I mean that ten thousand is going to be honest money.  Well, what are you going to do with it?
"That's a nice piece of jack, Nicky – ten grand is.  And here's my suggestion: You used to be a crackerjack electrician.  Why not change back to your real name, Jack Miller, and buy an interest in an electrical store?  I know a man who will sell an electrical store – worth twenty-five thousand for half that.  I'll lend you enough to get you started.  Think it over.
"Now run along.  Get those yeggs out of my house.  They smell.  Have you any idea how you're going to round up Rafferty's mob?"
"I got a couple.  I know where they're hangin' out about dis time.  I'll stage a surprise party.  Whereabouts is dis electrical shop?"
"In Norville Center."
"It soitny listens good, Mr. Hazeltine.  I don't need to think it over.  Tell dat fella you found a customer fer it!"
"Good luck, Nicky!  And, by the way, when it's necessary to send anything out to you at Lake Largo, provisions of any kind, or messages by hand, my man, Toro, will bring them.  You can trust him."
The events of the next few hours, Gillian realized, would depend entirely upon whether Mike Rafferty or any of his gang drove off from the scene of the attempted roadside killing with the knowledge that their intended victim had escaped unscratched.  The nature of immediately forthcoming events would also depend upon whether or not Gillian had been seen driving back to his house.
If reports were turned in by the gunmen that Gillian Hazeltine had been "knocked off" no further attention would be paid to him until it was learned that these reports were unfounded.
The belief, in the proper quarters, that Gillian was dead would have, for him, two important benefits.  The gunmen, thinking he was out of the way, would relax, and would probably stage a celebration in some speakeasy with which Nicky was acquainted and could gain access.  It would be comparatively easy to stick them up and kidnap them under these circumstances.
Moreover, if it were believed in certain official circles that Gillian Hazeltine was dead, it would make him safe from further attempts at assassination for some hours to come.  He only hoped that, in these hours, Nicky would be successful in executing his dangerous mission.
When Nicky and his gangsters were gone, Gillian rang for Toro.  And when the Japanese appeared, the lawyer said: "Toro, are you satisfied with your job?"
In his perfect English, Toro answered: "I am perfectly satisfied, Mr. Hazeltine."
"You aren't sorry I got you out of the dope smuggling business?"
"On the contrary, you have won my lifelong gratitude."
"That's good," said Gillian.  "Did you, by any chance, observe my recent callers?"
"I did, sir."
"What did you think of them?"
"They looked like men from the Chicago Loop.  Several, in fact, I recognized."
"What, I said, did you think about them?"
The Japanese smiled fleetly.  "I said to myself: Your curiosity can wait.  All things are eventually explained."
Gillian chuckled.  "Toro, that gang is my personal constabulary.  To-night, with luck, they are going to kidnap Mike Rafferty's gang and take them out to the Lake Largo camp."
"And, I trust, drown them like rats," said Toro.  "I saw the window of your coupe, Mr. Hazeltine.  I drove the car into the garage."
"And locked the garage?"
"Yes, sir."
"Next year," said Gillian, "I am going to send you home to Yokohama for a six months' vacation on full pay."
"Yes, sir."
"Now, let's check up.  This is the gardener's day off, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where are the cook and the chambermaid?"
"Both are out for the afternoon, sir.  They will return in about an hour, I believe."
"When they return, they are not to know I am in.  The point is: No one must know I am alive until word comes from Nicky Anderson that the Rafferty gang is safe under lock and key at the camp."
"Yes, sir."
"In case any one phones, I was shot and killed on the State road.  Some farmer called up this house.  That's all you know.  Wait!  In case any woman phones, you simply do not know where I am.  I am not home.  Get her name.  Now go around locking up the house."
"It is completely locked, Mr. Hazeltine."
"If the phone rings, answer it in my bedroom.  I want to listen in on this extension."
"Very well, sir."
It was perhaps an hour later that the telephone rang.  It rang vigorously, insistently.
Gillian heard the soft footfalls of Toro in the bedroom.  He lifted the receiver and put it to his ear the instant he heard Toro say hello.
"I want to talk to Mr. Hazeltine," said a man's gruff voice, which Gillian identified promptly as that of Chief of Police Bellows.
"Mr. Hazeltine is not in," said Toro.  "I have just had a telephone call from a farmer on the State turnpike that Mr. Hazeltine was shot and killed."
There was a, silence at the other end.  Then Hazeltine, heard a loud whisper: "His Chink says he was killed on the State road."  Again the chief's voice on the wire: "How did it happen?"
"I do not know," Toro answered.  "The farmer merely wanted to know if this was Mr. Hazeltine's residence.  He said he had found Mr. Hazeltine dead in his car beside the road – full of bullets.  He asked me to describe Mr. Hazeltine, and I did.  He then said he would telephone the nearest State police barracks."
"Thanks," said Mr. Bellows, and hung up.
Toro came into the office.  "Satisfactory, sir?" he inquired.
"Perfect," said Gillian.  "In case there are other calls, stick to that story."
"Very well, sir."
There were, however, no other calls until evening.  Darkness came.  At seven Toro entered the office with a tray of supper and the information that "those vandals" had drunk up the last bottle of Canadian ale.
At eight-thirty a car passed slowly in front of the Hazeltine residence, but did not stop.  Two men, Toro reported, had peered steadfastly at the upper windows.
"They may be burglars, sir, planning to break in and rob, knowing that you are dead.  I have set the burglar alarm."
"Are you armed?"
Toro drew from his hip pocket a .45 caliber army automatic pistol.  At nine-thirty the telephone rang.  Toro answered, as before, and Gillian listened in downstairs on the office extension.
The man said: "Is Mr. Hazeltine there?"
Toro answered: "No, sir, he–"
The man hung up.
A few minutes later, the phone rang again.  This time it was Dorothy Murphy.  Toro told her that Mr. Hazeltine had not yet returned from a trip to Springton.
"Do you suppose anything has happened to him?"
"Nothing ever happens to Mr. Hazeltine, madam."
The girl hung up her receiver.
Gillian waited.  He was working on the case already, listing his witnesses, preparing his many-angled attack; but it was hard for him to concentrate.  He felt nervous.  He was letting his imagination get the upper hand.  He was seeing Nicky Anderson and the Rafferty gang in a fight to the death; guns blazing, men falling, blood flowing; a swift and ruthless descent by the police; a third degree of the surviving gunmen – his name in the papers as the perpetrator of a horrible gang war!
Gillian began to perspire.  It was only ten-fifteen.  He might be kept in suspense hours – hours!
He tried again to concentrate, but once again his mind slipped off into morbidly horrible channels.  The success of his entire plans depended upon the success of Anderson's gunmen.  If they failed, he was finished.
"Nicky's clever," he argued.  "And he has guts.  And he fell hard for that electrical store.  He'll work for that, the kid will!"
Gillian began to hear strange, suspicious noises about the house.  A stiff fall wind was blowing; branches, drained of sap, were creaking and crackling.
The Silver Fox smoked cigar after cigar.  He paced.  He tried to concentrate on the Dearing case; but his mind slipped away.
At a little after eleven, the phone rang again.  Again Toro answered it.  A man's excited voice began: "This is Milliken of the Daily Journal.  We've just heard a report that Mr. Hazeltine was killed on the State turnpike this afternoon.  Anything in it?"
Gillian had placed his receiver on the desk at the first words and rushed into the bedroom.  He whispered in Toro's available ear: "You don't know anything about it."
"I know nothing about it," said Toro.  
As Toro replaced the receiver, Gillian panted: "I can't stand this strain much longer."
"Yes, sir," said Toro, and departed.
He returned with a tall, slim, alluring Scotch highball.
"Try this, sir," he suggested.
Gillian was sipping the highball when the telephone bell jangled again.  He lifted the receiver from the hook and heard: "This is Dan Merritt, the plumber, at Dexter.  Mr. Hazeltine wanted me to go over his plumbin' and give him some idea–"
Gillian marveled, even as his heart leaped and sang, at Nicky's ability to enact the role of a drawling, small-town plumber.
Hazeltine dashed wildly to the bedroom and gestured to Toro.  The Japanese put his hand over the mouthpiece as Hazeltine whispered: "Ask him what he found out about my plumbing."
Toro listened, then whispered back: "He found eight leaky faucets, sir."
"Ask him about that big one I told him about."
"Yes, sir, he got that one, too."
Hazeltine grabbed the telephone.  "Hello, Dan, this is Mr. Hazeltine.  Good enough.  Go ahead with the work.  Did you put on those new washers I got for you?"
Gillian hoped Nicky would understand that he was alluding to the handcuffs he had given to him.  After a silence, Nicky grasped the allusion.
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  They're all on.  And workin' fine, sir!  There hasn't been a leak out of one of them pipes – not a leak.  How about that nice thick steak you promised to send my missus from your butcher's?"
It was Gillian's turn to think rapidly.  Steak?  Butcher's?  Food?  Food!  That was it!  Nicky needed provisions for his eight guests and their nine hosts.
"I'll send my butler, Toro, out with that steak in my car this very minute," said Gillian heartily.
Toro came in on soft feet with a catlike grin.
"Buddha be praised!" said he.
"You," Gillian informed him, "have a difficult job on your hands.  You are, somehow, to keep that gang of seventeen men in provisions without any one suspecting what is up.  Can you get away with it?"
"I have a flivver that is identical in appearance with twenty million other flivvers," was Toro's answer.  "And there are an unlimited supply of grocery stores whose proprietors do not ask questions when purchases are paid for with cash!"
"Go to it," said Gillian.  "Take everything in the house you need now.  And take this note to Sheriff Bolton, at Dexter."
Gillian seated himself at his typewriter and laboriously picked out with his two fingers this note: 

Dear Pete: I want you to do me a great big favor.  A number of my friends, in fact a large number of my friends, are putting on a stag party at my house on the lake.  It may be a pretty wild party, but they can raise the roof as far as I'm concerned.  This large party of gentlemen wanted a nice, remote place to go and stage their jamboree.  Please see that they are not interrupted, spied upon or annoyed in any way.
The favor I want to ask is that you hire two deputies at five dollars a day – which I will pay – to keep an eye on the house.  They musn't go near the house, but they must keep anybody else from going near it.
My butler, Toro, the bearer of this note, whom you know well, will drive up once a day or so with provisions for my guests.  He is to be permitted to enter the house.  So am I.  But no one else.
These gentlemen who are using my house are all men of great importance.  They must not be bothered.
I am sending to you, by the hand of Toro, a box of those cigars you said you enjoyed so much.
Fraternally yours,

Gillian signed the note, sealed it in an envelope and gave it to Toro with instructions to deliver to the sheriff a large box of Corona Coronas.
"Deliver the provisions to Nicky and, if I were you, I'd carry along an electric flash-light and shine it into your face as you walk toward the house, so they won't accidentally pot you.  Then come back immediately.  I want to know how Nicky landed that gang.  The kid is clever!"
The telephone began to ring before Toro was out of the room.  He stopped and turned, but Gillian waved him on.  There was no need for keeping his aliveness a secret any longer.
He hoped his caller would be Chief of Police Bellows.  It was.  The chief's voice was savage.  "That you, Gillian?"
"Yep!  That you, chief?"
"I, want to know," said Mr. Bellows in the thick voice of fury, "what in hell your game is?"
"My game?"
"I said, game.  What's the big idea of letting out the report that you're dead?"
"The reports of my death, to use the celebrated words of Mark Twain," Gillian answered, "have been grossly exaggerated."
There was a snort of rage at the other end of the line.  "You'll be sorry if you try to make a monkey out of me!  Come clean and come clean quick!"
"To use your favorite expression," Gillian gibed at him, "'let's put all our cards on the table.' Meaning: Let's keep on lying as long as we can get away with it."
"I want to know where Mike Rafferty is!"
"Rafferty?  Rafferty?" said Gillian with pretended puzzlement.  "You mean your old henchman and personal killer, Mike Rafferty?"
"You know damned well I mean Mike Rafferty!" roared the chief of police.
"Have you tried dragging the river for his body?" asked Gillian.
"Where is Rafferty?" bellowed Mr. Bellows.
"I said, you might try dragging the river," answered Gillian.  "Is anybody else missing?"
"You know well enough who's missing!  Mike Rafferty and seven of his very-close friends.  They've been kidnapped.  Where are they?"
"Listen," said Gillian, no longer playful.  "Acting under the orders of Governor Brundage, you ordered Rafferty's mob to get me this afternoon when I drove back from Springton.  They didn't get me, Bellows.  But I'm like the elephant.  I never forgive a man who tries to shoot me in the back.  And I never forget an enemy.  I got Rafferty.  I'm going to get you.  Before I'm through, I'm going to get Brundage because you're a pack of rats!
"Rafferty?" Gillian snarled.  "Rafferty is dead!  His seven gunmen are dead!  I had them killed and thrown in the river.  What else do you want to know?"
The conversation ended in a splutter, as of uncontrollable rage, and a sharp click.  Mr. Bellows had rudely terminated the connection.
Gillian jiggled his hook and put, in a call for the Murphy sisters' apartment.
Dorothy answered.  She seemed startled to hear his voice.  She gave a little gasp, said "Gil-Gillian?"
The Silver Fox said: "Did I startle you, dear?  You phoned here this afternoon, so Toro says."
"I wanted to see you this evening," Dorothy told him.
"I'm afraid you can't.  I'm afraid I'll be too busy, I'm also afraid you wouldn't want to see me, anyway, when you learn that I've decided to handle the Dearing murder case."
"I knew you would!" she wailed.
"You had marvelous intuitions.  I didn't know it myself until I talked to the Governor.  You evidently knew better."
She snapped: "What do you mean, Gillian Hazeltine?"
"I'd give a good deal to know," said the Silver Fox, "why you were so startled when you heard my voice just now?"
"Startled?" she repeated.
"And why you asked Toro this afternoon if anything had happened to me.  Hadn't heard I'd been waylaid and killed by gunmen, had you?"
"Why-why-why–"
"I'm afraid I set a trap for you, my dear.  I deliberately had Toro tell some people I'd been killed and others that as far as he knew I was fine.  I wanted to know who learned what from whom.  I'd give a lot, Dorothy, to know who you learned it from.  And just who sold you on the idea," Gillian relentlessly went on, "of offering to marry me on condition that I gave up my criminal practice, beginning now."
"How dare you!" cried Miss Murphy.
"Last night," went on Gillian, "I loved you.  You are marvelous.  You are a brilliant actress – and a dangerous character.  Get out of town.  I am starting a clean-up campaign.  You gave me the idea.  You pointed out the errors of my ways.  I am a reformed man.  It's going to be a whirlwind campaign, Dorothy.  I hate to fight women – especially beautiful women I've been in love with."
"Gillian, please–" Her voice was suddenly frantic.
"Clear out before you're hurt," he said.  "I've done a good deal for you and your sister.  I've thought you were two clever girls.  I've concluded that you're too clever girls.  I'll give you both a week to go somewhere where your cleverness will be better appreciated.  Good-by!"
"Gillian–" she shrieked.
But Gillian had hung up the receiver.  He felt tired.  He had loved Dorothy and – she had made a fool of him.  He was, he reflected, too weak where beautiful women were concerned.  He wanted to treat them gallantly.  When he admired them, he wanted to believe they were true and upright and fine.  It hurt to discover the things he had discovered about Dorothy Murphy.

