<h3><SPAN name="Ch_XXVI" name="Ch_XXVI"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
<h2>“THE ONLY FRIENDS HE HAS.”</h2>
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<p>So it befell that the next day a well-known criminal attorney
called on Jimmy Torrance at the county jail. “I
understand,” he said to Jimmy, “that you have retained
no attorney. I have been instructed by one of my clients to take
your case.”</p>
<p>Jimmy looked at him in silence for a moment.</p>
<p>“Who is going to pay you?” he asked with a smile.
“I understand attorneys expect to be paid.”</p>
<p>“That needn’t worry you!” replied the
lawyer.</p>
<p>“You mean that your client is going to pay for my defense?
What’s his name?”</p>
<p>“That I am not permitted to tell you,” replied the
lawyer.</p>
<p>“Very well. Tell your client that I appreciate his
kindness, but I cannot accept it.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be a fool,” said the attorney.
“This client of mine can well afford the expense, and anyway,
my instructions are to defend you whether you want me to or not, so
I guess you can’t help yourself.”</p>
<p>Jimmy laughed with the lawyer. “All right,” he said.
“The first thing I wish you’d do is to get Miss Hudson
out of jail. There is doubtless some reason for suspicion attaching
to me because I was found alone with Mr. Compton’s body, and
the pistol with which he was shot was one that had been given to me
and which I kept in my desk, but there is no earthly reason why she
should be detained. She could have had absolutely nothing to do
with it.”</p>
<p>“I will see what can be done,” replied the attorney,
“although I had no instructions to defend her
also.”</p>
<p>“I will make that one of the conditions under which I will
accept your services,” said Jimmy.</p>
<p>The result was that within a few days Edith was released. From
the moment that she left the jail she was aware that she was being
shadowed.</p>
<p>“I suppose,” she thought, “that they expect to
open up a fund of new clues through me,” but she was
disturbed nevertheless, because she realized that it was going to
make difficult a thing that she had been trying to find some means
to accomplish ever since she had been arrested.</p>
<p>She went directly to her apartment and presently took down the
telephone-receiver, and after calling a public phone in a building
down-town, she listened intently while the operator was getting her
connection, and before the connection was made she hung up the
receiver with a smile, for she had distinctly heard the sound of a
man’s breathing over the line, and she knew that in all
probability O’Donnell had tapped in immediately on learning
that she had been released from jail.</p>
<p>That evening she attended a local motion-picture theater which
she often frequented. It was one of those small affairs, the width
of a city block, with a narrow aisle running down either side and
an emergency exit upon the alley at the far end of each aisle. The
theater was darkened when she entered and, a quick glance apprizing
her that no one followed her in immediately, she continued on down
one of the side aisles and passed through the doorway into the
alley.</p>
<p>Five minutes later she was in a telephone-booth in a drug-store
two blocks away.</p>
<p>“Is this Feinheimer’s?” she asked after she
had got her connection. “I want to talk to Carl.” She
asked for Carl because she knew that this man who had been
head-waiter at Feinheimer’s for years would know her
voice.</p>
<p>“Is that you, Carl?” she asked as a man’s
voice finally answered the telephone. “This is Little
Eva.”</p>
<p>“Oh, hello!” said the man. “I thought you were
over at the county jail.”</p>
<p>“I was released to-day,” she explained. “Well,
listen, Carl; I’ve got to see the Lizard. I’ve simply
got to see him to-night. I was being shadowed, but I got away from
them. Do you know where he is?”</p>
<p>“I guess I could find him,” said Carl in a low
voice. “You go out to Mother Kruger’s. I’ll tell
him you’ll be there in about an hour.”</p>
<p>“I’ll be waiting in a taxi outside,” said the
girl.</p>
<p>“Good,” said Carl. “If he isn’t there in
an hour you can know that he was afraid to come. He’s
layin’ pretty low.”</p>
<p>“All right,” said the girl, “I’ll be
there. You tell him that he simply must come.” She hung up
the receiver and then called a taxi. She gave a number on a side
street about a half block away, where she knew it would be
reasonably dark, and consequently less danger of detection.</p>
<p>Three-quarters of an hour later her taxi drew up beside Mother
Kruger’s, but the girl did not alight. She had waited but a
short time when another taxi swung in beside the road-house, turned
around and backed up alongside hers. A man stepped out and peered
through the glass of her machine. It was the Lizard.</p>
<p>Recognizing the girl he opened the door and took a seat beside
her. “Well,” inquired the Lizard, “What’s
on your mind?”</p>
<p>“Jimmy,” replied the girl.</p>
<p>“I thought so,” returned the Lizard. “It looks
pretty bad for him, don’t it? I wish there was some way to
help him.”</p>
<p>“He did not do it,” said the girl.</p>
<p>“It didn’t seem like him,” said the Lizard,
“but I got it straight from a guy who knows that he done it
all right.”</p>
<p>“Who?” asked Edith.</p>
<p>“Murray.”</p>
<p>“I thought he knew a lot about it,” said the girl.
