Corwin was staring at Hanvey in amazement. The pudgy detective had been speaking disinterestedly, casually, but he had the most intimate facts at his finger-tips. Corwin nodded before he thought, then bit his tongue.
“I’m not at liberty to say whether or not you’re correct, Mr. Hanvey.”
“Sure you ain’t. You’re dead right, son. Don’t you never spill no beans to nobody no time. I wasn’t tryin’ to pump you. I got the dope straight from headquarters. I was just tellin’ you so you’d understand that I know why I was sent out with you, an’ so you’d understand too.”
Hanvey paused, and as though that ended the matter he extracted from an elaborately engraved and sadly tarnished silver-plated cigar case two huge black invincibles,27 one of which he reluctantly extended to his companion. Corwin declined, and Jim sighed relievedly as he tenderly returned the cigar to its place. He lighted the other, inhaled with gusto and blew a cloud of the smoke into the air.
“I still don’t understand, Mr. Hanvey.”
Jim jerked his head toward Scanlan. “Billy’s been sent out by the Quincy gang. His job is to keep that proxy from getting to New York in time for the stockholders’ meeting.”
“O-o-oh!”
Corwin’s jaw hardened, his sinewy frame tensed and a fighting light blazed in his fine, level eyes.
Jim grinned.
“They ain’t gonna try no rough stuff. That ain’t Bill Scanlan’s way of workin’. He’s one of the smoothest con men in the known world, but he ain’t rough—not Billy. He’s smooth as butter.”
“Then how——”
“Easy enough, son. He’ll be on the same train that carries us back east, an’ before we get to Chicago he’ll swipe that proxy. At least that’s what he’s figurin’ he’s goin’ to do.”
Matters were clarifying slightly in the brain of young Corwin. But his curiosity was still unsatisfied.
“If I may ask, Mr. Hanvey, how do you know that he is the Quincy-Scott agent?”
Jim shrugged his fat shoulders.
“Easy enough. Y’see, it’s this way: When the good Lord manufactured me he forgot to hand me out any good looks an’ he slipped me entirely too much figger. But he didn’t find that out until too late, so what he did to make up for it was to give me a mem’ry. I’ve got a mem’ry like a cam’ra, son. I just naturally don’t forget things, an’ I’ve sort of built up the rep of knowin’ more professional crooks than any other ten men put together. McIntosh knew that the other crowd would engage a professional crook to get the proxy away from you, it not bein’ no job for an amachoor. He was sure to foller you out here, an’ the way he was plannin’ to work was to scrape an acquaintance with you, you never suspectin’ nothin’, which would have made things pretty easy for Billy. I just trailed along to sort of point out to you the feller you wasn’t safe with, an’ Billy Scanlan is him.”
Gerald Corwin felt a fresh respect for the fat man with the bovine expression, and a bit of his resentment vanished at the same time, for he now understood one or two things which before had left him wholly puzzled and more than a trifle resentful.
They finished their meal in silence. The check paid, they rose and started from the dining room, but Hanvey took Corwin’s arm.
“C’mon over an’ lemme introduce you to Billy. It’ll sort of make things easier for him, bein’ introduced formal-like, an’ the poor feller’s got a tough enough job on his hands as it is.”
Startled but obedient; Corwin followed, and he saw the expression of incredulous amazement, not untinged with apprehension, which flashed into Scanlan’s face as they paused by his table.
“Hello, Billy!”
Scanlan rose slowly. His jaw was set and it was plain that he was struggling to orient himself to this bizarre situation. He strove to make his tone casual.
“Hello, Jim!”
Hanvey was exceedingly gracious.
“Lemme introduce my friend Mr. Corwin. Mr. Corwin is the feller you was sent out here to watch, Billy. Mr. Corwin, shake hands with Mr. Scanlan.”
Awkwardly the two men—one an innate gentleman and the other a student at the school of gentility—shook hands. Corwin was a trifle sorry for Scanlan. The man seemed afraid of Jim Hanvey.
“I’m pleased to meet Mr. Corwin.”