CHAPTER 9
On the Offensive

GILLIAN put on a hat and coat and drove down to the jail where Violet Dearing was lodged.  Coming down the steps as he was going up was Police Captain Sorrenson.
Sorrenson stopped, stared and turned pale.
He gasped: "Hazeltine!"
Gillian said affably: "Oh, you thought I was dead, didn't you?"
The police captain made no answer.
Gillian leveled the butt of his cigar at him.  "The only people in this town who are dying violent deaths right now, captain, are the ones who monkey with human buzz saws.  I'm a human buzz saw.  Hear what's happened to Rafferty and his seven wise men?"
Still Captain Sorrenson was unable to find his voice.
"They're dead," Gillian informed him.  I had them drowned like rats."
With incoherent mutterings, Captain Sorrenson hastened down the jail steps past him.  On the lowermost step he stopped, turned and flung back: "That's a lie!"
"Don't take my word for it," said Gillian.  "Drag the river!  I'm letting you know I've got a big gang here.  And I'm out for blood!  Don't monkey with Gillian Buzzsaw Hazeltine, or you're apt to lose your neck!  Where did you have those two patrol wagons parked while Big Ben Lewis was being bumped off?"
"What the hell–" began the police captain, and shut his mouth.  He vanished in long strides down the sidewalk.
Forty seconds later, Gillian Hazeltine was standing before Cell No.  99, gazing whimsically into the deep blue eyes of the girl accused of shooting Big Ben Lewis.
"'Lo, Red," he said gently.
"My hair isn't red," stated that spirited young person.  "It's auburn!  I knew you'd come!  But, darn your hide, Gillian Hazeltine, you gave me a day of awful suspense.  I cried three times.  I saw you vanishing over the horizon like a mirage.  Now – praise be to Allah!"
"I wonder," said Gillian, still gazing thoughtfully down onto her pretty face, "if you're on the level?"
"Is the correct answer yes or no?" inquired Violet Dearing.  "Which ever way you'd love me most, I am, Great Knight!"
"I'd like to meet a woman sometime – for the rare novelty of it," the man pursued his strange topic, "who doesn't try to make a fool out of me, or work me because I am rich and have power, or humiliate me because I treat all women, until they prove they're unworthy, as if they're somehow related to my mother."
"You should not put women on pedestals," said the red head.  "We're too tricky."
"You, too?"
"I have lots of tricks – bags and bags," she said brightly.  "But so far none of them have worked on you.  I tried to vamp you last night.  I tried to reach your intelligence this morning, in that note."
"Well, you can congratulate yourself anyhow," he grumbled.  I've decided to take your case."
The red-haired girl drew a deep breath and said "Wow!" in a reverent tone.  "You angel!" an octave higher.
"I kept thinking and thinking," he said, "of what you said last night: 'What a fight we could have given them!'  It's been running through my mind all day.  It happened to be in my mind this morning when Governor Brundage said something particularly nasty in trying to bully me off the case."
"I'd like ever so much to know," said the Dearing girl, "what you meant by that crack at the end of your letter.  You said: 'Before you are a free woman, you will have told Wally Brundage to roll his hoop.  Why?  Because you are too bright.  You've made your point!'  What did that mean – you've made your point?"
"What do you think it means?" he countered.
"Well," she said, "it means that I either must be what you hate most – tricky – or a fool.  I'm a fool to be in love with Wally Brundage, because, so you say, he is such a sap.  If I'm only playing him, then I'm tricky.  Well?"
"Well?" Gillian mocked.
"Look at it this way," she argued.  "Supposing we admit that I fell for Wally at first because he is such a beautiful young animal.  Intelligent women do fall for handsome dumbbells as often as intelligent men fall for beautiful dumbbells.  Then supposing I found that he hadn't a brain in his head and stopped loving him, and at the same time I realized I was being made the victim of vicious persecution by his father?  Am I tricky to keep on pretending I'm in love with him?"
"He will be hurt when he discovers the truth," Gillian said.
"I considered that.  But remember I am feminine.  His father did his best to ruin my reputation.  Shouldn't I, being a woman, use any handy weapon to hurt back?  Well, Wally was that weapon.
"As for hurting Wally, he needs hurting.  He is horribly conceited.  He knows how beautiful he is.  Every woman he knew until I came along fell for him like tons of bricks, He is, actually, a lazy young good-for-nothing.  He needs a jolt.  When he recovers from the one I intend giving him very soon, he may brace up, be a man and get to work.  No; I don't love Wally.  Am I, therefore, the kind of woman you detest most?"
Gillian said earnestly: "I think you are one of the straightest thinking women I've known in a long time."
"And you can add," she quickly put in, "the straightest behaving!  If you think, just because I became a bootlegger, that I am a moral derelict; that I am any man's sweetie– 
"Listen, Silver Fox!  I've forgotten more than most of these modern, supposedly wise flappers ever knew about men and wickedness.  But I learned it by observation, not from experience.  I know my book!  But where any man has ever been concerned, I have always considered myself sacred!"
Her beautiful blue eyes, glowing, were looking up belligerently into his.
"I believe you," said Gillian.
She laughed shortly.  "You don't have to.  Virtue is its own reward!  Would you handle my case if I weren't a good girl?"
"Your morals haven't much to do with the present issue," Gillian promptly answered.  "In court, it's a great help to know that a woman's slate is clean."
"Mine is spotless.  Were you thinking of making love to me?"
"Love!" Gillian blustered.  "To you?"
"Am I so dreadful to look at and ponder upon?"
Gillian looked angry.
"Or," she said softly, "does a burned child dread the flame?  Did she do you dirt?  Did she disillusion you?  Are you off her for life?"
"'She was crooked," stated Gillian.  "She was part of the biggest frame-up I've ever stumbled into.  You and I were the goats.  As far as I can gather, you were to be framed; I was to be scared out.  It seems to me the two of us are in the boat by ourselves, surrounded by angry waves and a first-rate hurricane approaching.
"We're going into court before a fixed judge, and a jury that, very probably, my best efforts can't keep honest.  They'll build up evidence, all lies, that will take the hardest thinking of my lifetime to see through and disprove."
He gave her a summary of the situation; mentioning his conversation with the Governor; the attack on his life; the kidnapping of Mike Rafferty; the attitude of the chief of police.  She was staring at him with round, frightened eyes when he had, finished.
"Mr. Hazeltine, they'll get you somehow!"
"I doubt it.  I think I have them buffaloed.  I wanted, somehow, to place every one of them on the defensive.  I did it by spiriting Rafferty's gang out of town.  If that kidnapping doesn't spring a leak, they'll believe by to-morrow that I had those men murdered.  I want them to believe that.  I want them to know how ruthless I am!"
"You're the smartest thing I ever knew in my life," sighed the Dearing girl.  "What do you think will happen?"
"You went before the homicide court to-day, didn't you?"
"I did."
"And pleaded not guilty?"
"Of course.  And they denied me bail."
"Did the magistrate appoint legal counsel?"
."He offered to, but I told him I preferred to select my own.  He seemed surprised.  What will happen now?"
"They'll railroad it through.  They'll take you before a special grand jury, and they'll give you an early trial."
"Do you want an early trial?"
"I want a week," said Gillian.
She eyed him curiously.  "How about our bets?  I owe you a box of cigars and you owe me a box of the purest silk stockings made in the world.  That word 'box' is misleading.  Any bet with the word 'box' in it always has a catch in it.  Some boxes contain one pair–"
"The box I was referring to," said Gillian, "contains, I think, twelve dozen."
"Did you say box car?" queried the lovely red-head.
Josh Hammersley, who in older days would have been called a star reporter, but was now merely the highest paid news gatherer on the Greenboro Morning Journal, was waiting outside the jail when Gillian emerged.
The age of Josh Hammersley was approximately that of Gillian Hazeltine.  The two were old friends.  So tried and true a friend, in fact, was Josh Hammersley that Gillian could – and did – speak to him on sundry occasions on sundry topics with the certainty that Josh would use his head, would not write stories for his paper containing statements injurious in any way to Gillian or his causes.
Josh Hammersley was plump, comfortable and bald.  He had the wide, innocent blue eyes of a babe.
He said, "Well!  Well!" in throaty surprise when he saw Gillian descending the jail steps.
"Hello, you big stiff," said Gillian.
"Hello, you big bum," said Josh.  "I heard you were killed.  I was just doping out your obituary and now, doggone it, I'll have to tear it up."
"Ride up to the house with me, Josh, and I'll give you an earful."
"Anything fit to print?"
"Not much.  You can say I'm going to handle the Dearing case."
"Thanks.  I'll phone it in from your house."
They climbed into Gillian's coupe.  Josh did not notice the splintered left window until they were passing a lighted store.
He said simply: "Bullet-proof glass, eh?  Well, things are stirring in this town.  First I hear you are dead, then out jumps the rumor that Mike Rafferty and his gang were wiped out in a gun fight with some out-of-town boys.  I can't find a soul to verify the story.  "You know all about it, you fox.  What's up?"
"They laid for me on the Springton turnpike," Gillian told him.  "They let loose a burst from a one of those new Browning machineguns and beat it without making sure they'd done a thorough job."
"Yeah?  And how about Rafferty?"
"If you want to help a good cause along, spread the news that Rafferty and his gang were captured, had their throats cut and were thrown into the river.  You can't print that, because you can't verify it; but it will make a nice, fast-moving rumor."
"I heard that story, too.  Is there anything in it?"
"Not for publication.  I also want you to spread around that you have, in a safe-deposit box, a complete story of the crooked work that has been pulled off in this city.  You can say you are going to print it in case I should be suddenly among the dead or missing.  Will you do that, Josh?"
"Sure, I'll do it!"
They drove on through Greenboro and through Riverdale.  Gillian parking beside the kitchen door, observed that Toro's battered old flivver was standing there.
He hastened inside and up to his office, followed by the reporter.  Gillian rang for Toro, and the Japanese presently entered.
"You know this gentleman," said Gillian.
Toro bowed profoundly.
You may speak freely before him, Toro."
"Very well, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Did you drive to Lake Largo?"
"I did, sir."
"Tell me what happened."
"I stopped first in Dexter and delivered your cigars and the note to Sheriff Bolton," said the precise Japanese.  "I then drove on to your house with the load of provisions.
"At your house I was met by three men with drawn pistols, who took me before Mr. Anderson.  I told him you wished to know how he had achieved his sensational victory.  He said to tell you that it had been a lead-pipe cinch.  He first stole a moving van.  He placed his men inside and backed up the moving van at the side door of Lenore's night club, after first ascertaining that the Rafferty gang was disporting inside.
"He told the man at the door he had a load of booze and when the man stuck out his head, Mr. Anderson struck him, with a blackjack.  His gunmen rushed up the stairs and took Mr. Rafferty and his cohorts completely by surprise.  In a twinkling–"
Josh interrupted: "I want to know how long a twinkling is."
"A twinkling," the Japanese promptly responded, "is just two-thirds as long as a jiffy, and just half as long as a trice."
"Go on," said Gillian, impatiently.
Toro obliged: "In a twinkling, Mr. Anderson's men had your handcuffs on Mr. Rafferty's men, and gags in all their mouths.  They threw them unceremoniously downstairs and loaded them like cordwood in the van.  Then Mr. Anderson and his men climbed in, shut the doors and drove to Lake Largo.  Whereupon Mr. Anderson telephoned to you,"
"What happened to the van?" Gillian wanted to know.
"The van was driven five miles back to the main road," Toro answered, "and the man who drove it walked the five miles back to your house."
"Did you see the captives?"
"I did not, sir.  Mr. Anderson had locked them all in the large upstairs room you use as a dormitory for overflow guests.  He had placed guards over them, armed with clubs.  He told me to report to you that everything is jake."
"That will be all, Toro.  You have done an excellent night's work.  You may bring highballs for Mr. Hammersley and me, and retire."
"One more point, sir: Mr. Anderson requested that a daily supply of snow be brought in for his men and the prisoners.  Most of them are cocaine fiends.  Shall they have it?"
"Can you secure it?"
"I have not forgotten my old tricks, Mr. Hazeltine."
"And I don't want you to renew them, Toro; but until this case is settled, you might forget your conscience – for the glory of pure justice!  We are waging a war upon the most dangerous vultures who ever got their talons into the political flesh of an American State.  Right must prevail!  Call it hokum if you wish, Josh, but that's my battle cry."
"You can depend upon my ablest assistance," said Toro, and withdrew.
Gillian remarked: "Toro is a genius."  
Josh Hammersley brought his fist down on the desk with a smack.
"Gillian," he burst out, "you're in too deep.  You can't right a wrong with a dozen more wrongs.  You're breaking every criminal statute in the State!  Hired gunmen!  Hold-ups!  Kidnapping!  Dope!  And, I'll wager, extortion!  Who are you after?"
"Brundage!"
"Don't be ridiculous.  You can't get him.  He's too slippery.  He's too clever."
"I can try, I'm letting you in on this, Josh, so that, some day, you can write the story from the inside.  I am going to clean up this State.  I am going to make a clean sweep of rotten politicians and city officials in Greenboro, which is the seat of most of the rottenness in the State.  Why?  Perhaps to purge my own conscience.  I'm not overly proud of some of the things I've done.
"Josh, I'm suddenly sick of being the Silver Fox – the craftiest criminal lawyer in this part of the country – the man who can get any crook or murderer off by outsmarting a dumb prosecuting attorney, a sleepy judge and a stupid jury!  I've given myself a thorough housecleaning since last night.  Now I'm branching out.
"You know what I'm trying to do, Josh.  You've got most of the story already.  If the Brundage gang gets me – publish the story!  Your paper hates Brundage and isn't afraid of him.  Come out with me now to Lake Largo and I'll let you listen with your own ears to some more of the story.  And on the way out, I'll tell you the inside story of the Dearing girl."
Hammersley put on his coat.
"Come on, kid.  I'd walk ten miles over broken glass in my bare feet to see Mike Rafferty with handcuffs on!"

