The Johnston McCulley Megapack by Johnston McCulley

Author:Johnston McCulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, crime, detective, sleuth, short stories
ISBN: 9781479402755
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

RUN TO GROUND

Originally published in Detective Story Magazine, September 3, 1921.

CHAPTER I

MR. WESTLEY ARRIVES

Well and unfavorably known to all other members of the metropolitan department as the “dude cop,” Police Of­ficer G. William Waltern squinted over the top of his desk and carefully re­garded the unusual man who waited on the end of the bench outside the railing. Officer Waltern was a sort of glori­fied office boy who received visitors for the chief of detectives. No man on the force had uniforms that fitted as per­fectly as those of Officer Waltern. The members of the detective branch who were compelled to dress like brokers, and who loafed around the big hotels on the watch for con men and swin­dlers in general, were not more fastidi­ous than Officer Waltern.

Officer Waltern might have been passed without unfavorable notice had he confined his apparent superiority to his personal adornment and his well-manicured fingernails. But he had ab­sorbed the idea that clothes make the man in police circles the same as in other lines of human endeavor.

For some years now, by lifting a cor­ner of his lip here and dropping a sar­castic word there, he had sought to convey the impression that the general run of detectives and policemen could not be compared to himself, and that he was doing a great favor to the de­partment and the city government by consenting to receive his monthly pay voucher.

There were some unkind members of the force who intimated that the chief of detectives had Officer Waltern as­signed to do office work for the simple reason that he was not man enough to do anything else, and not because he had superior brains. But Waltern did fill his particular niche acceptably for the greater part, and so he was endured.

He made a mistake now and then, but, about nine-tenths of the time, Of­ficer G. William Waltern, as he insisted on being known, could separate the sheep from the goats with consummate skill.

Waltern seemed to know at a first glance whether a caller possessed infor­mation of importance enough to war­rant him getting the ear of the chief of detectives. He could sense when a man or woman wanted something that could be attended to just as well by some subordinate.

But, being susceptible to the charms of women, he had been known to let an ordinary female book agent into the sacred inner office on a day when the chief was not feeling particularly fit. He had never done it a second time. What the chief said was remarked in the presence of about a score of detec­tives reporting for their daily grind, and the ears of Officer G. William Wal­tern burned for at least a week there­after.

It was about ten o’clock in the morn­ing. Officer Waltern rubbed his fingernails carefully, straightened the front of his uniform blouse, glanced down to make sure that there was no speck of dust on his highly polished boots, hummed lightly a little air that he had picked up at a vaudeville

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