“Sure you are.” The voice of Hanvey chimed in genially. “Didn’t you come all the way from New York just for that? An’ wasn’t you wonderin’ how you was gonna work it? That’s me—always ready to help out a friend, Billy—so I up an’ introduces you fellers.”
“It’s real kind of you, Jim”—Scanlan was choosing his words with scrupulous care—“but I don’t quite—er—comprehend what you’re driving at.”
“No?” Hanvey’s bushy eyebrows arched in surprise. “I’d sure hate to think that you wasn’t tellin’ me the truth, Billy.”
“I really don’t understand your—a—innuendoes. I’m in Los Angeles on a vacation and without no definite objective.”
“Sure, Billy, sure! I know that. You’re a gent of leisure, you are. But if you could grab off that fat wad the Quincy-Scott people hung under your nose, you wouldn’t have no objections, would you?”
Scanlan’s hand dropped on Hanvey’s shoulder and he gazed earnestly into the eyes of the detective, Corwin for the moment forgotten.
“Honest, Jim, I’m runnin’ straight. I ain’t plannin’ a thing. So leave me be, won’t you?”
“I ain’t aimin’ to bother you none, Billy. Goodness knows, you’re too much of a gent to be in jail. Only it just struck me that I was doin’ you a favor by introducin’ you to Mr. Corwin, him an’ you both bein’ genuine swells an’ li’ble to have a heap in common.”
Suddenly reawakened to consciousness of Corwin’s presence, Scanlan pulled himself together.
“Mr. Hanvey is bound to have his little joke, Mr. Corwin. A very interesting chap, isn’t he?”
Corwin inclined his head gravely.
“Very.”
Hanvey regarded them amusedly.
“You fellers like each other?”
They nodded.
“That’s fine! I’m sure glad!” He turned away, then swung back suddenly. “By the way, Billy, we’re leaving on the California Limited Friday morning, ten o’clock. We’ve got Drawin’-room A in Car S-17. I’m tellin’ you so you can get your reservations early on that train. Eastern travel is awful thick these days.”
They parted from the bewildered Scanlan. In the sanctuary of Hanvey’s room Gerald Corwin voiced his displeasure.
“You are probably a very great detective, Mr. Hanvey——”
“Naw! Not me! I’m just a fat, lucky bum.”
“But it strikes me that you volunteered some valuable information unnecessarily.”
“To Billy?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“About our reservations east. Why did you tell him the correct day?”
“I never lie to a crook,” said Jim gravely. “It ain’t fair. Besides, if they’re good enough crooks to be worth lyin’ to a feller ain’t gonna get away with it. Billy will check up, an’ once he found I’d lied to him he’d lose all confidence in me.”
“But I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“That’s ’cause you’re a business man, son. Detectives an’ crooks know the value of tellin’ the truth.”
“You didn’t have to tell him who I was.”
“No-o, that’s true. But it saved him a heap of trouble.”
“I don’t understand your desire to save him trouble.”
“It’s this way, Mr. Corwin: The less trouble Billy has to take the more time he’ll have for thinkin’, an’ the more he thinks the worse off he is. Thinkin’, son, has ruined a heap of happy homes, an’ don’t you forget it.”
Hanvey was right. At that moment Billy Sca
nlan was slumped in a chair in the hotel lobby, smoking cigarette after cigarette and wondering what it all meant. He knew Jim Hanvey of old, was familiar with the working methods of the ponderous, slow-moving, quick-thinking detective; and he knew that Jim had told the truth. Of course he’d check up, but that was a mere formality. All the more prominent criminals knew that Jim Hanvey did not lie. That was one explanation of the high esteem in which they held him—because he played fair.
Scanlan was worried. He had been intrusted with a definite mission, one well suited to his peculiar talents. His job was to secure from Gerald Corwin the proxy which Corwin was to receive from Col. Robert E. Warrington and to deliver that proxy to the men who were fighting to wrest control of the K. R. & P. from the McIntosh interests. That was all. The sky was the limit so far as he was concerned. His professional reputation was at stake. Besides, the reward offered by the Quincy-Scott crowd was stupendous, and Billy was sadly in need of ready cash—and plenty of it.