CHAPTER 10
The Fourth Degree

THE MOON had set when the bullet-proof coupe pulled to a sudden stop with lights extinguished a hundred yards from the Hazeltine summer camp– 
Gillian stopped the car because a man with a sawed-off shotgun had sprung out from the bushes.  He had forgotten the deputies he had requested Sheriff Bolton to secure.
Holding his shotgun in one hand and flooding the occupants of the car with a flash-light held in the other, the man roared: "Put your hands up!"
Gillian and Josh elevated their wrists.  The deputy looked into the car, gasped: "Mr. Hazeltine!  Holy cats, I didn't recognize ye!  Roll along, Sweet Missouri, roll along!"  He winked prodigiously.  "Some party a-goin' on up at your place!"
"You bet," said Gillian heartily.  And drove on.
Three men with pistols greeted them as they walked up on the porch: Benny the Knife, Hop Smith, and Snake Harris.
They lowered their pistols and permitted the two visitors to enter.  Cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air of his immaculate living room.  Nicky Anderson was descending the stairs when Gillian and Josh entered.
The Silver Fox grasped his hand and said: "Congratulations!  You did a beautiful job, Nicky.  You know Mr. Hammersley, don't you – of the Morning Journal?"
Nicky shook hands with Josh.
"I know him, but he don't know me.  Gonna write us up, Mr. Hammersley?"  And Nicky laughed boisterously, then sobered.  "This gent won't talk, will he, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"He is one of my most trusted friends," Gillian assured him.
"I think we made a clean getaway," said Nicky.
"How are the prisoners?" Gillian wanted to know.
"They ain't said a word – because the gags're still on 'em.  Want to look 'em over?"
"We do," said Gillian.
Nicky led the way upstairs to the large dormitory in which Gillian, during large week-end summer, parties, often lodged as many as a dozen men at a time.  It contained eleven army cots.  On eight of these cots lay the cream of Greenboro's criminal element.
Eight pairs of eyes glared murderously at Gillian as he walked from cot to cot, bent over and looked down.
"How are you going to handle this crowd, Nicky?"
"With good heavy clubs."
Gillian bent over the last cot in the line.  It contained the supine, balefuleyed figure of the gang leader, the man who had with cold deliberation attempted to kill him this afternoon – Mike Rafferty.
"Mike," said Gillian amiably, "I thought I'd never see you reduced to this – trussed up like a hog on the way to the slaughter house!  What a sight for sore eyes you are!  Nicky, have you had them frisked?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  We took enough hardware off them to start up a arsenal!  There ain't even a penknife among the lot of 'em."
"When do you plan to ungag them?"
"Well, those gags are on good and tight, Mr. Hazeltine.  They don't feel good.  I figured on lettin' 'em suffer awhile."
"Take their gags off.  I want to have a talk with them."
"What if they all, yelled?  You could hear 'em as far away as Dexter!"
Gillian explained to Nicky his arrangements with Sheriff Bolton.  Then Nicky took him into the hall and said in a confidential whisper: "These boys of mine are O.  K., Mr. Hazeltine, but they're weak.  I mean, they're human.  Let this bunch begin to offer 'em bribes and – well, they're weak and human."
"You'll have to spend all your time up here, Nicky, and see that nothing of the kind happens.  My plans take care of that contingency.  Keep them handcuffed and keep their feet tied together.  Only let one of them at a time go to the bathroom.  See that he is well escorted.  If one of them gives us the slip – we're sunk!"
The two men reentered the dormitory.
"Take off their gags," said Gillian.
Slug Lenihan, Frisco Joe and Kit Murphy removed the gags from the gangsters' months.  And for some minutes the air was purple with profanity.
Gillian seated himself in a camp chair beside Mike Rafferty's cot and shouted: "Nicky, I want this profanity stopped.  Use that club on the next man who opens his mouth,"
The profanity ceased.  "That's a standing order," said Gillian.  "Not one of you is to speak unless you're spoken to.  I believe all of you men know Nicky Anderson.  You killed his pal up here last night.  He doesn't know which of you did the killing but he doesn't love any of you.
"Now until I let you go, Nicky will stay in this room with a long, heavy club.  In short, I'd advise you to keep your mouths shut tight – unless it is to answer questions."
He looked down into the ugly, red, scarred face of Mike Rafferty; and Mike Rafferty's hot, blue eyes glared back at him.  "You, Mike, can talk.  I want to know who killed Big Ben Lewis."
The gang leader glared at him without answering.
"Who," Gillian repeated, "killed Ben Lewis?"
Still Mike Rafferty was silent.
Gillian put the question a third time.  "Who killed Ben Lewis?"
The gunman would not answer.
Gillian glanced about the room.  He asked the question generally.  A pale, pimply faced youth, croaked: "The Dearing girl!"
"Shall I hit him?" Nicky solicitously inquired.
He had, from somewhere, secured a great club such as our prehistoric ancestors are pictured as having carried.
"Not yet," said Gillian.  "Nicky, I didn't have these men brought here because they tried to take my life this afternoon.  At the same time, I am, of course, delighted that I have them where I want them.  No, I am not revengeful – not a bit more revengeful than a full-grown male rattlesnake that's just been stepped on!
"You think you are a cruel man, Rafferty.  In fact, you are proud of your record of brutality.  You have made a great many people suffer.  You look upon yourself as a thoroughly ruthless individual, beyond all law, entitled to take a life here and a life there as you see fit, or to carry out the orders of a man higher up who has something on you.  You like to see blood flow.  You enjoy seeing the look of death come into a man's face when you have pulled the trigger.
"Well, I am cruel, too.  But I am cruel in ways that you know nothing of – but will soon learn.  I am going to torture you, Rafferty.  Not with any blunt, stupid police third-degree methods – but with a much more subtle, much more ingenious system.  And when I am through torturing you, you will tell me from a full heart who killed Ben Lewis.
"That's why you and your friends are my guests here to-night: so that I can find out, as I sooner or later shall, who murdered Ben Lewis."
The blue eves of the gangster had seemed to turn red.  They seemed to radiate venom.
"You," Gillian went on, "are a great talker, Rafferty.  You love to hear the sound of your voice.  You love to brag.  You love to tell how crazy the ladies are about you.  
"And you don't even realize that the torture has begun.  Before it is finished you will gladly tell who killed Big Ben.  If you don't, your men will."
Mike Rafferty spoke.  His voice leaped out, a harsh snarling: "The first one of you who lets out a peep to Hazeltine or any of his gang is goin' to have his guts blown out by me personally – see?"
He stopped with a howl of mingled rage and pain.  The club in the hands of Nicky Anderson had landed with a thwack across his chest.
"The golden rule for children," Gillian proceeded briskly, "applies, from now on, to all you men.  Gunmen should be seen but not heard!  Until you are ready to confess who murdered Ben Lewis, you are not to speak.  Any man wishing to visit the bathroom will simply rattle his handcuffs.  One man will go at a time.
"Now I will outline my plan of torture," said the Silver Fox.  "First, silence!  That must prevail night and day, hour in and hour out.  Not one word is to be spoken.  Breakfast tomorrow is to be your last meal.  Thereafter – no food!
"Beginning now – no dope.  No cocaine, morphine, heroin or any of their derivatives."
One of the gunmen groaned.
"Day after to-morrow morning, at breakfast time, you are to have, your last drink of water.  That is my plan.  All of you know that it will be carried out.  The suffering you are about to undergo, of silence, of hunger, of thirst, of that terrible gnawing craving for stimulants and narcotics – all this suffering can be avoided if any of you cares to speak the truth now.  Does any one care to speak'?"
The dormitory, save for the labored breathing of the Rafferty gang, remained still.
Gillian addressed Nicky Anderson: "When they are ready to tell the truth, let me know.  Phone me and I'll come at once."
"It won't be long now!" said Nicky, gently swinging the club back and forth.
Gillian and Josh took their departure.  In the coupe, Josh remarked to Gillian, "You cannot get away with it!  That dormitory is going to be a madhouse before tomorrow, noon.  Those eight men will be eight wild, frothing animals.  They will escape somehow – and where will you be then?  Why didn't you torture it out of them tonight?"
"I abhor physical torture," said Gillian.

CHAPTER 11
Starting the Ballyhoo

THE GREENBORO newspapers on the following day pushed all news, including recent developments in the Dearing case, into the second and subsequent pages, whole-heartedly devoting their first pages to the sensational bill which had been introduced by Senator McMorrow in the State Legislature.
In honor of the man who had suggested it, it was given the name of the Yistle Bill.  All honor and glory to Adelbert Yistle!
The prosecuting attorney did not know whether to be delighted or terrified.  When the front pages of the morning papers were first brought to his attention he was delighted.  When he read, as he did in the noon editions of the afternoon papers, that Governor Brundage was vigorously opposed to the measure, he was terrified.
Extras were on the streets at five in the afternoon with the announcement that the bill had been passed by a majority vote of both houses; sent to the Governor for his signature; returned after lunch with his veto – and promptly became a law by an almost unanimous vote of both houses sitting in joint session!  Discounting wartime days, perhaps the record for lawmaking in any State in the Union had been broken.
By the terms of the Yistle Bill, the State, represented by the State's Attorney, was to profit hereafter from "such murder trials as attract, to a pronounced degree, the morbid curiosity of the public."
The bill consisted of numerous sections.  Briefly summarized it provided that: The local State's attorney was to be in charge of all arrangements, including the leasing of radio broadcasting rights to the highest bidder, the installation of suitable loud speaking apparatus whereby those seated at a distance from the judge and witness stand could hear all testimony and judicial decisions; the leasing of all profitable privileges and allotting of concessions.
The prosecuting attorney was instructed to consult with the counsel for the defense in order that the State might profit to the utmost.
Editorial writers in the Greenboro papers vied with one another in the flattering terms with which they welcomed the Yistle Bill.  They spoke of it as a stroke of genius.  They praised Mr. Yistle.  They lauded Senator McMorrow.  They congratulated the lucky taxpayers.  They hung verbal laurel wreaths all over the Legislature.  They criticized Governor Brundage for his disapproval.  The measure was spoken of as "daring," "audacious," and "revolutionary."  Only the sensational Greenboro Times condemned the measure!  And the Greenboro Times, a spokesman of the Brundage political faith, was only lukewarm in its condemnation.
It was the newspapers' opinion that the Yistle Bill had been railroaded through in time to be effective when Violet Dearing's case went to trial.
It was a busy day for poor Mr. Yistle.  It was equally as busy a day for Gillian Hazeltine.  He had little time for the preparation of his case.  Miss Dearing had gone before the homicide court yesterday; this afternoon she would go before a specially impaneled grand jury.
It would, not surprise him if Governor Brundage had issued orders that Violet Dearing was to be tried immediately.  The Governor would realize that Gillian needed time; by breaking all precedents and bringing the girl to trial without delay, he would hamper Gillian's efforts at building a defense.
At nine-thirty in the morning, Gillian was in the jail, saying to a beautiful red-haired girl with a tired smile and scared blue eyes: "How're you bearing up?"
She answered with a question: "What's in store for me, Gillian?"
In pondering his answer he reflected that she had spanned the chasm from "Mr. Hazeltine" to "Gillian" in perhaps record time, and decided that the name, falling from her lips, took on musical values never before known.  He always looked at people's hands for their state of mind; hers, this morning, were white and limp.
She was, he realized, frightened.
"You're going to be as free as a lark," he assured her.
"I haven't the slightest doubt that I'll be as free as a lark if you have anything to do with it," she said.  "But supposing something happens that prevents you from having anything to do with it?  I mean, Gillian, you've gone to war with the most dangerous, most ruthless man in the State.  You know how he deals with his enemies.  You know how he has dealt with me.  I stood in the way and – here I am!"
"Don't worry."
"Worry?  Knowing that at any moment you might be shot or stabbed in the back?  Don't you suppose that Brundage can find other men to shoot at you?"
He countered: "Don't you suppose I can, too?  As a matter of fact, I've attended to that.  I'm ashamed to admit it, but I have a personal bodyguard.  My gardener was a sharpshooter, a sniper, in the war.  He is a crack shot with pistol or rifle.  He accompanies me wherever I go.  Does that satisfy you?"
"It makes me feel much better.  Now let's get busy in earnest and decide how we're going to handle this matter of, People versus Dearing."
For an hour he questioned and cross-questioned her; examined and cross-examined her.  At the end of an hour he said: "That will do for to-day."
Miss Dearing removed from her bodice a slip of pink paper and handed it through the grating to him.  It was a check, drawn to his order, for twenty-five hundred dollars, and it was signed by her.
Gillian looked up from it with a quizzical smile.  "What's this for?"
"It's your retainer, Gillian.  I don't know what your fee is, and I'll be perfectly frank in telling you that this is every dollar I have in the world."
Gillian was frowning.  "Have I said anything about a fee?"
"You usually collect one, don't you?"
"When I win this case," he growled, "we will discuss the fee.  This money I am going to invest for you."
"I want to know," she said firmly, "what your fee is going to be."
"We will discuss that after the trial.  What are your plans, after the trial?  You will have received hundreds of columns of newspaper publicity.  You will be more famous than any woman who ever went on the witness stand.  What's it going to be – the stage, movies?"
"All the king's horses and all the king's men," Miss Dearing answered, "couldn't drag me into the movies or upon the stage.  Gillian, I haven't any plans.  I will probably assume another name, go West or East or North or South – and get a job.  But I haven't thought about that."
Gillian put the check away and prepared to, depart.
The lovely red-head put her hand through the bars and nestled it in his.  "You won't let them shoot you, will you, Gillian?"
Gillian said to himself:  Watch your step!  They're all alike.  They'll stoop to any trick.  This girl wants you to fall in love with her, so she can lead you around by a nose ring.  Get this idiotic idea out of your head of eating breadfruit under a palm tree in the South Seas!  You've been stung too often, my boy!  Don't be an ass!"
So he gave the nestling, soft white little hand a brotherly squeeze and departed.
The trouble with Violet Dearing, he assured himself, as he walked rapidly away, was that she had too much sex appeal.  She was too beautiful.  Too alluring.
"Love," he stated, "is bunk!"
"I beg your pardon?" said an irritable voice.
It was Adelbert Yistle.
The Silver Fox gazed guiltily at the State attorney.  Mr. Yistle was pale and he looked harassed.
"You were talking to yourself!" Mr. Yistle accused him.  "You will be making baskets in the Home for the Mentally Incurable when I get through with you this trip, Gillian!"
"Adelbert," Gillian retorted, "if you didn't always say that, I'd be apt to be terrified.  Have you ever won a case from me?"
"I'm going to win this one.  Look here, Gillian; what did you have to do with this preposterous bill – this so-called Yistle Bill?"
"I'm the father of it"' Gillian admitted.  "And Miss Dearing is the mother of it.  You, being a strict moralist, would hardly call it a legitimate child, I suppose."
"Miss Dearing?" croaked the district attorney.
"Sure!  It's her idea: hire a stadium, lease the radio rights, and so on."
"You're up to some of your dirty work!"
"Adelbert, on my word of honor, you're wrong.  This is not dirty work.  It's part of clean-up week in Greenboro.  My name is Gillian 'Gold Dust Twins' Hazeltine, and I am going to make Greenboro the Spotless Town."
Mr. Yistle stared at him suspiciously.  "I don't get you."
"You wouldn't, Adelbert."
"You think you're going to get that murderess off simply by staging one of your court room farces in a stadium seating sixty thousand people?"
"No, Adelbert; my getting her off will be incidental.  Doesn't the stadium idea really appeal to you?"
"It's preposterous!"
"But don't you see it's going to make you the biggest political figure in the State?  You'll be the logical candidate for Governor.  Beyond that, perhaps the White House!  Why are you so suspicious, Adelbert?  You ought to be drowning me with gratitude!"
Still the prosecuting attorney stared at him with suspicion.  Presently he shook his head.  "Why did you do it?" he demanded.
"Because I love you!" purred Gillian.
Mr. Yistle continued to eye him distrustfully.  "What do you expect to get out of it?"
"Not a thing!  Not a thing!"
"You know I'm being hounded by people who want concessions.  I've had six offers from radio people already."
Make them submit sealed bids, and give the radio concession to the highest bidder."
Mr. Yistle looked worried.  "It says in that bill that the prosecuting attorney and counsel for the defense should collaborate."
"Why not?" said Gillian.  "It must be put over with a big ballyhoo, to attract thousands of customers so the stadium will be filled.  Naturally, we must work together.
"We must prepare press stories together; we must keep the stadium filled.  For example, this afternoon Miss Dearing is to be photographed.  Photographers from all the papers and all the news photo services will be here.  The public must realize what a beautiful girl she is – and the public will flock to see her.  What is more appealing than beauty in distress?"
"I distrust you," said Mr. Yistle. "You have something up your sleeve."  
"A wallop in each one," said Gillian.  "Nothing more."
"Shall we have a conference?"
"Aren't we having a conference?"
"A jail is no place for a conference.  I want to know what you want, Gillian.  You always want something.  What is it this time?"
Gillian gazed at him as if his feelings were hurt.
Mr. Yistle proceeded: "All these concessions.  What are we going to do about them?"
"The only thing I want," said Gillian, laughing, "is the hot dog concession."
"Stop kidding."
"I am not kidding, Adelbert.  I am being serious.  I don't care about any of the important concessions, but I would like to have the hot dog concession; I mean the concession for selling refreshments.  And I don't intend to gyp anybody.  The idea of supplying all the spectators with good, wholesome, nourishing food appeals to me.  You can give all the big concessions to your friends.  But let me have the hot dog concession."
"For yourself?"
"Now, Adelbert, you know I don't want the hot dog concession for myself.  I'll be too busy defending Miss Dearing.  I want it for a very deserving woman, Adelbert."
"Well," wavered Mr. Yistle, don't see why you can't have it – as long as you don't want to have anything to say about the other concessions."
"Adelbert, that is noble of you."
"We'll get together later, shall we, to discuss publicity stunts?" inquired the prosecuting attorney.
"Why not hire a good reporter," Gillian suggested.  "Why not give the job to Josh Hammersley?  I'll give him a story a day; you give him a story a day.  The best story I can think of, to run from day to day, would be that this trial is a grudge fight between you and me."
"It is one!" growled Mr. Yistle.
"Then simply say so to Josh.  And I'll say the same.  Tell him how you detest me and why.  And I'll try to think of some reasons why I ought to detest you.  I've got to be running along now, Adelbert.  So long!"
"If you think you're going to win this case," was the prosecuting attorney's parting shot, "you're cuckoo!"
Gillian was not smiling when he issued from the jail.  Perhaps Mr.Yistle was right!

