Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

Then he closed the door and I went through our living room into our vestibule and from there to our front door, for I wanted to have a look at the screw which Ruggles said had worked loose in the metal under our keyhole.

And there it was — loose as he had said, its protruding head twisted nearly off at some time by a screwdriver, raising a tiny, upstanding sliver of metal, jagged and sharp as broken glass.

Carefully avoiding this knifelike sliver of metal, I worked the screw out with my fingers and, bringing it into the living room, held it to the light — and there, on the screw’s head, was a freshly dried drop of blood.

I was as sure, then, as anything in the world could have made me, that that was Dr. Spaulding’s blood, let out of his first finger when he had thrust the tiny barrel of his gas pistol through that keyhole, and had sent those deadly gas fumes into our living room.

It was all clear to me now. But how had Ruggles the power so surely and swiftly to identify the criminal and understand the workings of the criminal mind? That extraordinary power of his bewildered and amazed me more with every revelation he gave me of it.

Where had he learned all that he had of the Criminal and Crime? What hard school had he gone to, and when? More than once he had said to me:

“I’m a near-crook, Dan, but I wear better.” What he meant by that, I was probably never to know. So far, he had never explained, and I had never asked for an explanation. And yet there were times when I asked myself how any man could know the underworld as Ruggles knew it without having been, at some time in his life, a member of it.

Was there, in his life, a past which some detective, or some enemy, one day would drag forth? And how would Ruggles’s resourcefulness and shrewdness serve him then? I couldn’t banish this thought.

For he knew the underworld so intimately and well; its most subtle secrets; he could tread so unerringly the darkest jungles of the worst districts of the world’s greatest cities! How had he been able to master so perfectly their crime-code? How had he learned to anticipate and checkmate, as he invariably did, organized crime’s efforts at merciless discipline and quick revenge? Ruggles alone could answer this.

In age, he was still in his early thirties, and he was marvelously equipped to tread the dark and dubious ways along which his strange profession called him; he was well over six feet in height, weighing always between two hundred and two ten stripped, he had the tremendous hitting power of the best heavyweight, and he combined with that the speed and endurance and catlike activity of foot which one expects to find only among the lighter weights.

If he had the hatred and fear of the chiefs and lower officers of the best organized and most highly financed syndicates of crime in Manhattan, as well as those of London, Vienna, Paris, Petrograd, and Berlin, he had their grim respect, too — they knew that, in addition to being their most dreaded enemy, he had always fought them fair.

He knew them — all of them were on his list. With the precision and steadiness of a perfectly operating machine and the inevitableness of destiny, Ruggles was capturing and convicting one after another of Manhattan’s most dangerous and clever criminals — he was working on down the list and now had got to where those, whom he had not yet come to, realized that their only means of escape from him lay in bringing about his death.

It was a little over four years since I had begun to work with him as his assistant, and in that time I had learned not to be surprised at anything which he, or our enemies, might do.

He had an extraordinary knowledge of biology, natural history, surgery, and medicine; and I believe that he had no equal when it came to a practical knowledge of poisons, ancient, medieval, and modern, and their antidotes — and this knowledge he had to have, to keep ahead of our sleepless antagonists.

He was an extremely clever mechanic, and this had saved our lives many times — infernal machines, for example, like the one Slade had put in our open fireplace, or the one Stanfield had placed behind the picture in Roger Sterling’s bedroom in that strange case where we had our final reckoning with Quin Lash, the alligator hunter, all were familiar to Ruggles.

His restless and eager mind was a veritable storehouse of information on every subject under the sun, always ready at the call of his photographic memory; and his power of quick and accurate deduction baffled me more with every revelation he gave me of it.

He insisted to me that he was not a detective, and certainly he had no connection with any detective agency. He was the unfailing ally of the innocent who, without his help, could not prove their innocence. But the predatory animal, whether the head or the unsuspected protector of crime, or the savage executor of desperate violence, Ruggles handled without gloves, showing them no mercy, for well he knew that they would show him none when the final show-down came.

If he broke the law — and he frequently did — it was always to right a wrong and never for his own gain; his sins were always benevolent.

Our capture of Dr. Webster, murderer and master hypnotist, had brought us again a publicity we had not wanted; this had resulted in our receiving a flood of new clients. Most of these, Ruggles turned over, or rather directed, to the local authorities, keeping for us to handle only those cases which seemed to him to present some special need or to offer points of unusual interest.