The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 28, 1904, Page 8

b ¥ mount of some have B. TiHE NDAY CALL m “event” at d Sandys of rved God and mil- formed th to which erton lent a play of pla by a great re the aw ehold after lected por- appeared rge that ached in its ten- to part with ith a chance to hand i uctions of the chief of manly eloguence: t to get that dough. a fit if he can’t cough ppers got to help him. the Eye people g means u fello case, you ta mouthpieces on the run, h ’em, do what you ut get that dough. An’ the country shoutin’ 'bout this hey say that we're bs like this, a get away. I'm and if it don't man jack of you h in )n an ornate reporters’ e of the public prints con- interview with the “subtle nt Detective Minick.” i to be “working” ndys case ne morning while ters were at his pass the chief handed Minick a tel- egram which was dated Akron, Ohio It & ified that one Bud De: 36, height 5 feet 11%, comple eyes blu zel, hair prematurely gr id black, teeth good, ious, weight 165 ” and was sup- . The reward nac Richard Cober was fast becoming the ad of a profession of which he was but which disliked to hear its right name. was only m t to time engaged 1n and it took him nost part of town o the beyond. He was and nom- his children s wi 1o b “traveling™ ) absences wo last for a few days or a few weeks, and out of the beyond he would commonly bring back a great deal of mon2y or a very bad temper e his absence lasted nearly 3 and he brought back o “@ suit of clothes, a pallid face and a most unpleasant trick of the eyes. When Richard Co was lav Jik tumbling in luck he and at gil ter than to have him; and whether ov: or not he was in luck, there was noth- ing their mamma could want that he did not 1 a way to provide. For the st part he looked uncommonly sharp 4 but in his daintily uphol- stered flat in Clinton place he was at rdored. He sang songs and cus ible-shufile for the kids and played man’s buff; and Mrs. Co sed jewels that would have made Mecker’s frosty eyes burn with desire. One afternoon while Bessie dandling a doll half as big as herself and Richard and Bobbie were doing a cake walk with an energy and free- dom of grimace and gesture that made was her scream with laughter the door a gentleman, who had colloguy with the maid in ed unannounced. The s Detective Minick. carat place you got here, Buck, old sport; nna, French clock, Turk kids; things n goin’ “Don't 100k as if you'd been up uinst hard luck yourself. Mr. Minick and me wanting to bill 00 in private. “Somethin’ doin he asked with laconic elegance. “A little matter o’ my own. I want you to put me next.” What t about ‘r blazes do you come to me for? I ain't next to nothin’ in this town except you dead at the front office.” the papers lately? you fly cops cromked an’ to touch me for a bouquet the details o' that Sandys *'Oh, itis that, is it? You can search me. You'll have to guess again if you want to pick a winner. I ain't mixed up in th I haven't done any work in this to an’ v for five years; I live here u know well enough that where I live there’s nothin’ doin’. I've got too much at stake.” “Don’t suppose I'd be sittin’ here rubberin’ at your wallpaper if you done it, do you? But I want you to get mixed up in it. There's five thou- sand semoleons reward, an’ I need 'em in my busine: “Who told you I was interested in your busine: I got troubles of my It won't do, Charley; I give you straight. I didn't do the job elf and don’t know who did; but if I did know I wouldn't tell you. I ain’t got nothing against you person- all you always treated me square, an' I'd go as far for you as an- other man; but I never yet beefed on a pal an’ I'm not goin’ to begin. I'm a bad lot, if you like, but I wouldn't turn mouthpiece for the whole five thousand.” “Better wait till I offer 'em,” Minick intently; this?” Minick passed him with one hand a telegram frém Akron, Ohio, and with the other fingered a revolver in his coat pocket. Minick’s acquaintances whom he met in the way of business were sometimes spasmodic in -their movements. Also Richard Cober was “‘age thirty-six, height five feet eleven and a quarter, complexion dark, eyes blue hazel, hair prematurely gray and black, beard—that is to say, close said “what'll you do for cut mustache—solid black, teeth good, mpose large and pugnacious, weight a hundred and sixty-five pounds.’ “Swell place you got here. Buck; pie-anna, French clock, Turkey rugs, 1 should think you'd hate on Minick was to be congratulated had the completeness with which he thought out his g “I don't want to be hard on You, Buck; Il give you time all right to turn the thing over in your mind; but understand me, 1 want those semo- leons. If you should happen to dis- cover a way of helpin’ me get them, well—f been six years since 1 seen Bud Denmer in Joliet; I might be so stuck on myself I couldn’t recogni him in the street if 1 passed him a dozen times a da; an' I'm the only man on the force that's on to his mug. If you shouldn’t happen to d cover a way of helpin’ me, that tele- gram reads cuffs in Clinton place, jail in Akron, stir in Columbus, free rides between pints, an’ free grub and lodg- in’ everywhere.” e you've said time after time that If it ever came 'to a pass again where you had to choose between me and the kids and a gun you'd let the nd you're up against that choice now,” urged Mrs. Richard Cober when Minick had said *so- long” and taken his leave. ‘“You've got enough money saved up to quit the business anyhow. I've often told you that with what we have in the bank we could go over to London, bring up the kids respectably and live decently ourselves.” “A man like me’s no business with kids, Nell, old gal; nor with a woman either,” said Cober wearily, not for the first time in his life “up against” the eternal difference between a woman’'s world and a man's. That evening, after his pacific inter- view with Minick, Cober loitered list- lessly about the better sort of haunts of the Powers That Prey. Richara would have been too shrewd, which is to say he loved his own skin too intel- ligently to put direct gquestions about the Sandys job, nor would there have been the least reason why he should ask questions. He had fully mastered his ideas in this connection when he entered, “The Green Dragon” and the presiding Belial stepped forward and handed him a note. It consisted of but two lines and a signature—he had received the pre- cise duplicate of it just as he was leav- ing Clinton place. "“I want.to see you ry, Buck. Pull the ringer at ber given in the other note.— Half an hour afterward he was sitting at the bedside of Lubin Cav- anaugh, in a house on Sixteenth street. When in obedience to a weak-voiced summons to “Co: i ichard first entered the room, he perceived emaciated head fallen back in ecstasy of exhaustion among the pii- lows; when the emaciated head identified its vigitor as “Buck™” Cober, it hailed him with “Hello, old sport!” and the man to whom it belonged sat upright, threw back the bedclothes and resumed an interrupted labor, which was the labor of ‘‘setting,” or possibly, as Riehard judged, of resetting jewels. "hought you might be the"doctor with some more dope. He an’ I are doin’ a little song an’ dance together vhile I fix up this pennyweight job. I'm playin’ the pennvweight -game alone, an’ he might want to cut He'd speculate on these sparklers his bill if he knew I had 'em—beut: ain't they?” The time had been when a “spark- ler” ‘had the same fascination for Richard Cober that it had for Lubin Cavanaugh, but he was in no mood that evening to admire another man's plunder. A wonder as to the previous ownership of the jewels he could not repress—even fn the “Stir” men make guesses as to the gin of an u scheduled piece of bread—put the e quette of the under world forbids in- quiry in regard to such matters. “What vou so blue about, Buck? Dig into that booze there an’ get a on. You an' Nell ain’'t been havin’ a row, have you?” 0. It's jus' a general case o grouch. I get hipped ev'ry now an’ then jus’ as I used to. What can 1 do for you, Lubin? I got to shift in a few minutes.” The two looked at each other for an instant in that quick but piercing way which all guns, let alone pals, have. “Td 'a’ let you into the job, Buck, but it was jus’ the kind o’ game to attract an old single-handed stiff like myself, an' I played it alone. What I want is a ‘dopp’ just like this one without the break,” and he