CHAPTER 12
Fighting Against Time

GILLIAN'S next call that morning was on John Walling, the superintendent of the Department of Public Works.  Mr. Walling was a robust, gray-haired, affable man of middle age who had, through a dexterous use of politics, occupied his position for upward of sixteen years.  Administrations came and administrations went, but he always seemed to know in time which way the flag would blow, which side his bread would be buttered on.
Gillian lighted a cigar, pulled a chair up so that they were sitting knee to knee and said confidently: "John, did the Dearing girl work for you about eight months ago as a stenographer?"
And Mr. Walling answered affably: She did, Gillian.  I understand you're taking her case."
"I want to know, John, why you let her out."
Mr. Walling looked uncomfortable.  He did not answer.
"Was she a good stenographer?"
"Perfect."
"All right morally and so on?"
"As far as I know – yes."
"Then you let her out for some reason having nothing to do with her ability to fill her job?"
Mr. Walling nodded.
"Who told you to let her out, John.
"Who do you suppose?" growled Mr. Walling.
"I know who," said Gillian.  "I'm just trying to make you admit it.  It was Brundage.  Did he phone you or see you personally?"
"He wrote me."
"Got the letter?"
"I have."
"Will you take the stand, give your testimony and let me submit that letter as material evidence?"
"Don't be humorous, Gillian.  I've got a wife and kids."
Gillian straightened up in his chair and looked the superintendent of the Department of Public Works squarely in the eyes.  "Look here, John.  As far as I know, you've got a nice clean slate.  I don't think you've ever been a grafter, and I'm pretty sure I'd know if you had.  You want to keep this job, and I want you to keep this job.  But, John, there is a shake-up coming in this State that is going to be felt by every public official from the Governor on down to the lowest office boy in the Sewage Disposal Department.  If you want to stay in this job, you'll take the stand and come clean.  You know I'm not lying.  You know I wouldn't try bluffing an old war horse like you.  Give me that letter!"
"So you think you're going to ride Brundage out of the State on a rail!" was Mr. Walling's comment.
"I do!"
"He's wise, Gillian; he's tough and he's clever.  He's the strongest man we've had up there for a good many years.  Are you sure you're not tilting at windmills?"
"Give me that letter!"
John Walling looked at him thoughtfully.  He placed his hands behind his large, red neck and continued to look at Gillian.  He teetered slowly back and forth in his swivel chair, without removing his eyes from Gillian's.  The sense with which he detected a change in the direction of the political wind was working.
At length, he arose.  He went to a small safe in a corner of the office; spun its dial.  The door opened.  A moment later he placed a letter in Gillian's hand.  Gillian quickly glanced through the letter, smiled briefly, and tucked it away in his pocket.
"If you don't lick Brundage," said Mr. Walling, "that letter means I've lost a nice comfortable job."
"You won't lose your job," Gillian assured him.
"That Dearing girl," said Mr. Walling, "is a damned nice kid.  She got a dirty deal, and I hope you clear her."
"I'm willing to break my neck trying," said Gillian, and departed.
His next call was upon the head librarian at the Greenboro Public Library; a tall, lean pale man, who turned paler and paler as Gillian talked to him.
Another visit kept Gillian fully an hour in the office of the president of the Mammoth Construction Company.  Mr. Edward Rice was the kind of man who roared when hurt, or even threatened with harm.  At the end of an hour of brisk arguing, he stopped roaring and surrendered.
Leaving his office, Gillian bought an afternoon paper and learned that the Dearing case had been scheduled for immediate trial.  The trial would be under way, the paper said, some day this week, and would be held in the Lincoln Stadium!
Governor Brundage was, in other words, bringing pressure to bear on Adelbert Yistle; had, it appeared, ordered poor flustered Mr. Yistle to prosecute the case with no delay.  And it would be useless for Gillian to appeal for a postponement.  The Governor did not want postponements; the sooner the case could be brought to trial the more handicapped Gillian would be.  He needed time to prepare this case.  Governor Brundage was aware of it, and would, in short, whip Gillian by every means at his disposal.
How many days, Gillian wondered, would be required to subdue Mike Rafferty and his gang to the point where they would willingly confess?  How long could men, inured to hardships as these men were, go without food, water and narcotics – and the use of speech?
He was pondering this problem when Police Captain Sorrenson hailed him on the street.
"I want to know," said the captain grimly, "where Mike Rafferty and his gang are?"
"I told you," Gillian answered, "that I had their throats cut and their bodies thrown in the river.  You seem to be a hard man to convince."
"You mean, you had eight men murdered in cold blood?"
"Yes," Gillian fairly purred.  "Eight."
"Look here, Mr. Hazeltine.  Let's cut out this kidding.  If you'll play fair with me, I'll play fair with you."
"You," said Gillian, "are such an infinitesimal speck in my plans that I'd need a microscope to see you.  At the same time, you are going down the soapy chute with the rest of them."
A little of the captain's cocksure expression departed.
"Mr. Hazletine," he said earnestly, I'm perfectly willing to play ball."
"You don't know how to play my kind of ball," said Gillian.  "You're too crooked!"
Captain Sorrenson flushed.
"If you get frisky with me," he threatened, "I'll make this town so hot for you you'll think the Sahara Desert is the North Pole!"
"I've laughed out loud," was Gillian's comeback, "when better men than you have threatened worse than that.  "
It was a worried police captain to whom he cheerily said goodby.  He wanted Captain Sorrenson worried.  He wanted Chief of Police Bellows worried.  He wanted the mayor of Greenboro worried.  It was one of Gillian's fighting rules that an enemy worried is an enemy half whipped.
It was late in the afternoon when Gillian visited the Silver Slipper Club, the gambling house where Big Ben Lewis had lived, conducted his notorious business – and been cut down in the prime of his life.
Gillian went over the premises from cellar to garret.  One full hour he spent in the dead gambler's office, inspecting every object the room contained.  The two entrances interested him most.  One door led into a hall from which ran a stairway down to the gambling rooms; the other door gave upon a narrow stairway leading down to the private back entrance on Adams Street.
Through this door had escaped the killer or killers of Big Ben.  How many seconds before the other door had been opened by Miss Dearing?
Who had that killer been?  Would Nicky Anderson find out in time to save Violet Dearing from the electric chair?
Gillian's last call of the afternoon was upon the State's attorney.  The offices of Mr. Yistle were in an uproar, and it was with difficulty that he obtained a consultation with that worried public servant.
Mr. Yistle, in his private office, was stripped for action.  His coat, vest and collar were removed.  He was perspiring freely.  When Gillian entered, he looked up from a cluttered desk with watery eyes and said: "This is your work!  I know it is!  How can I prepare my case by tomorrow morning?"
"Tomorrow morning?" Gillian repeated.
"Didn't you know it?" wailed Mr. Yistle.  "Didn't you know the trial begins in the Lincoln Stadium tomorrow morning?"
"It's news to me," gasped Gillian.
"It's your doing!" Mr. Yistle spluttered.  "You know I couldn't prepare my case on such short notice!"
"How about my case?"
"Your case?"
"Don't you suppose I require time to prepare my case, too?"
"It's an outrage," declared Mr. Yistle.
"Who is it going to be tried before, Adelbert?"
"Judge Lorgan."
Gillian made, no comment.  He had expected that the trial judge would be judge Lorgan – judge Lorgan, the wheel horse of the Brundage party, the personal slave of Governor Brundage.
"I dropped up here," said Gillian, "to inspect the revolver alleged to have been found in Miss Dearing's possession after the murder.  Can I see it?"
Mr. Yistle opened a drawer of his desk and removed a small Smith & Wesson revolver and a pill box containing the two bullets which had been removed from Big Ben's body.  Gillian examined the revolver, took note of the fact that two of the shells were discharged, and surrendered bullets and revolver to Mr. Yistle.
"Have you made sure that, these bullets were fired by this revolver?"
"I have," said the State's attorney.
"You seem," commented Gillian, "to have a pretty tight case."
"I have an unbeatable case," declared Mr. Yistle.  "But I need more time.  I'm giving you fair warning, Gillian!  If you pull off any of your sly tricks in this trial I'll have you disbarred!"
Gillian smiled and withdrew.
He was more worried than he would care to admit.  Governor Brundage was a fighter; a fighter who would stoop to gouging, biting and clawing.  He was fighting as he had perhaps never fought before in his political life.  In his attempts to crush Violet Dearing under his heel, he had met, in Gillian Hazeltine, a worthy opponent.
Gillian's only wish was that he could have met Brundage on more equal terms.  He did not object to fighting an uphill fight; he welcomed opposition.  Weak opponents did not interest him.  But Governor Brundage's strength was disheartening.
What progress Gillian had made so far had been accomplished entirely by his sharp wits.  His only weapons were the enemies', which he had seized and turned against them.  His only hope for success, Violet Dearing's only hope for freedom, hung on the slender thread of a confession by one or all of Mike Rafferty's gang.
Could that confession be secured from them?  Was Nicky Anderson to be trusted?  What, Gillian wondered, had happened at Lake Largo today?  Had the Rafferty gang weakened?  Were they ready to confess?
He stopped, on his way home, at the bakery shop of Mrs. Maria Simpson, who was reputed to sell the best bread baked in Greenboro.
Mrs. Simpson, a spry old lady, was one of Gillian's warmest friends and staunchest admirers.
There were customers in the shop when he went in.  Mrs. Simpson waited until they were gone, then locked the door and pulled down the shade.
She wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and through these her eyes peered benevolently, giving her a gentle, grandmotherly appearance which belied the facts.  She was in reality one of the smartest, shrewdest business women in Gillian's extensive acquaintance.
Mrs. Simpson brusquely informed him: "Gillian, you're worried sick.  I understand you're goin' to defend this Dearing girl who killed Ben Lewis."
"She didn't kill him," Gillian wearily protested.
"You mean, by the time you get through makin' a dozen monkeys out of the jury, she'll be a fresh, fragrant little flower of a girl, who never had a thought in her mind beyond bein' a good little girl and helpin' her ma around the house."
Gillian smiled palely.  Mrs. Simpson's peppery comments always delighted him.
"She's really innocent," he insisted.
"Then what are you worried about?"
"It's going to be a difficult case.  Brundage wants to railroad the girl because his son paid attention to her.  She is red headed and fought him back."
"Gillian," said Mrs. Simpson, "I never clapped eyes on the girl, but if you want me to, I'll take the witness stand and swear I've known her all her life!"
"How would you like to become her business partner?" Gillian asked.
Mrs. Simpson eyed him keenly.
"The trial starts in the, Lincoln Stadium tomorrow morning," he went on.  "I've got the hot dog concession.  Rather, the refreshment concession.  There ought to be a small fortune in it.  I want you to, handle it – make sandwiches to feed as many of the, sixty thousand people in attendance as are hungry.  Can you do it?"
"Certainly, I can do it!  I've never fed a mob that big, but I've had lots of experience!"
"My idea," said Gillian, "is to sell sandwiches wrapped in wax paper at a reasonable price."
"Gillian, you know there's a mint of money in this for both of us.  But what's the idea back of it?"
Gillian smiled.  He removed from his pocket a slip of paper on which he had jotted down a few words.  "Your printer can rush through enough wrappers for tomorrow's supply, if you get after him at once.  Will you do it for me?"
Mrs. Simpson chuckled.  "Will I pass up a chance to repay some of the favors you've done me, make enough money to travel to Europe in luxury?  Now, why wasn't I born as smart as you are?'
"Because," answered the gallant Gillian, "you were born smarter!"
He returned at last to his mansion in Riverdale, too tired, too worried for dinner.
Toro met him at the door and followed him upstairs to his study with a long, gloomy countenance.  He was, deeply grieved, he said in response to Gillian's inquiry, to report that there had been no telephone messages from Lake Largo.  He had driven to the Hazeltine summer residence late in the afternoon in his flivver with a load of provisions.
"Mr. Anderson gave me this note for you," he said.
Gillian fairly snatched the envelope from Toro's hand, eagerly tore it open, removed a single sheet of paper, and read: 

