“TWO MORE SHOTS TORE THROUGH AND SPRAYED US WITH SPLINTERS” LANAGAN AMATEUR DETECTIVE BY EDWARD H. HURLBUT WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC DORR STEELE New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1913 Copyright, 1913, by STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1913...

JACK LANAGAN of the San Francisco Enquirer was conceded to have “arrived” as the premier police reporter of San Francisco. This honour was his not solely through a series of brilliant newspaper feats in his especial field, but as well by reason of an entente that permitted him to call half the patrolmen on the force by their given names; enjoy the confidences of detective sergeants, a close-mouthed brotherhood; dine tête-à-tête in private at French restaurants with well-groomed police captains o

JACK LANAGAN had a Sunday off, the first in weeks. A man of whim and caprice in his leisure moments, he had made no plans. This Sunday morning, after idly reading the morning papers, rolling and consuming innumerable brown paper cigarettes meanwhile, he finally sallied forth in his ill-fitting clothes toward the Palace grill and breakfast. And this being luxuriously ended, he was laved and shaved to his heart’s content. Then, perfumed like a boulevardier, he issued forth into Market Street to jo

“KIND of caught you fellows off base, Norrie.” Bradley, star man for the Herald , drawled it at me invidiously as I entered the police reporters’ room at the Hall of Justice. Merriman of the Times and a half-dozen morning paper men, their copy turned in, had drifted down to the room to await any late developments. The Ratto story had been on for three days and the Herald and the Times had “put over” the arrest of Bernardo Tosci, Camorrist, at the expense of Lanagan and myself. “Better shoot a fe

AT Riordan’s, much frequented by policemen and reporters, Jack Lanagan sat with Leslie, that greatest chief of his time, discussing one of Dan’s delectable Bismarck herrings and a “steam.” It was not above the very human Leslie to mingle in the free democracy of Dan’s back room, where the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate foregathered to settle in seasoned nonchalance the problems of the world. Leslie was speaking. “You haven’t lost out, Jack,” he was saying. “But if that narrow-gauge Sampson elect

THE manner of Lanagan’s acquiring the Ambassador’s stick-pin is nearly, if not quite, as interesting as the matter of his losing it. His possession of the pin was simple enough when one understands the chromatic ways of a police reporter’s daily routine: and Jack Lanagan was the “star” police reporter of the city. The surrender of the pin is as easily understood, when one comes to learn something of the devious paths the police reporter is sometimes called on to follow, and the curious and start

SAMPSON, city editor of the San Francisco Enquirer , sat scowling over the Times and the Herald . Stripped blackly across the front pages of those rival morning papers was the unaccustomed seven-column head: SUSPECT JAILED FOR MONTEAGLE MURDER! “ Norton! ” It was Sampson’s voice. When Sampson shot that curt call in his ugly voice through the swinging doors of his office I felt as though the warden was calling me from the condemned cell for the drop. Only the able-bodied newspaper man who has bee

“I   HAVE always considered Bannerman,” said Jack Lanagan, deliberately, “the crookedest judge that ever sat on the bench in San Francisco.” Attorney Haddon, distinguished in criminal practice, thumped his office table. “Exactly,” he said. “Have felt that way about it myself. But he seems to have a hold on the people. And he makes capital out of the fact that he ever permits a ‘shyster’ lawyer to practise in his court.” “Simple,” replied Lanagan. “He doesn’t have to. He does business with Fogart

“EXTRA! EXTRA!” in shrill diminuendo awakened Jack Lanagan from the very heart of his morning slumber. The morning paper man sleeps late and nothing short of cataclysm or the cry of an extra is likely to awaken him. Lanagan was from his bed to the window in a lanky leap hailing the newsboy. It was the Evening Record with a “screamer” head and two hundred words of black-face type. Lanagan swept through it in a comprehensive flash. With more speed than was his custom he thereupon dressed. “ Swanso

“SAMPSON,” said Lanagan, “there’s something queer about that Robbins case. Professional second story men aren’t returning to the scene of a $10,000 burglary and sending by messenger a written proposition to return the property for a cash settlement. They know how and where to negotiate the stuff and they take no chances; particularly not with one of their number under arrest—assuming the Ward boy is one of them. And that is another queer angle: seasoned crooks don’t operate with sixteen-year-old

THE Stockslager case will be recalled immediately upon the Pacific Coast as a crime of some years ago marked by the peculiar atrocity of the circumstances. Aged Mrs. Stockslager, living in a small cottage at the extreme northern end of Thirty-third Avenue—in those days a region sparsely settled and visited chiefly by picknickers bound for Baker’s Beach—was found one Sunday morning literally hacked to pieces. From the location of portions of the dismembered body it was apparent that the author ha