"He Seems Rather a Versatile Sort of Crook"

"Caught Out."
By Fred C. Smale (1865-1917).
First appearance: The All-Story Magazine, March 1914.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at Pulpgen HERE.

A newspaperman with an eidetic memory and an unlikely name is assigned to track down an embezzler who has absconded with nearly four thousand dollars not his own, with the trail leading to a comfortable drawing-room, an edacious servant girl, and a dodgy housekeeper. Several passages:

. . . "There’s a woman in it somewhere, of course."  . . .

. . . Left to himself, he carefully poured the coffee into the pot of a tall palm which adorned one corner of the room.  . . .

. . . "What—what do you mean?" she replied in a voice strangely hoarse and unsteady. "Who are you—a robber?"  . . .

. . . Apparently maddened by the sound of the woman’s voice, the disguised man sprang at his captor and tried to wrest his revolver from him, but Bat Miller’s muscles were like whipcord.  . . .

. . . "Ah!" sighed Bat, "that’s no way to treat a lady; but I suppose you’ll say ladies don’t make meals off policemen’s hands."  . . .

. . . "That’s the way with all these smart crooks that always slip a cog sooner or later, and being something of a good-looker, vanity was his rock."  . . .

Resources:
- Information about Fred Smale on the Internet is sparse, to say the least; his FictionMags entry is HERE, and he's also earned the attention of the ISFDb HERE.

Category: Be careful how you catch a vase