“That’s why I sent for you. You haven’t got any
love for Murray, have you?”</p>
<p>“No,” replied the Lizard; “not so you could
notice it.”</p>
<p>“I think Murray knows a lot about that job. If you want to
help Jimmy I know where you can get the dope that will start
something, anyway.”</p>
<p>“What is it?” asked the Lizard.</p>
<p>“This fellow Bince, who is assistant general manager for
Compton, got a letter from Murray two or three weeks before Compton
was killed. Murray enclosed a threat signed I.W.W., and his letter
instructed Bince to show the threat to Compton. I haven’t got
all the dope on it, but I’ve got a hunch that in some way it
is connected with this job. Anyway, I’ve got both
Murray’s letter and the threat he enclosed. They’re
hidden in my desk at the plant. I can’t get them, of course;
they wouldn’t let me in the place now, and Murray’s so
strong with the police that I wouldn’t trust them, so I
haven’t told any one. What I want is for you to go there
to-night and get them.”</p>
<p>The Lizard was thinking fast. The girl knew nothing of his
connection with the job. She did not know that he had entered
Compton’s office and had been first to find his dead body; in
fact, no one knew that. Even Murray did not know that the Lizard
had succeeded in entering the plant, as the latter had told him
that he was delayed, and that when he reached there a patrol and
ambulance were already backed up in front of the building. He felt
that he had enough knowledge, however, to make the conviction of
Jimmy a very difficult proposition, but if he divulged the
knowledge he had and explained how he came by it he could readily
see that suspicion would be at once transferred from Jimmy to
himself.</p>
<p>The Lizard therefore was in a quandary. Of course, if
Murray’s connection was ever discovered the Lizard might then
be drawn into it, but if he could keep Murray out the Lizard would
be reasonably safe from suspicion, and now the girl had shown him
how he might remove a damaging piece of evidence against
Murray.</p>
<p>“You will get it, won’t you?” asked the
girl.</p>
<p>“Where are these papers?” he asked.</p>
<p>“They are in the outer office which adjoins Mr.
Compton’s. My desk stands at the right of the door as you
enter from the main office. Remove the right-hand lower drawer and
you will find the papers lying on the little wooden partition
directly underneath the drawer.”</p>
<p>“All right,” said the Lizard; “I’ll get
them.”</p>
<p>“Bless you, Lizard,” cried the girl. “I knew
you would help. You and I are the only friends he has. If we went
back on him he’d be sent up, for there’s lots of money
being used against him. He might even be hanged. I know from what I
have heard that the prosecuting attorney intends to ask for the
death penalty.”</p>
<p>The Lizard made no reply as he started to leave the taxi.</p>
<p>“Take them to his attorney,” said the girl, and she
gave him the name and address.</p>
<p>The Lizard grunted and entered his own cab. As he did so a man
on a motorcycle drew up on the opposite side and peered through the
window. The driver had started his motor as the newcomer
approached. From her cab the girl saw the Lizard and the man on the
motorcycle look into each other’s face for a moment, then she
heard the Lizard’s quick admonition to his driver,
“Beat it, bo!”</p>
<p>A sharp “Halt!” came from the man on the motorcycle,
but the taxicab leaped forward, and, accelerating rapidly, turned
to the left into the road toward the city. The girl had guessed at
the first glance that the man on the motorcycle was a police
officer. As the Lizard’s taxi raced away the officer circled
quickly and started in pursuit. “No chance,” thought
the girl. “He’ll get caught sure.” She could hear
the staccato reports from the open exhaust of the motorcycle
diminishing rapidly in the distance, indicating the speed of the
pursued and the pursuer.</p>
<p>And then from the distance came a shot and then another and
another. She leaned forward and spoke to her own driver. “Go
on to Elmhurst,” she said, “and then come back to the
city on the St. Charles Road.”</p>
<p>It was after two o’clock in the morning when the Lizard
entered an apartment on Ashland Avenue which he had for several
years used as a hiding-place when the police were hot upon his
trail. The people from whom he rented the room were eminently
respectable Jews who thought their occasional roomer what he
represented himself to be, a special agent for one of the federal
departments, a vocation which naturally explained the
Lizard’s long absences and unusual hours.</p>
<p>Once within his room the Lizard sank into a chair and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead, although it was by no means a warm
night. He drew a folded paper from his inside pocket, which, when
opened, revealed a small piece of wrapping paper within. They were
Murray’s letter to Bince and the enclosure.</p>
<p>“Believe me,” muttered the Lizard, “that was
the toughest job I ever pulled off and all I gets is two pieces of
paper, but I don’t know but what they’re worth
it.”</p>
<p>He sat for a long time looking at the papers in his hand, but he
did not see them. He was thinking of other things: of prison walls
that he had eluded so far through years of crime; of
O’Donnell, whom he knew to be working on the Compton case and
whose boast it had been that sooner or later he would get the
Lizard; of what might naturally be expected were the papers in his
hands to fall into the possession of Torrance’s attorney. It
would mean that Murray would be immediately placed in jeopardy, and
the Lizard knew Murray well enough to know that he would sacrifice
his best friend to save himself, and the Lizard was by no means
Murray’s best friend.</p>
<p>He realized that he knew more about the Compton murder case than
any one else. He was of the opinion that he could clear it up if he
were almost any one other than the Lizard, but with the record of
his past life against him, would any one believe him? In order to
prove his assertion it would be necessary to make admissions that
might incriminate himself, and there would be Murray and the
Compton millions against him; and as he pondered these things there
ran always through his mind the words of the girl, “You and I
are the only friends he has.”</p>
<p>“Hell,” ejaculated the Lizard as he rose from his
chair and prepared for bed.</p>
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