handed Cober a little instrument newly broken. “I've got to have a new one by 11 o’clock to-morrow morning, an’ I'll be dead obliged to yoh if you'll get it for me. I'd get it my- self, but I got these symptoms, you know, an’ the push thinks I'm out at that crib in Mexico, rollin’ the wheel Understand, don’t cher? Say, Buck, if it’s dough you need, reach under my pillow here an’ you'll find a roll. I bean there myself, you know.” “That’'s all bad as that.” “Well, take care o’ yourself. old man, an’ if you see any o' the push, tell ‘em I'm baskin’ in the'sun down among the right, Lube. ’'Tain't as Mexies. So long, Buck.” R “Well?” said Mrs. Cober expectantly when Richard paused at the close of his account of the evening's interview with Cavanaugh. “Well! Jail in Akron, free grub an can’t ‘beef’ on a pal Nell.: A man's got friends.” “It ain’t a case o’ beefin’ on a Dick; it’s a case o’ doin’ dirt by me an It's cuffs in Clinton place free rides between pin to stick the kids. There ain't one o’ your friends has stood by you like me an’ the kids; you got to stick your friends. you got to stick by u “It won't do, Nell; a gun's seen his lgck when he turns mouthpiece. B square with the push an’ the push'll be square with you, an’ it'll be the bet- ter for you in the end. I don’t even know for sure that Cavaraush made the touch; but whether he did or not, he’d know I had split on him, an’ he'd follow me till he croaked.” “A woman is perfectly helpless whe she’s to 2 man that means to play the fool,” she said bitterly. “You have to be square to the push or the push will get even with you; you can do as you like by the woman an’ the Kkids. No matter what you do, they've got to stand for This statement hard Cober 1 ent to bed. ober put on her hat and shawl and softly left the house; that perhaps was a part of her idea. . e . The raid was one of those ordinary man hunts with the game at bay, the details of which even the newspapers have long since wearied of reporting. The “flatties”™ in uniforms surrounded the place, and Minick with three fel- low huntsmen went into the building to ace an animal rather more dangerous than one of the larger carnivora. The animal, however, was intelligent. Cava- naugh had not the slightest chance of escape, and knew it the minute his door was open and the detectives drew their revolvers. “They’'re good,” he remarked in the gambler's jargon, and allowed himself to be handcuffed. His only comment on the capture lay in the words: “Another case of beef.” The Sandys jewels were all found In Cavanaugh’s possession, a number of them very skillfully reset and two of being gelf-evident, the larger very The public pri with the prai ick, and repe unrecognizgd which taxes powers of the ully disfigured. s rang the next day f the celebrated Min- d their version of the rtellectual profession. swiftest and subtlest nd. to which soci- ety owes its om crime. Sadie Meek: he attention of both Margie an ittie to the meos" ghly ornate paragraphs in prafse of theé ‘celebrated Minick-and enjoyed the proud delight of fame. She had been in some doubt until the newspapers took him up whether for him “real but the e quence dec d her. Wh the ring waa brought a great flu f triumph came into f than Kittie's an “Oh, Charle job,” ond was bigger scale in yor or your m box™ even more but there were a ns of which Tiffany toc dent occurred in one of the Cit f Mexic in pay pockets she financial 3 of Oliv much pu ink on the “Buck Cober sciousne: tain an 4 wound in his that he had t with an monly heav i A woman s forward frem nowhere in particular to claim the 1y t she showed no d position to sup graphical detail she dedicated to hysterie It has ¥ ction with this incident t previot the following paragraph appeared in various newspapers in the United States: . “Lubin Cavanaugh, " York Lube, escaned from last night. H siohal bur him which takes up several pages of the prison’s blotter. A reward of $500 is offered for his capture and im- prisonment until the prison authorities can be communicated with.” There are those who rate themselves “wise,” however, who believe that the two trivial incidents are connected and that a belated item should be added to the bill from Tiffany's. » %