The presence of Jim Hanvey complicated matters somewhat in the way of accomplishing a task already difficult and delicate. But Billy was game and not entirely averse to matching wits with the Gargantuan detective. So he waited patiently in the lobby, watching the elevator bank, and eventually he was rewarded when Gerald Corwin descended, walked swiftly to the street and hailed a taxi.
As he drove off, Scanlan stepped into another cab.
“Follow that cab ahead. Keep about a block in the rear. When he stops you stop.”
As Scanlan drove off, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see the ungainly figure of Jim Hanvey climb laboriously into yet a third taxi. He did not quite fathom Jim’s motive in following, but he didn’t care particularly. He knew that Jim knew he’d trail Corwin. So much for that.
Corwin’s taxi driver, evidently aware that his fare was unfamiliar with the vastness of Los Angeles, selected a circuitous route to the Wilshire Boulevard address of Colonel Warrington. He drove through the traffic to Pico and via that important thoroughfare to Western Avenue, swinging across then to the fashionable Wilshire section, a tremendous area of spotlessly white homes, immaculate lawns, stiff and artificial gardening and aggressive affluence. Before the gates of a huge home, the grounds of which occupied an entire block, Corwin’s taxi stopped. Gerald retained his man and entered the Warrington mansion. A block farther down Wilshire Boulevard Scanlan’s taxi halted, and a half block behind that Jim Hanvey left his taxi.
Jim, alone of the three, dismissed his driver. And then, slowly and purposefully, puffing on a cigar, Jim waddled up the street toward Scanlan’s automobile.
“’Lo, Billy!”
“Hello, Jim!”
“Have a good ride?”
“Pretty good.”
“Just wanted to let you know I follered you, Billy. All I done it for was to make sure you was watchin’ young Corwin yonder. I’ll be trottin’ back to town now.” He addressed Scanlan’s driver: “Which street car do I take to get back to town?”
The driver vouchsafed the desired information. Scanlan could not forbear a question:
“Where’s your taxi, Jim?”
“I let it go. Taxis are terribly expensive.” And Hanvey moved heavily away.
Scanlan’s vigil continued for more than an hour. Then through the gates of the Warrington home swung a limousine. It stopped briefly while Corwin alighted, paid his taxi and then returned to the big car. The route into the city was more direct this time, and Scanlan followed Corwin and Colonel Warrington into one of the larger Broadway office buildings. He saw them enter the offices of a law firm and knew that Corwin had won the first move of the game by persuading Warrington to issue his proxy in favor of the McIntosh interests.
From his vantage point in the marbled hallway Scanlan kept watch. Eventually he saw a young man emerge from the offices of the firm of lawyers and enter a smaller office down the hall which was marked “Real Estate & Insurance. Notary Public.” A second young man returned with the first and in his hand was a small notarial seal. It was obvious to Scanlan that if there was a notary in the law firm he was out at the moment. Alone again, Scanlan ascertained the name of the notary—Leopold Jones.
When Warrington and Corwin descended in an elevator a few minutes later Scanlan did not follow. Instead he produced from his pocket an income-tax blank and went with it to the office of Leopold Jones. Of that young gentleman he requested an attestation of his income-tax return.28 Mr. Jones found Mr. Scanlan an engaging talker and they chatted for several minutes. When Mr. Scanlan eventually departed Mr. Jones was happily unaware of the fact that in Mr. Scanlan’s coat pocket reposed his, Mr. Jones’, notarial seal.
From the office building Scanlan visited the city ticket office of the Santa Fe Railroad. He learned readily enough that Drawing-room A in Car S-17, California Limited, for Friday morning had been sold the day previous to a very fat gentleman. He bought Compartment C in the same car. He returned to the hotel.
Thus far things appeared propitious for Mr. Scanlan.
Jim was a hindrance, of course, and a grave one; but Scanlan operated on the theory that no vigilance is so keen that it cannot be eluded. There remained nothing now save the trip east. At some time between the departure from Los Angeles and the arrival in Chicago it was incumbent upon Mr. Scanlan to secure from Corwin the Warrington proxy.