Dear Mr. Hazeltine: Well, I got to report that things ain't been going as well as we hoped.  I cut off their food and water and saw to it that none of them were getting any snow or booze and by this noon they was all just about nuts.  They was ready to crack.  Then they seemed to calm down a lot all of a sudden and I found that that little louse of a Frisco Joe had been slippin' drinks of water and shots of hop to them all day, also soda crackers.
You can bet your sweet life I gave Joe what was coming to him.  Well, we got to start all over again, Mr. Hazeltine, and, believe me, we will get some action soon.  I am a tough guy, but you can hardly blame me at that.  The sufferings these guys went through was something fierce.  The gang of them just laid there on their cots and groaned and flopped around.  It was fierce.  But this time they can groan and flop till they come clean.
Yrs respfy,
Nicky

Gillian destroyed the note and promptly decided to visit Lake Largo for the purpose of jacking up the morale of Nicky Anderson and his men.  Mr. Yistle might, under pressure from the Governor, impanel a jury in a few hours' time; might rush the case through to a conclusion before nightfall.
He entered his coupe and started out.  Before he had driven a block Gillian was aware that he was being followed by a long, low gray roadster, and guessed that the chief of police had begun seriously to doubt that story of the drowning of Mike Rafferty and his gang.  Would it occur to the chief of police that the eight gunmen might be guests at Gillian's summer house?
Gillian abandoned the project of visiting Lake Largo tonight.  He must sit and wait, a form of exertion he detested.  But he was helpless now.
It was perhaps the most discouraged moment of Gillian's long, strenuous career when, re-entering his study, he seated himself at his desk to consider the problems of the trial.  If he failed to defeat Governor Brundage with the fragile weapons at his disposal, the Governor could be depended upon to crush him.
His mind, Gillian presently found, obstinately refused to consider the forthcoming trial.  It persisted in wandering off to dwell amidst scenes of high romance.  He saw himself standing beside a lovely laughing red-haired girl in the bow of a steamer plowing through a phosphorescent sea under sparkling stars and a golden moon.  Scent of spices was in the wind.  She was gazing up at him with adoring blue eyes, her hand trustfully cuddled within his own.
"I love you," she whispered.
Gillian bent down and kissed that sweet, laughing little mouth; slim and warm and soft, she lay happily in his arms.
The scene abruptly changed.  It faded, and now he beheld, in its stead, the most unfashionable piece of furniture in existences – a chair equipped with many wires and plates of metal.  For an awful moment he saw the red-haired girl seated in this chair with a mask over her beautiful blue eyes.  Some one signaled to a man who stood at a giant electric switch on the wall.  The man reached for the switch– 
Groaning, Gillian snatched up a pencil and began to write.
"Gentlemen of the jury, it is your sworn duty to ask of yourselves whether it has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt–"

CHAPTER 13
In the Arena

THE MORNING of the Dearing trial was crisp and clear and golden – a perfect day of Indian summer.  Long before dawn, cues of the morbidly curious formed, blocks long, at the wickets of the Lincoln Stadium.  From many miles in all directions, people had been pouring into Greenboro all through the night to attend the first trial ever to be held in America, perhaps in the history of the world, on such a spectacular scale.
By eight o'clock in the morning, the one, three and five-dollar seats were sold out.  By ten o'clock the "ringside" seats were filled.  The Lincoln Stadium was packed by the time judge Lorgan, in the flowing black of his office, emerged from the dressing room ordinarily reserved for the star of whatever attraction was being held in the great stadium.
The crowd roared at his appearance.  Slowly and with dignity he advanced up the aisle to the bench in the very center of the arena which had been erected during the preceding afternoon and the night by carpenters.  Other workmen had erected a jury stand; while electricians had been toiling since four in the afternoon, installing microphones and loud speakers, so that those in the bleachers could clearly hear every word uttered by, lawyers, witnesses and judge.
To these same microphones was connected the circuit by means of which the proceedings of the trial would be broadcast to all corners of America.
Perhaps fifty yards from the bench had been erected a tall, spidery tower upon which was a platform.  Here were the cameramen-men from the news services and the film weeklies.
People were rising as judge Lorgan came down the aisle from the dressing room that had been, on other occasions, occupied by Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, and Babe Ruth.  Sixty thousand people got to their feet and stood until his honor had seated himself.
Then a sharp voice barked over the stadium, as a bailiff spoke into a microphone and his voice was picked up and tossed into the ears of the eagerly-listening sixty thousand.
"Oyez!  Oyez!  Oyez!  The Superior Court within and for Greenboro County, criminal term, is open and in session at this place.  All persons having cause or action who are summoned to appear herein will give attention according to the law."
His last words were lost in a tremendous roar that swept the field.  Into the arena was walking a tall, handsome man, who was recognized by many as the famous Gillian Hazeltine.  Along another aisle was proceeding a slim girl with red hair, handcuffed on each side to a sheriff.  The sun shone down upon the bright red cap that was her hair and caused it to glisten.  She was attired simply and youthfully in a soft white dress that scarcely came to her knees.  In photographs, the alleged murderess of Big Ben Lewis had been merely beautiful.  In the flesh, she was bewitching.
She looked small and young and helpless.  Field glasses bore upon her from every quarter of the great stadium, and it was observed that her face was not that of a saint or a sinner, but only that of a typical American girl.
Looking at her, you declared it was absurd to accuse so lovely, so normal a girl of such a horrid crime as murder; even more absurd was it to harness that slip of a girl with steel grey eyes to the two hulking sheriffs between whom she walked with head lowered, as if in modesty or shame.
The roar that greeted her was the roar of a crowd greeting a popular princess.  Small boys wearing white caps were already darting about the sections.  Already, some thousands of sandwiches had been disposed of, each wrapped neatly in waxed paper printed with the startling legend: 

Minced Chicken
Guaranteed by the defendant in this trial to be made of pure materials, deliciously prepared by American labor.
Cordially yours,
Violet Dearing
Especially Prepared by the Simpson Bakery

Those who had purchased sandwiches roared more loudly than those who had not; because the sandwiches were toothsome; Maria Simpson had outdone herself; and the sandwiches were only ten cents.
A brazen blast of sound, rising above the roar of the crowd, became quickly distinguishable as that of the bailiff at the microphone.  He was shouting: "Order in the court!  Order in the court!"
So terrifying was this brazen voice, magnified countless dimensions by the artful aid of amplifiers, that the crowd at once ceased to roar and fell silent, Thus was answered the question that had tried Mr. Yistle most sorely: could the crowd be managed?  It could!
Adelbert Yistle and his assistant, Mr. Bullock, were already at their table with papers of all sorts spread out before them.  It was necessary to use paper weights, as a stiff breeze was blowing.
The process of impaneling a jury was begun at once.  Never, perhaps, in the history of important murder trials was a jury impaneled so quickly.  Mr. Yistle used but two of his peremptory challenges, because he did not really care who served on the jury; he was so sure of winning his case.  His only question was: "Are you opposed to capital punishment?"
If the jury candidate said "No," or "I am not," Mr. Yistle accepted him.
Gillian was, likewise, disinterested in the jury.  His hope for an acquittal hung solely on a confession by Rafferty's gang, and he was confident that his methods would bring a confession from them at the moment, the psychological moment, when he needed it most.
By noon, the process of impaneling the jury had been completed.  Twelve good and true men stood up in the fine autumn sunshine and swore to hearken closely to all testimony, and to render a fair and honest verdict.
The clerk now read the charge, and his voice carried clearly and loudly to all those tensely listening thousands.
"No. 4621!" he cried in a ringing voice.  "To the Superior Court for Greenboro County comes Adelbert Yistle, attorney for the State in said county, and on his oath of office complaint and information makes that on the 15th day of October, Violet Dearing, of the town of Greenboro, in said county, with calculation and deliberation did slay by means of a lethal weapon one Benjamin Beauregard Lewis, in the said town and county; did twice shoot him, so that the said Benjamin Beauregard Lewis, did languish and suffer and did, within a lapse of minutes, die, so that the said Violet Dearing did then and there commit the crime of murder against the peace of the people of the State and their dignity and contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided."
The ringing voice stopped.  Gillian Hazeltine was on his feet pleading not guilty to the charge and the beautiful girl at his side was the cynosure of sixty thousand pairs of expectant eyes, some equipped with field glasses and some not.
Mr. Yistle in his opening address said – and his voice was flung loudly to the sixty thousand spectators, and beyond, to listeners grouped around the radio in cities, in towns, in hamlets, and on farms over a radius of thousands of miles: "I will prove that this girl deliberately planned and executed the murder of Benjamin Beauregard Lewis.  I will prove it not merely beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt!"
Some of the crowd cheered, but most of them hissed and booed.  The brazen voice of the bailiff leaped out over the dense throng like the lash of a whip, and silence was promptly restored.
"Nice fresh sandwiches!" cried a boy's thin, piping voice.
Judge Lorgan glared.  The bailiff bawled: "No sandwiches or other refreshments are to be sold while the court is in session!"
The crowd roared with laughter, but soon became orderly again.
It was first necessary for Mr. Yistle to prove that Ben Lewis was dead.  He did so by calling his first witness, Dr. Bartrom, the coroner.
Dr. Bartrom, a sad-looking man with long drooping black mustache and a deep, hollow voice, took the witness stand.
"What is your name?" the clerk asked.
"Edward H.  Bartrom."
Dr. Bartrom was sworn, and Mr. Yistle began to question him.
"Are you the coroner of Greenboro?"
"I am."
"On the night of October 15, were you called to examine the body of a man found dead in the Silver Slipper Club."
"I was."
"Did you recognize the man?"
"I did."
"Kindly tell the jury who he was."
"He was Benjamin Beauregard Lewis."
"He was dead?"
"He was; yes, sir."
"Kindly describe to the jury how, in your professional opinion, his death was caused."
"His death was caused," responded the witness, "by the entrance into his body of two bullets, either of which would have caused his almost immediate death.  One of these bullets entered his heart, the other entered his aorta.  The aorta is the large artery, or reservoir, through which the blood passes immediately upon leaving the heart."
"How long after his death occurred," said Mr. Yistle, "did you make this examination?"
"I should say, about forty-five minutes," answered the coroner.  "I was at home when the call came.  I entered my sedan and drove at once to the Silver Slipper."
"Did you at once probe for the bullets, Dr. Bartrom?"
"I did."
"You found them both?"
"I did."
"Kindly tell the jury what you did with these bullets."
"I gave them to your assistant, Mr. Bullock."
Mr. Yistle nodded.  "That will be all.  Counsel for the defense may take the witness for cross-examination."
Gillian walked toward the coroner and looked at him gravely.  "Doctor, who was in Ben Lewis's office when you were conducting your post mortem?"
Mr. Yistle yelped: "I object!  The question is irrelevant."
"Objection is upheld," snapped judge Lorgan.
Gillian had asked the question for only one reason.  He was certain that Mr. Yistle would object, on principle, although the question was not a damaging one to the State's cause.  He merely wished to determine whether judge Lorgan would uphold the objection.  He did.  He was apparently determined to uphold Mr. Yistle, no matter how the law might rule.
Gillian said: "Question is withdrawn.  Doctor, will you kindly tell me whether the bullets which killed Lewis entered from in back or in front?"
"They entered in back," answered the coroner.
"That is all," said Gillian.  "Thank you, doctor' "
Gillian seated himself beside his client, and Miss Dearing promptly whispered in his ear: "Naturally, the bullets entered from in back, because they were fired from the doorway behind him, just before I came in the doorway in front of him.  He was sitting facing the door at which I came in, at his desk–" Her whisper trailed off.
Once again the stadium was resounding to the brazen voice of the bailiff.
"Smoking is not permitted in this court room.  I see smoke rising from those bleacher seats in Z section.  Anybody who smokes will be removed from this court room!"
Mr. Yistle's next witness was Professor Whitby, a stooping old man with a white Vandyke, who wore goldrimmed spectacles.
Having been duly sworn, he answered the first of Mr. Yistle's questions in a voice surprisingly young and robust for a man of his aged appearance.
"Yes, sir; I am known as an authority on firearms."
"Will you kindly examine this revolver and these two bullets, which I hereby beg your honor to permit me to introduce as material evidence, exhibits A, B and C, for the State, and tell the jury whether or not you have seen them before."
The revolver and bullets were tagged by the stenographer and passed on to Professor Whitby.
"I have seen these before, yes."
"Under what circumstances?"
"They were brought to my laboratory by a Mr. Bullock, who is sitting over there at that table and who is, I believe, the assistant State's attorney.  He wanted me to determine, by scientific methods, whether or not these bullets had been fired by this revolver."
Mr. Yistle: "What was the result of your investigations?" 
Professor Whitby: "I ascertained beyond any doubt, that these bullets were fired from this revolver."
Mr. Yistle: "Kindly describe to the jury what methods you used to reach this result."
Professor Whitby then entered upon a somewhat long-winded explanation involving his use of cameras, enlarging lenses and other equipment in making a comparison between the grooves of the revolver barrel and the grooves in the jackets of the bullets; explaining that every revolver has a "personality" different from that of every other revolver.
Greatly enlarged photographs of the two bullets and of the rifled barrel of the revolver were shown and introduced as exhibits D, E and F, for the State.
When the enlargements had been admitted as material evidence, Mr. Yistle turned over the witness to Gillian Hazeltine.
Gillian asked Professor Whitby only one question: "There is no question in your mind, is there, professor, that these bullets were fired from this particular revolver?"
"Absolutely none, Mr. Hazeltine."
"That will be all, professor."
Mr. Yistle's next witness was Isadore Ginsberg, who admitted that he conducted a pawnshop near the railroad station on Sycamore Street.
He was asked to identify the revolver, and he did, by the number on its butt, of which he had taken a record.  He was compelled by law to do so, he said.
"Who purchased this revolver from you?" Mr. Yistle asked him.
"A young woman," answered Mr. Ginsberg.
"Can you describe her?"
"Well, she vas a good looker.  She had red hair and blue eyes.  She's setting over there."
Mr. Ginsberg pointed at Violet Dearing.  "That young lady purchased this revolver from you?"
"She did!" cried Mr. Ginsberg.  
"Describe the circumstances."
"She come into my store on the night of October 14.  She says she wants a gun.  I sold her this one fer fifteen bucks – dirt cheap at the price!  I threw in a box of cartridges."
"There is no doubt in your mind, is there, Mr. Ginsberg, that that young lady sitting over there is the one who purchased this revolver from you?"
Mr. Ginsberg vigorously shook his head.  "No, sir!"
And into Gillian's ear the prisoner whispered: "Get up and tell him he's a liar, Gillian!"
Mr. Yistle was saying: "That will be all, Mr. Ginsberg."
Gillian did not rise.  He merely waved his hand and said gently: "Cross-examination waived.  But I want this witness held until later."
Judge Lorgan arose.  "Court is recessed until two-thirty," he announced.
A murmur as of countless bees promptly arose from the stadium.  
Boys began to shout: "Dee-licious sammidges!  Only ten cents!  Dee-licious sammidges!  Here y'are!  Ham-chick-enn-cheese!  Dee-licious Dearing sammidges!"

