“East. Except the Robbins. Needed money bad, didn’t want to take a chance handling it here, so I tried the message. What Harrigan didn’t get is down at the office in the safe.”
“We suspected that,” said Leslie. “How long has Harrigan been cutting with you?”
“Oh, well, don’t ask me that. Some time. He’s a wolf. I am a crook, but he’s got me lashed to the mast. The kid stuff was none of mine. I did lose one ring at the office. The boy found it. He got scared and contradicted himself. Harrigan framed the other thing about the house.”
“I guess it’s pretty nearly an even break,” said Leslie. He stepped forward to put on the wrist nippers. As he did so Cutting raised his hat to his head; his hand, coming down, stopped for a fraction of a second at his lips.
“Better this,” he said, rapidly, backing away, “I couldn’t go back. I’m a pretty old man, you know.”
As though he had been shot through the heart he dropped in a heap. Lanagan leaped for him. The Chief bent over him. They arose together. Lanagan picked up the hat and turned back the sweat band. Inside was a little envelope, pasted to the felt. It was half filled with white powder.
Lanagan, in his search for similar conditions in the ten burglaries found but one: that Cutting had personally visited each house to make the estimates of cost. That fact, coupled with the ring found at his establishment, convinced Lanagan that he and he alone was the man. Cutting worked four machines, each with its separate crew, and no other employee had worked in more than three out of the ten houses.
Anxious to keep track of Cutting after his theory began to impress him, he had learned that he was at the theatre. He had picked him up after the show, trailed him to a café, followed him in a taxicab as he took his wife home, and kept at his tail lights when he returned after one o’clock to discharge the machine and walk to a saloon well south of Market Street where he had met Harrigan. That was Lanagan’s first definite information that Harrigan and Cutting were involved.
Cutting and Harrigan had separated, Lanagan following Cutting to his establishment. He remained there some time, busied about his safe, and had then apparently gone directly home.