That night—Wednesday—the three men dined together, Corwin’s distaste swallowed up by his keening interest in the peculiar friendship existing between Hanvey and Scanlan. Corwin had always held the idea that criminals and detectives clashed on sight; that the former were habitually in flight and the latter constantly in pursuit. To see them chatting amiably about topics in general, reminiscing over past escapades of Scanlan and exploits of other criminals and swapping theories on unsolved crimes was astounding. Corwin found it hard to reconcile himself to the fact that at the moment the portly detective and the would-be-gentleman crook were engaged in a battle of wits. He later discussed the matter with Hanvey.
“Why don’t you arrest Scanlan?”
“Arrest him? He ain’t done nothin’.”
“He’s planning to.”
“You can’t arrest a man for what he’s got in his head. If you could the jails’d be overflowin’.”
“You could arrest him for that McCarthy affair I heard him telling you about. He confesses he was involved in the swindle.”
“Aw, you know I wouldn’t touch him for that! He just passed that dope on as a friend.”
“But I didn’t know that policemen and criminals were friends.”
Hanvey smiled wistfully.
“’Bout the only friends I got in this world, son, are crooks. Most of them are servin’ time. Some of ’em I put there. But we’re friends. This here solid gold watch charm—that was given me by one of the niftiest con men in the world. I sure hated to send him up.”
They checked out of the hotel Friday morning. Billy Scanlan was at the station when they arrived. The heavy train rumbled under the shed and they settled themselves for the three-day journey to Chicago. At Hanvey’s invitation Scanlan joined them in the drawing-room and they became absorbed in a game of setback29 at half a cent a point.
Hanvey and Scanlan waxed violently enthusiastic over the game——“King for high.” “Trey low?” “Well, dog-gone your ornery hide——” “You’re a rotten setback player, Mr. Corwin; y’oughta learn somethin’ ’bout the fine points of the game.”
Nothing to indicate that a crisis was approaching, no outward manifestation of the drama which was imminent. Occasionally Corwin reassured himself by touching his coat, in the lining of which was sewed the envelope containing the proxy which controlled a railroad. Once Hanvey saw the gesture and he laughed.
“It’s safe all right, son. It’ll stay safe unless you lose your coat.”
Corwin flushed angrily. Hanvey rightly interpreted his anger and extended a fat and r
eassuring hand.
“I wasn’t giving no dope away. Billy knew where you had the proxy, didn’t you, Billy?”
Scanlan nodded.
“Sure! It’s the regular place.”
Both men—detective and criminal—were vastly amused by Corwin’s obviousness, and Corwin knew it. But he didn’t care. Perhaps the lining of a coat was the regular place to keep a valuable document; certainly it was a safe one; and Hanvey might have been more careful than to remove the last vestige of doubt from Scanlan’s mind. Corwin knew that Scanlan could not possibly get the proxy. Such a thing was impossible during the day, and at night Corwin planned to use the coat as a pillow.
Following a light breakfast the next morning, Corwin made his way forward to the club car for a shave. He removed coat, collar and tie, for the moment unmindful of Scanlan. When the hot towel was removed from his face and fresh lather applied he noticed Scanlan sitting with two other men, awaiting his turn for a shave. Next to Scanlan was Jim Hanvey. Corwin sighed relievedly.
The barber shaved the right side of Corwin’s face, then turned him in the chair to get at the other side. As he did so Scanlan cast a glance of simulated impatience at the waiting men, rose, donned coat and hat and left the club car.
But the coat which Scanlan wore on leaving the car was Corwin’s!
In five minutes’ time he returned. Corwin was just emerging from the chair. Hanvey was slumped in a corner immersed in the very-female pictures of a weekly periodical. Scanlan removed Corwin’s coat and extended it to that young gentleman.
“Took your coat by accident, Mr. Corwin. Just discovered my mistake.”
Corwin’s face blanched. He grabbed the coat and touched the spot where the proxy had been. For a single wild instant Corwin contemplated bodily assault, and only the hulking figure of Jim Hanvey and his slow, drawling voice prevented.
“What’s the matter, son? What’s the matter? You look all het up.”
“This thief—”
“Whoa, son, whoa! That ain’t no kind of a name to call a crook.”
Jim Hanvey, Detective Page 8