CHAPTER 14
Damning Evidence

MR. YISTLE'S first witness after the recess was Police Captain Daniel Sorrenson.  Captain Sorrenson, in civilian attire, was not an impressive witness.  The uniform gave him dignity; lacking the uniform, you were conscious of his close-set small eyes, his heavy jowls, his cruel mouth.
"You are Captain Sorrenson, of the Seventh Precinct, are you not?"
"I am – yep!" answered the captain in a ponderous attempt at affability.
"At nine-thirty o'clock on the night of October 15, where were you, captain?"
"At the precinct station house."
"You mean, the Seventh Precinct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Will you tell the jury what occurred subsequent to nine-thirty?"
"I will gladly," said Captain Sorrenson.  "I was in my office at the station house when the phone rang and some one at the other end, very excited, said that Big Ben Lewis had been shot and killed by a girl named Violet Dearing."
"I object to this man's testimony, your honor," Gillian cried.  "He is testifying for the State and he is building up an unverifiable case against the accused.  I want to know who was at the other end of that telephone conversation."
"You may bring up such questions in your cross-examination," ruled judge Lorgan.  "Your objection is overruled.  The witness may proceed."  
Captain Sorrenson grinned.  He proceeded: "This party said, as I was testifying, that Ben Lewis had been shot and killed by Violet Dearing.  I knew that that meant trouble, so I ordered out both wagons and we hurried to the Silver Slipper.  The place was in confusion.  People were running around, trying to get out of windows and doors.  I ordered my men to grab everybody, and I myself ran up to Ben's office and grabbed the Dearing girl."
"What did you do to her?" Mr. Yistle interrupted the flowing narrative.
"I frisked her and put the cuffs on her."
"What did you find when you frisked her?"
"A revolver."
"Would you recognize the revolver if you saw it again?"
"I sure would!"
"Is this the revolver?"  Mr. Yistle handed to him Exhibit A for the State.
"Yes, sir, this is it."
"Where was she carrying it?"
"Down inside her dress."
"What did you do then?"
"I took the revolver and put her under arrest.  I rounded up everybody I saw and put them in the wagons."
"What did you do with the revolver?"
"I turned it over to Mr. Bullock, there."
"Did the Dearing girl object to being arrested?"
"Yes, sir; she fought and scratched like a wildcat, and the way she swore made me blush, and I'm pretty used to cussing."
"That will be all."
Gillian rose and faced the witness.  "I want you to tell me who was at the other end of the wire when you were told that Ben Lewis had been shot and killed, as you say, by the Dearing girl."
Captain Sorrenson looked at him with contempt.
"How do I know?" he snorted.
"Don't you know?"
"No, I don't.  I don't stop to ask details when there's been a big murder."
Gillian gazed at him thoughtfully.  "Captain, about three years ago, when you were a lieutenant, wasn't it proved in court that you planted a revolver on a man you wanted sent up for burglary?"
"I object"' shouted Mr. Yistle.  "The question is irrelevant."
"Objection is sustained," ruled judge Lorgan.  "Strike that out of the record.  Proceed with your cross-examination, Mr. Hazeltine."
"I have no more questions," Gillian said in subdued tones.  "The witness is excused – until later."
The next witness for the State was a plump, jolly-looking man of forty or thereabouts.  Answering Mr. Yistle's questions, he admitted that his name was John Crawford, that he occupied an apartment in the Herendon Arms, that he was, by occupation, the vice-president of the Intercities Bus Company, and that he was acquainted with the defendant.  
Said Mr. Yistle: "Describe to the jury, Mr. Crawford, under what circumstances you knew the defendant."
"I knew her as a bootlegger," answered the jolly Mr. Crawford.  "She used to drop around about once a week and supply me with liquid refreshments."
The stadium roared with laughter.  The bailiff roared for order and presently was obeyed.  
Mr. Yistle proceeded: "Do you know if she had many customers?"
"Yes, sir; I know a dozen of her customers."
The questioning went on.  
Violet Dearing said to Gillian: "What's the idea?  I did sell him liquor.  But what is Yistle trying to prove?"
To which Gillian answered: "Merely that you were a bootlegger.  Merely that you are, or were, a dangerous character.  All bootleggers are villains, aren't they?"
"I suppose so.  But I think it's a low trick for that man to testify against me."
"He can't help himself.  These witnesses are acting under orders."
At the termination of Mr. Yistle's examination, Gillian arose and asked the jolly Mr. Crawford but one question: "Was the liquor Miss Dearing sold to you good liquor?"
"Yes, sir!" cried Mr. Crawford enthusiastically.  "It was grand liquor!"
The crowd applauded.  Then fell to whispering excitedly as a portly man of fifty made his way to the stand.  He was the mayor of Greenboro!  Mayor Rand was going to take the stand!
Silence fell as he seated himself in the witness chair and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
"I want to know," Mr. Yistle said to him, "if you are acquainted with a Mr. Ezra Wallace."
Mayor Rand nodded.  "I am, indeed.  I know Mr. Wallace, well."
"What is your opinion of him as a man and as a citizen?"
"My opinion of him is the highest.  He is a man, if I may so express myself, of great nobility of character, and I take pride in pointing him out as a model citizen."
Mr. Yistle said: "Will you tell the jury, Mr. Rand, if you have, within recent months, given to Mr. Wallace a certain commission to execute?"
"I have," answered the distinguished witness.
"What was the nature of this commission?"
"The nature of the commission gave Mr. Wallace," replied the mayor, "I was to ascertain to what extent vice was rampant in this city.  I wanted some one, not connected with police circles, to render me an honest, unbiased report.  I unhesitatingly selected Mr. Wallace."
"Were his reports of value?"
They were extremely valuable."
Gillian arose with a wan smile.  "Your honor, I wish this entire testimony stricken from the record.  It is entirely irrelevant to the issue.  My distinguished colleague may have some definite plan.  If so, he should outline it prior to the taking of testimony."
It was a reasonable request.  It was just a request.  And judge Lorgan said: "Your request is denied.  Mr. Yistle may proceed."
Mr. Yistle looked at Gillian, but in his look was not triumph.  He was puzzled.  And Gillian knew that the State's attorney was the unsuspecting tool of Governor Brundage.
"I have finished my examination," he said.
"Cross-examination waived," said Gillian.
The next witness was the noble gentleman and the civic model to whom Mayor Rand had referred with such pride.
Ezra Wallace was a pink-cheeked man of forty-three to forty-five.  His face had the roundness of a cherub's.  
His face had the innocence of a babe's.  He spoke with a faint lisp.
Yes; he was Ezra Wallace.  Occupation?  He was the president of the Second National Bank of Greenboro.  Yes; it was true that he had undertaken to ferret out vice in Greenboro.  No; he was not a reformer; he merely wanted his fair, wholesome city to become fairer and wholesomer.  
Mr. Yistle: "Where were you, Mr. Wallace, on the night of October 15?"
"I was in a gambling house known as the Silver Slipper, the proprietor of which was Benjamin Beauregard Lewis."
"Where were you at the hour of nine-thirty?"
"I was in conference with Mr. Lewis in his office."
"Will you kindly describe such of the events occurring after the hour of nine-thirty as you can recall?"
"I will," said Mr. Wallace.  "I was conferring with Mr. Lewis in his office; I was, in fact, pleading with him to stop this vicious gambling and to turn over a new leaf, when the door that leads into his gaming rooms was suddenly opened and a girl came in with a pistol, or a revolver, in her hand.  Mr. Lewis sprang to his feet and turned about, as if with the intention of escaping.  The girl fired two shots and he fell."
Violet Dearing, clutching Gillian by the arm, was sobbing: "The liar!  The ugly liar!"
The stadium was in an uproar.  Ten minutes was required for the bailiff to restore silence.
When quiet prevailed, Mr. Wallace rounded off his story: "The girl ran out of the room, and I followed, crying: 'She killed Ben Lewis!'  Then the police came, as Captain Sorrenson has narrated."
Mr. Yistle questioned him.  He took him back and forth over the scene of the murder.  And Mr. Wallace stuck to his story, elaborated it, embroidered it, made it utterly and terrifyingly convincing.
And Violet Dearing, her eyes dark with fury, clutched her attorney's arm and whispered to him over and over: "The liar!  How can a man say such things?"
It was almost five o'clock when Mr. Wallace left the stand.  Gillian again waived cross-examination.
And judge Lorgan said:  "Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at ten."  He instructed the jury to discuss the case with no one.  Gillian stepped up to the bench and gave that eminent jurist a look that should have shriveled him.
"Your honor," he said, "I beg that you will grant me a postponement for forty-eight hours on the grounds that I have not had sufficient time to prepare my case."
Judge Lorgan's eyes glittered.  "Petition is denied.  Court is adjourned."
Miss Dearing was spirited from the stadium with a sheriff on either side.  And she stumbled as she went.
Looking after that departing slim figure, Gillian Hazeltine experienced the utmost bitterness of desperation.  She was so small, so gallant – and so hopelessly ringed in by enemies'

