“You will never see Jolnes,” I continued, “until this murder has been
forgotten, two or three weeks from now. I had a better opinion of your
shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you waited
he has got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction theories
now, and no wrongdoer has yet been known to come upon him while thus
engaged. I advise you to give it up.”
“Doctor,” said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and a
squaring of his chin, “in spite of the record your city holds of
something like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the
perpetrator, and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake to
break that record. To-morrow I will take you to Shamrock Jolnes—I will
unmask him before you and prove to you that it is not an impossibility
for an officer of the law and a manslayer to stand face to face in your
city.”
“Do it,” said I, “and you’ll have the sincere thanks of the Police
Department.”
On the next day Knight called for me in a cab.
“I’ve been on one or two false scents, doctor,” he admitted. “I know
something of detectives’ methods, and I followed out a few of them,
expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a
.45-caliber, I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in
Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the
Columbia University, as the man’s being shot in the back naturally
suggested hazing. But I could not find a trace of him.”
“—Nor will you,” I said, emphatically.
“Not by ordinary methods,” said Knight. “I might walk up and down
Broadway for a month without success. But you have aroused my pride,
doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise
you I will never kill or rob in your city again.”
“Nonsense, man,” I replied. “When our burglars walk into our houses and
politely demand, thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels, and then dine
and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a mere
murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is looking
for you?”
Avery Knight, sat lost in thought for a while. At length he looked up
brightly.
“Doc,” said he, “I have it. Put on your hat, and come with me. In half
an hour I guarantee that you shall stand in the presence of Shamrock
Jolnes.”
I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to
the driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway,
turning presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It
was with a rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and
gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and superb self-confidence had
prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of bringing me into the
presence of a murderer and the New York detective in pursuit of him
simultaneously. Even yet I could not believe it possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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