CHAPTER 15
A Last Resort

GILLIAN fought his way through the dense pack of humanity flowing from the stadium exits and found two men waiting for him.  One was Toro, the other was Wally Brundage.
The son of the governor was pale.  There were dark pouches under his eyes and brackets about his mouth.  Several days' growth of beard darkened his rather too handsome face.  He had, obviously, been drinking.
"I want to have a little talk with you," he said.
Gillian eyed him sympathetically.  "What is it, Wally?"
"Mr. Hazeltine, I'm going away.  Maybe you'd say I was running away; but I've got to go.  I can't stay here any longer.  I've been at the trial all day.  I-I simply can't stand it.  I mean – I mean, they've almost got me convinced that she did kill Ben Lewis."  
"But you know she didn't, Wally."
The young man groaned.  "I don't know what I know.  I'm going away.  I am going out to the coast and ship as a sailor.  I guess I'm too weak to stand the gaff.  I've got to thinking it over.  I hate my father, but he is my father.  I've disgraced him enough, and what – what in God's name – have I got to offer Violet if you should, by some miracle, get her off?"
"I hate to hear a man talk like this," Gillian growled.
"I can't help it!" the young man wailed, and his eyes were brimming with tears of self-pity.  "Don't you see?  I just can't love her after – after all this."
"You can't love her?"
Wally Brundage wrung his hands.  "Don't you see I can't?  All those vultures, the thousand and thousands of them, staring at her with their glasses, staring and staring!"  He shuddered.  They've made an animal of her!"
His lips were wet and flabby.
"It's your imagination," Gillian laid sternly.  "She's as fine and brave as ever she was."
Wally Brundage shook his head; he was on the point of blubbering.
"I'm going away!" he blurted.  "I'm going.  Tonight!  You-you'll have to b-break it to her somehow."
Gillian looked at him sadly.  "I'm sorry for you, Wally."
"I'm yellow!  I know I'm yellow!  But if I don't clear out I'll go nuts."
"Do you think running away will help?"
"I want to go to sea.  I hate this.  I hate cities!"
"Then go," Gillian advised him.
"You-you'll break it to Vi?  What'll she think?"
"Just what she always has," said Gillian honestly.
He saw the tragic young man swallowed up in the crowd and then turned back to his coupe, in which Toro sat, as grave, as expressionless as a bronze Buddha upon a throne of bronze.
"I have been waiting here an hour, Mr. Hazeltine," Toro said, in his carefully selected English.  "I am a bearer of good tidings.  The Rafferty gang is ready to talk!  Word came by telephone at a little after half-past three."
Gillian took the wheel.  He instructed Toro to keep a sharp watch, arear for pursuers.  They escaped eventually from the traffic jam and reached the Dexter Road.  Still there was no pursuit.
It was growing dark when the gray coupe, halted by one of Sheriff Bolton's deputies, came to a stop at the steps of his house on Lake Largo.
Slug Lenihan met the two men at the door and conducted them upstairs, where, he said, Nicky Anderson was waiting.
Gillian, with ears attuned for the groans of thirsty, hungry men, pushed open the dormitory door.  He saw, to his amazement, that the Rafferty gang were smoking.  Near each was an emptied plate.
Nicky met him with a grin.
"It's all right, Mr. Hazeltine.  When they said they'd come clean, I let 'em have water, food and a shot of booze apiece.  They were suffering something fierce.  But they'll talk now!"
Gillian dubiously seated himself beside Mike Rafferty.  The cold blue eyes of the gang leader looked up at him without expression.
"Well?" said Gillian curtly.
"Well?" repeated Mike Rafferty.
"Who killed Ben Lewis?"
Mike Rafferty smiled.  A throaty sound came from his lips.  He began to laugh.  "Try and find out!"
Nicky Anderson came and looked anxiously down.  "Why!  You big bum!  You said you'd come clean!"
"Applesauce!" snorted the gang leader.
Gillian stood up and looked at Nicky Anderson with severity.  He could not express his bitterness at this disappointment.
"I think," he said, "you have a heart of cornmeal mush, Nicky.  You had these men on the point of confessing.  Why did you weaken?"
"Mr. Hazeltine, I'm just about as tough as they come, but I couldn't stand the way they was moanin'.  It like to drove me nuts!"
"And now," said Gillian, "we have it all to go through with again."
"If I may make a suggestion–" Toro began and bowed.
"Make it, Toro."
"It is this," said the Japanese.  "I am a yellow man, with the heart of a yellow man and the feelings of a yellow man.  The art of torture is one of the oldest of all Oriental arts."
"I don't want these men physically tortured," Gillian objected.
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine; I understand.  But there is torture and torture.  I would like to take charge of this situation.  I would like to be left alone with these eight men until, let us say, tomorrow morning.  By then, I assure you, you will know, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, the name of the murderer of Ben Lewis.  But I wish no assistance.  I do not wish Mr. Anderson's assistance.  I want to be left here alone with Mr. Rafferty and his gang."
For the first time since he had had him captured, Gillian saw in Mike Rafferty's eyes a look of fear.  Instantly it was gone.
"You may take charge of the situation, Toro," Gillian decided promptly.  "Clear out, Nicky.  Clear out, Slug."
The two gunmen reluctantly withdrew.  Gillian found Toro's eyes; his left lid trembled perceptibly– 
"Toro, I leave these fellows absolutely at your mercy.  You are at liberty to torture them in any way you see fit.  You may, in short, draw the line at nothing short of actual death.  I want none of them killed."
"I understand perfectly, Mr. Hazeltine."
"Look here," burst out Mike Rafferty wrathfully, "if you leave us alone here with this Chink, I swear to God I'll get you somehow, sooner or later.  I swear–"
He stopped with a squeal of pain and anger.  Toro had merely touched one of the cords or muscles in his neck.
"Jujutsu?" Gillian pleasantly inquired.
"Jujutsu," affirmed the polite Japanese.
Gillian left the room.  As he closed the door he heard Toro saying in a thin, awful voice: "I will first describe to you gentlemen some of the methods of torture visited by Orientals upon their, enemies.  The commonest is known as the bastinado, which consists of removing the shoes of the victim and whipping the soles of his feet with a bamboo stick."
Gillian descended to the living room.  Nicky Anderson was pacing up and down by the window, smoking a cigarette.
"Gosh, Mr. Hazeltine, sorry ain't no name for it!  I hate to have to give up.  I hate that guy Rafferty like poison, but there's limits to human endurance, and mine was reached when they began rattling their dry tongues around in their throats.  Gee, it was fierce!"
Toro, Gillian assured him, would not make the mistake of being sympathetic.
"I want you to keep away from that room,  Nicky, unless you hear him yelling for help.  When he tells you they are ready to confess, come to town with them.  If I'm at the stadium, phone my office, and my private secretary will tell you what to do.  She is quite trustworthy.  You have a sedan parked in back, haven't you?"
"Yes, sir,"
"See that it's in good running order.  Be ready to come to town at a moment's notice.  If Toro breaks them down before dawn, bring them directly to my house.  Remember – Toro is in charge."
"Yes, sir."
Gillian returned to Greenboro.
He drove on down town to the county jail, and was presently gazing through the bars into the face of a woebegone girl.  He was sure that he might have comforted her if he could have taken her into his arms; but words would never spirit her out of the dejection into which the events of the day had cast her.  He tried, however, to cheer her.
"The Rafferty gang will break down before morning.  I'm sure of it."
She shook her beautiful red head.
"I don't see how you can be sure of anything – after to-day.  All those lying cowards!  That mayor!  That hypocrite Wallace!  That vicious Sorrenson!  Gillian, what can you possibly do in the face of such damning testimony?"
"I can produce the actual murderer!!'
"But can you–"
"I will!  And I will, before I'm through, wipe the political slate of this State so clean it positively shines."
"I feel," she sighed, "as if I were surrounded by ravenous wolves.  They are drooling for my blood!  I could hear the snapping of fangs all morning – or was that the sound of crackling electricity attached to a chair?"
"Neither," said Gillian.  "It was the crackling of waxed paper on Maria Simpson's sandwiches."
She looked at him sorrowfully.  "Gillian, the warden showed me one of those waxed papers.  Why did you have those printed?"
"They made you so human with the people.  Every one of those sixty thousand spectators wanted to see you freed.  So will every one of to-morrow's spectators.  I want people to talk about you.  I want them to keep on talking."
"'Until I finally sit in the electric chair?"
"You aren't going to sit in the electric chair!" he blustered.
She reached through the bars for his hand in the clutching, childlike gesture that always made him feel warm in the region of his heart.
"You're the best friend a poor, downtrodden girl ever had."
He said huskily: "I want you to be the happiest girl on earth.  I want you to be free, and I want you to be happy."
She looked at him, but she did not respond with her usual bright little grin.  Her eyes were dark pools of blue.  She seemed to be analyzing him, weighing him.  .  .
Hours afterward Gillian saw her eyes staring at him hopelessly from her sad white face.
He spent a miserable evening alone, going over his defense, waiting for a telephone call that did not come.

CHAPTER 16
In the Balance

THE SECOND day of the Dearing trial dawned gray and overcast, but the threat of impending rain did not discourage in the slightest those long cues which stretched for blocks and blocks from the gates of the stadium.
By the time judge Lorgan appeared every seat was occupied, from the ten dollar ones, close to the center of activity, to the dollar ones, so far away that the actors were hardly distinguishable except through powerful field glasses.
The prisoner, again in white, between two stalwart sheriffs, was once more given a thunderous ovation.  Her face was drawn and gray, the face of a girl who has spent a sleepless night without aid of encouraging thoughts.  She seemed to droop with weariness, but her smile for a boy who called good luck to her was bright and friendly.
She seemed to slump down in her chair beside Gillian Hazeltine.
Miss Dearing whispered: "Any word from Lake Largo?"
He shook his head.  "Not yet.  But don't give up hope.  The day is young."
"And gray and gloomy," she added.  "A perfect day for a jury to bring in a verdict of guilty in the first degree."
The clerk was droning.  His voice, picked up by the microphones and multiplied by the amplifiers, emerged as a bull-like roar over the stadium.
Judge Lorgan said: "The State will continue."
Adelbert Yistle said: "The State rests, your honor."
Judge Lorgan gazed down with unveiled hostility at Gillian Hazeltine.  "The defense will proceed."
Gillian arose and faced the jury.  
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began, "I will endeavor to prove to you that Miss Violet Dearing is not guilty of the crime as accused; is, in fact, guilty of no crime or crimes.  I will, by producing witnesses of the utmost credibility, prove to you that the accused has been for many months the victim of deliberate persecution and conspiracy."
Judge Lorgan snapped: "Whom are you accusing of persecuting the accused?"
Gillian flung back at him: "It is not required that I divulge any information until I see fit."
Adelbert Yistle was watching him.  And the expression in his eyes was the expression Gillian had seen yesterday afternoon – curious and puzzled.
"My first witness," said Gillian, "is Clarence Wormsley."
There was an audible murmur over the stadium, but it was not of sufficient volume to call forth a rebuke from the bailiff.
A tall, lanky man with worried dark eyes took the stand, and was sworn.  He acknowledged that his name was Clarence Wormsley, that he occupied the post of head librarian at the Greenboro Public Library, and that he had been so employed for more than nine years,
"Mr. Wormsley," said Gillian, "I want you to look upon the defendant."
The librarian's worried eyes rested uneasily upon Miss Dearing.
She smiled faintly.
"You have seen her before?" asked Gillian.
"I have."
"Under what circumstances?"
"She was in my employ for about two years."
"In what capacity?"
"She was in charge of the juvenile department of the library."
"Was the nature of her work satisfactory?"
"It was – yes.  Very."
"When did she leave your employ?"
"About a year ago.  To be exact, last year, in September."
"Mr. Wormsley, why did she leave your employ?"
"I received a letter instructing me to discharge her."
Gillian picked up a letter lying on top of a pile on the table at which Miss Dearing sat.  "Is this the letter?"
Mr. Wormsley glanced at the letter and nodded.  "That is the letter."
"I wish to read this letter into the record," said Gillian.  "It is, dated Springton, September 26, and is written on the personal stationery of Governor Brundage."
Gillian paused.  The judge was trying mightily to attract Mr. Yistle's attention.  Mr. Yistle was gazing dumbly at Gillian.
"The letter reads: 'Dear Wormsley: For personal reasons, I want you to get rid of a girl in your library, a Violet Dearing.  I trust that a hint to the wise is sufficient.'  The letter is signed, H. B."
"I object," cried Mr. Yistle faintly.
"On what grounds?" snapped judge Lorgan.
"The testimony is irrelevant."
"Objection is upheld," ruled judge Lorgan.  "The entire testimony of Mr. Wormsley is to be stricken from the record."
"I am endeavoring to prove a point in law!" Gillian cried.
"Proceed with your defense.  Witness is dismissed."
"John Walling," said Gillian.
The Superintendent of Public works came to the stand.  He, too, was uneasy.  The promised change in the political wind was not being fulfilled.  He seated himself and cast an imploring glance at Gillian.
"Mr. Walling," Gillian began, "are you acquainted with the accused?"
"I am," said the witness weakly.
"Kindly tell the jury what you know about her, based on your experience."
"Well," said Mr. Walling, "she came to me about a year ago and wanted a job as a stenographer.  I gave her one.  She kept it about three months."
"You discharged her?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because I was ordered to."
"By whom?"
"Governor Brundage."
"I object" yelped Mr. Yistle.
"Objection is sustained," roared judge Lorgan.
"I wish to introduce as material evidence," Gillian shouted, "the letter from Governor Brundage ordering Mr. Walling to discharge Miss Dearing and I wish–"
"Application is denied.  Strike off Mr. Walling's evidence from the record, stenographer.  You, Mr. Hazeltine, are requested to conduct your defense in a manner prescribed by law.  Your attempts at slandering a–"
"I am attempting only to prove my contention, your honor, that the accused has been, made the victim of deliberate persecution, and I demand a fair trial!"
"Don't you think your defendant is receiving a fair trial?"
"I do not!"
"It resides within my discretion, Mr. Hazeltine, to determine whether or not the defendant is being tried fairly or not.  You may proceed with your defense."
Gillian outwardly was smoldering.  He appeared to be furious.  Inwardly, he was rejoicing.  Whether or not this evidence was admitted to the record was of no importance.  Most important was to implant in the collective mind of the jury, in the collective mind of these sixty thousand spectators and those countless thousands of auditors at radio receivers, that Governor Brundage stooped to such tactics.  He was driving in the wedge with which he intended to topple over the Brundage citadel.
His next witness was Edward Rice, president of the Mammoth Construction Company.  Mr. Rice roared when angry, as you will recall.  He roared now.  Having decided to cast his lot with Gillian and declare war on Governor Brundage, he lifted his voice until it was heard, quite literally, a thousand miles away.  Nor was he to be headed off.
"I don't care what you say, you crook!" he shouted at judge Lorgan.  "I'm going to talk now, and all the sheriffs in this county can't stop me!  The way you're conducting this trial is a shame and disgrace to the sacred name of justice!  You aren't giving this girl a fair break.  You've got your orders from Brundage to railroad her through to the chair!"
"Silence!  Put that man out!" shouted his honor.
"You won't put me out!  Jail me for contempt if you wish – but you know what will happen if you do!  I'm here to testify and I'm going to testify!  Miss Dearing worked for me for two months, after John Walling fired her.  I was doing a big States road job.  I was toadying to that big crook in the Governor's chair at Springton!  He told me to fire Miss Dearing!  I did!  I'm here to tell you she has been the victim of ruthless persecution!  I let her out because I was scared of that crook in Springton!  Now I'm not scared.  I'm telling you people he is a crook!  I'm telling–"
Three sheriffs snatched Mr. Rice from the witness chair and carried him struggling up an aisle – still roaring.
"There," cried Miss Dearing, "is a man!"
The bailiff was roaring for order.  Judge Lorgan was looking murderously at Mr. Yistle.  Why hadn't Mr. Yistle objected?  His honor shouted this question at him.
"Because," Mr. Yistle shouted in return, "I think this is a fixed trial!  I've been smelling rats since yesterday!"
Order presently prevailed.
"Strike that testimony from the record," Judge Lorgan ordered.  "If there is another such scene, this trial will be adjourned to a court room.  Silence!  Mr. Hazeltine, will you conduct this trial as I request you to–"
"Your honor, I will conduct my defense according to the proposition I laid down at the outset," said Gillian.  "My next witness is the accused.  Miss Dearing, will you take the stand?"
Violet Dearing was cheered to the stand.  Sixty thousand pairs of lungs roared their approval of her.  Many of the sixty thousand owners of these lungs were presently delighted to observe that Miss Dearing had perhaps the loveliest pair of legs in Greenboro.
When silence obtained, Gillian said: "Miss Dearing, will you affirm that what the previous witnesses stated is, so far as know, the truth?"
"Indeed I will!" attested the beautiful red-haired witness.
"Question and answer are to be stricken from the record," ordered judge Lorgan.
"I want you to tell the jury, Miss Dearing, what you were doing in the Silver Slipper on the night of Ben Lewis's murder."
"I was there to see Mr. Lewis by appointment."
"What was the nature of your business with Mr. Lewis?"
"I was to secure from him certain facts concerning the Governor of this State!"
"Mr. Yistle," shouted judge Lorgan, "do you object?"
"I do not," snapped Mr. Yistle.  "I am as anxious to hear every word of this girl's testimony as any one in this courtroom – er – I mean, stadium."
"Questions and answers are to he stricken from the record."  Roared Judge Lorgan.
"Proceed, Miss Dearing."
"Mr. Lewis knew how Governor Brundage had been persecuting me driving me out of job after job until I became, finally, a bootlegger."
"One moment, Miss Dearing," Gillian broke in.  "Why did you become a bootlegger?"
"Because I knew that being a bootlegger would put me in the closest touch with what was going on in the underworld – would give me the opportunity I wanted to learn facts about the Governor of this State!  No one but a coward would have treated me as he did!  I was determined, somehow, to fight back."
"Mr. Yistle–" Judge Lorgan began desperately.
Yistle rudely turned his back.
Gillian Hazeltine: "Miss Dearing, had you had previous conferences with Ben Lewis?"
"I had!"
"Had he given you any information regarding the corruption existing in this State, largely due to the crookedness of Governor Brundage?"
"He had!  He named names and gave dates!  I have all that information.  It fills pages and pages of a notebook.  It lists the officials in this State who are crooked; it lists the charges against them!"
Judge Lorgan had turned ashen.  He croaked: "That evidence – not admissible, strike it out – every word!"
If Judge Lorgan had fought as hard for honesty as he had for crookedness and corruption, Gillian reflected, what a wonder he would have been!
Fifteen minutes was required to restore order in the stadium.
"Miss Dearing, will you kindly tell me what occurred in Ben Lewis's the night of October 15?" said Gillian.
"I was playing roulette," answered the girl, "waiting for Mr. Lewis to send word down that he would see me.  He finally sent word down.  I went to his office.  As I put my hand on the knob of his door, I heard a shot.  As I turned the knob I heard another.  As I entered, the door at the other end of the room slammed shut.  That was the killer!  He had made his getaway!"
"Was Ezra Wallace, whom you heard testify yesterday he had seen you kill Mr. Lewis, in the room at the time, as he declared he was?"
"He was not!  The room was empty except for Mr. Lewis, who sat at his desk, all hunched over – dead!"
A hum of excitement suddenly filled one section of the grand stand.  A queer procession was making its way down toward the center – eight men, their hands locked behind them with handcuffs, stumbling blindly along with flour sacks over their heads!
Behind them, prodding them along, walked a lone man with his right hand in a suspiciously bulging, outthrust pocket.  It was Toro!

CHAPTER 17
Last Act of the Circus

SHERIFFS gazed at the approaching parade, and looked up to the bench for instructions.  Judge Lorgan glared at the strange procession as if tongue-tied.  Mr. Yistle's eyes were bulging.  Gillian heard his Japanese butler say, in muffled accents: "Walk-walk-walk.  Not a drop of water until you've told all!"
It was like a chant.  Later, Gillian was to learn that Toro had been chanting in this fashion all night long; had been chanting horribly of thirst, of unspeakable tortures, until those eight nerve-racked wretches had bleated their surrender.
In front of the table at which Gillian stood, Toro stopped his prisoners, just as judge Lorgan found his voice.
"Throw those ruffians out of the court room!" he thundered through the loud speakers.  Deputies moved forward.  Gillian Hazeltine snapped: "Quick, Toro, who did it?"  Though he thought he knew the answer already.
"This gentleman, Mr. Hazeltine, is the murderer of Benjamin Beauregard Lewis!"  Toro's precise tones echoed to the rim of the stadium.  With a graceful gesture, he snatched the flour sack from the man's head – and Mike Rafferty peered, blinking, into the gray light of the cloudy day.
But it was not the Mike Rafferty we have known.  Gone was the fine audacity, the cocksureness; gone was the famous Rafferty deviltry.  In his stead stood an owlish-eyed, gaping-mouthed man whose first husky words were: "Fer God's sake, call off that Chink."
Gillian snapped: "Did you kill Ben Lewis?"
"Yes, yes, I did.  Gimme a drink of water.  Fer gossakes, gimme a drink!"  It was, in a way, sickening to hear him.  Oriental imagination had drawn the fire from the once dauntless Mike Rafferty.
As the deputies surrounded the group of gangsters, Hazeltine shouted: "Your honor, these men are my witnesses.  If Mr. Yistle will waive further examination of Miss Dearing" – Yistle murmured quick assent before judge Lorgan could protest – "I will call Mike Rafferty."
With head down, and twitching hands, the broken gangster was sworn.
"It was a frame-up," muttered Rafferty.  "We was tipped off all along the line that she had a date to see Big Ben at nine toity.  At nine-twenty-nine, I went in de back door of Ben's office and plugged him – twice.  Then I ducked and give the gun to Sorrenson, who was waiting outside for the gun, to plant it on the Dearing girl.  Dat's all.  I faded."
"You followed Click Gorner out to my Lake Largo house and killed him?"
"Yes.  Sure.  I got him, too."
"Your honor," said Gillian, "this man's confession was obtained under duress.  I wish to make sure that he is now voluntarily telling the truth.  Rafferty, are you telling the truth?"
"Before God, I am."
Judge Lorgan was pale.  In the past few minutes he had seemed to age.
"I want each of these men put under arrest charged as material witnesses," Gillian added.  "But before they are taken away, I want each of them to go on record here.  Get down, Rafferty."
The gang leader slunk out of the chair – and into the arms of a waiting deputy sheriff.  Then, in turn, each of his gang took the witness chair.  In weak, parched voices, they corroborated the story Rafferty had told.  Each had known of the proposed frame-up; each had in some way participated.  
When the subdued eight were taken away, Gillian said: "I now want Captain Sorrenson to take the stand."
It was an ashen, police captain who answered that summons.
"You lied yesterday!" Gillian fired.
"I know it!  I-I did!  I planted the gun on the little lady.  But I was actin'  under orders.  Did I want to be busted?  No, I did not!  I was doin' what I was told to do!" answered the captain.
"Under whose orders were you acting?"
"The chief's!"
"Chief of Police Bellows?"
"Yes, sir – his."
"That will be all, Sorrenson.  Your honor, I prefer the charge of perjury against this witness."
"The dirty skunk!" growled Mr. Yistle.  "Gillian, we want the chief of police.  Where's the chief?"
Mr. Bellows, his usual air of importance sadly lacking, came forward.  He fairly leaped into the stand.
"All right, Gillian," snapped Mr. Yistle.  "Give him the works!"
"Mr. Bellows," Gillian began gently, "Captain Sorrenson's testimony, in the light of what we already know, places you in a most delicate position.  You ordered him to frame the Dearing girl; you, ordered him to order Mike Rafferty to kill Ben Lewis.  Will you kindly explain yourself?"
"I will!  You're damned right I will!" clamored the agitated chief of police.  "I was acting under orders!  If I hadn't done what I did, they'd have busted me!"
"Who gave you your orders?" 
"Mayor Rand!"
"Where's Mayor Rand?" Gillian and Mr. Yistle shouted in unison.  Someone cried: "There he goes!"
Mr. Rand, who possessed a keen nose for political winds himself, had scented one that was blowing him no good whatsoever.  He was halfway up an aisle, when a thousand voices apprehended him: "Oh, mayor, you're wanted down there!  Hey, mayor!  Whoa, mayor!"
Mayor Rand changed his mind and returned.  With great reluctance he seated himself in the witness chair.  It was impossible, for several minutes, for him to make himself heard, so loud was the storm of hissing and booing.
Gillian presently said: "Mayor, I believe you have heard all of the foregoing testimony.  It seems to me you are in something of a corner.  Will you kindly tell the jury whether or not you were telling the truth yesterday when you testified to the sterling character and civic pride of Mr. Ezra Wallace?"
"I had to do it."
"Did you also have to order the chief of police to order Captain Sorrenson to order Mike Rafferty to kill Ben Lewis and put the blame on this young lady's shoulders?"
"I did!"
"You did?"
"You heard me!" roared the mayor.  "I was taking orders like all the rest of them, I was told that this frame-up must take place.  I know I'm a dead man politically.  I know I'm going to be hauled before a court for perjury.  But I'm going to tell the truth now.  The man who ordered Ben Lewis put to death and the blame fastened on Miss Dearing was none other than the beloved Governor of this State!"
Loud booing and hissing stopped him.  When it had ceased he continued, saying: "You people up there in this, stadium, and you people out there somewhere listening to all this on your radios, are just as much to blame as anybody else!  Why did you elect Brundage to office?  You knew what a crook he was.  You knew his record!  You didn't think he'd become a little gilded saint, did you – just because you elected him?
"Well, let me tell you people something.  If you weren't so damned indifferent and careless about the men you elect to high offices, things like this could not happen.  Look at that judge up there!  He's so crooked he couldn't follow a snake's trail!  I'm telling you.  I know!  He's under Horace Brundage's orders, too.  'Railroad the Dearing girl to the electric chair.'  That was the order Judge Lorgan got from that poisonous reptile up there in Springton!"
Mayor Rand stood up, but his head was bowed.  This time, however, the crowd did not boo or hiss.  They roared their approval of him!
Gillian made himself heard again.  He looked at Judge Lorgan, but, the latter would not meet his or any man's eyes.
Gillian cried: "The defense rests!" 
Judge Lorgan looked wearily at the jury.  He said, in a broken voice: "It is hardly necessary for you to leave your seats.  You have heard the evidence presented by the gifted – the gifted counsel for the defendant.  Your verdict must, given the nature of this evidence, be perfunctory."
While the crowd chattered, the jury put their heads together.  Presently the foreman stood up.  Silence throughout the stadium immediately followed.
Judge Lorgan said mechanically: "Have you arrived at a verdict?"
"We have," said the foreman.
"What say you?"
"Not guilty.  And the jury respectfully recommends that the notebook possessed by Miss Dearing, containing charges against public officials of this State, be turned over to the grand jury, along with the cases of these witnesses.  We further recommend–"
Gillian did not wait to hear the rest of it.  With one hand he was skillfully guiding his client toward an exit, accompanied by thunderous cheering.
Gillian was ordinarily a reckless driver – but this afternoon he drove his gray coupe as slowly as if it contained eggs.  From time to time, as the car rolled toward the open country, he glanced down at the charming profile of his companion.  It was still, he thought, woebegone.  It would take Violet Dearing a long time to recover from the terrific strain of the past few days.
She seemed to be in a state of thorough preoccupation.  Her eyes, softly luminous, remained fixed on the road ahead.  She said nothing.  She seemed utterly unaware of Gillian's presence.
He did not speak to her until the city was well behind.  Slowly he drove down a country road softly ablaze with the gold and red of autumn.  He pulled up at length under a giant oak below which, through bushes of saffron, a stream sparkled.
"Well?" said Gillian.
Without turning her head, she looked at him, sliding her eyes to the corners, as if she were preparing to answer drolly.
"Why did you bring me out here?"
"I thought you'd like to get away from the crowd.  I thought it would be good for you."
She smiled faintly.  "You're thoughtful, Gillian.  I've been thinking you over a great deal on this drive.  I used to think I was smart.  I used to think I was just about as smart as you were said to be.  Never in my life have I seen such an exhibition of pure mental brilliance as you gave in that stadium today.  First getting that confession from Rafferty, and then using that confession to knock down all those crooked politicians, one right after another like dominoes –bang, a perfect strike!  Gillian, I crawl!"
"Don't be silly," said Gillian.  "The moment I heard the Rafferty gang's car had been seen pulling away from the Silver Slipper right after the murder, I knew some member of his mob had done the killing.  The question was – who gave the order for Ben Lewis to be bumped off?  But, Governor Brundage made that easy for me when he pointed the accusing finger directly at himself by having Rafferty's mob ambush me on the way home from Springton.  Only two men knew I'd been at the State Capitol that day, and I knew it sure wasn't the Speaker of the House who had me set up."
"You killed the two birds with the one stone – so nicely!" she went on.  "Why!  You had me acquitted long before Mike Rafferty came in and confessed.  It was magic, the way you did it.  And how heavily you have dethroned poor Horace Brundage!  Will you be the next Governor?"
Gillian said, "No," grimly.
"You could have it."
"I don't want it.  But my plans aren't really so important.  What are you going to do, Violet?"
She shrugged.  "I want to go away," she said dreamily.  "I want to go some place where people won't be staring at me on the streets and saying: 'Oh, there goes that Dearing girl!  The one who was mixed up in that awful murder – political mess, you know?'"
He looked at her without hope.  "Where do you think you'll go?"
"Gillian," she exclaimed, "I've had the silliest idea.  Do you know where I'd really like to go?"
"No," Gillian gulped.
"To the South Seas!  Ever since I was arrested, my mind's been full of it.  It seems such a peaceful place!  But let's talk business.  How much do I owe you for handling my case?"
Gillian did not answer.
"You said you'd tell me when I was a free woman!"
"Let's forget it," growled the man.
"No," said the girl.  "Let's get it paid.  You weren't going to charge me an exorbitant price.  Gillian, weren't you going to tell me that your fee was to be a – kiss?"
Gillian uttered a choking sound.  Ordinarily, so gracious and nonchalant and at ease with the ladies, he was now enjoying the awkward clumsiness of a seventeen-year-old.  He presently found enough courage to look at her, and found that she was grinning at him.
"Yes," she said, "I'd like to go to the South Seas.  I want to sit under a palm tree and watch the waves."
"Alone?" said Gillian huskily.  Why couldn't he assert himself; stop acting like a fool lovesick kid!
She reached up and grasped one of his ears in each white hand.  
"Darling," she said, "must I write it down on a piece of paper and have it sworn before a notary – that I adore you?"
Gillian collected himself sufficiently to collect his fee!

The End

Publication Data

First published in book form in 1929.  No record of renewal.

Published by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.

THE GILLIAN HAZELTINE NOVELS

The Lies at Any Price Murder Case
The Love Bandit Murder Case
The Ezra Klagg Murder Case
The Screen of Ice Murder Case
The Crime Circus Murder Case*
The Haunted Yacht Club Murder Case
The Reptile Named Robard Murder Case
The Lost Punch  Murder Case
The Murder Most Foul Murder Case
The Jungle Murder Case
The High Seas Murder Case
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case*
The Grapevine Murder Case
The Black Ice Murder Case
The Magpie Murder Case
The Michigan Murder Case
The Decoy Murder Case
The Missing Will Murder Case
The Gold Coffin Murder Case*
The Honest Forger Murder Case
The Five Bald Men Murder Case
The Reluctant Witness Murder Case
The Hospital Homicides Murder Case*
The Girl Rebel Murder Case
The Mr. Hazeltine Defendant Murder Case

Available in electronic form from Deerstalker Classics and the PageTurner Imprint of Renaissance E Books.