“Well, there ain’t any use botherin’ you with details about how Tim tried to work it. It’s enough to say that they nabbed him. Caught him dead to rights. Tim was sorry, but he wasn’t really worried. He knew all he had to do was to get in touch with Lathrop on the Q. T. and a heap of influence would be used to get him a fine instead of a jail sentence and that Lathrop would pay the fine. But—” her hand went out and tightened grimly over Jim’s flappy paw—“Lathrop welched. Welched like a dirty yeller dog. He said he didn’t know Tim, hadn’t never seen him before, and had nothing whatever to do with the case. Meanwhile Tim, feeling secure, had pleaded guilty to the smuggling charge.
“And it wasn’t until after he pleaded guilty to that, Jim—and Walt Yeager had disappeared—that Tim learned how bad he was in. Because the jewels he had admitted smuggling were the ones which had been stolen in Paris and they were recognized instanter. That’s where Tim was crossed up. It wasn’t that they nabbed him for smuggling—he was guilty of that and willing to take his medicine. But he wasn’t mixed up in the robbery.…
“And here’s the lay of the land now. Tim got two years in the Federal prison for smuggling. He’s been there seven months. The jewels have been returned to Paris. Yeager has disappeared. Noah Lathrop swears he don’t know nothing about anything crooked. And when Tim gets through serving his smuggling time, Jim—they’re going to send him back to Paris to stand trial for stealing them jewels.”
Her voice trailed off. Jim blinked with maddening slowness and turned his apparently sightless eyes upon a pert little squirrel nearby. But his voice was charged with keenest sympathy—
“They’ve got him dead to rights, sure enough, ain’t they, Mary?”
“Yes,” with fierce bitterness, “they have. He hasn’t a leg to stand on. It’s twenty or twenty-five years in a French prison for him. He was in Paris when the robbery occurred—no chance to prove an alibi. He tried to smuggle the stones. He was caught red-handed. He confessed to the smuggling. Lathrop was in the clear—what’s Tim’s word against his? And I—well, I don’t mind the two years Tim is doing: he went into that with his eyes open…but Jim—I’m out to save Tim from doing a twenty-year stretch for something he never even knew about. That’s what I’m doing, Jim. Now do you understand?”
Jim nodded a ponderous affirmative. “I sure do, Mary. I sure do. But I still don’t quite savvy this nurse stuff.”
Her voice came crisply now in response to the warm friendliness of the detective’s tone. “Any man who will do what Noah Lathrop did is the dirtiest kind of a crook. He’s poison mean and low-down and rotten. You never knew a first class crook who would welch like that, did you?”
“No-o. Not no decent crook.”
“Neither did I. And I figured out if Lathrop was that crooked—it wasn’t the first time. He’s a prominent man and he’s proud. He must have slipped before. It’s a certainty that some time in his life he’s done something just as rotten as the trick he pulled on Tim. Oh! I wouldn’t be kicking if he’d come clean with Tim in the first place and told him it was stolen stuff. It was the double-crossing and then the welching that hurt. And the fact that Tim is innocent. A crook has a hard enough life serving time for what he really does, let alone what he don’t do.
“That’s why I worked around and got this job as nursegirl in Lathrop’s home. I’ve got a room on the place, and I’m watching, Jim—I’m watching close. I’m learning a heap about that bird. He’s rotten all the way through—a cheap, piking, safety-first crook. Smug and self-satisfied and so stuck on himself I want to kill him sometimes. Of course he don’t dream I know Tim Lannigan or that I’m anything except what I seem.
“And some day, Jim, I’m gonna get something on Noah Lathrop—something that he’d rather die than see come out. And when I do I’m gonna make him sing. I’m gonna make him come out in the clear and save Tim from doing that stretch in France.” She threw her arms wide in an unconsciously dramatic gesture—“That’s why I’m working as a nursegirl in his house, Jim—that’s why.”
Pauline Lathrop appeared and demanded two cents with which to purchase an apple-on-a-stick. She accepted the money from Jim but again expressed her disdain for the vulgar toothpick. “And your cigars smell terrible.”
Jim sighed. “I reckon they do. But I like ’em.”
“You’re a funny man,” said the child.
Pauline departed joyously to purchase her confection. Jim turned friendly eyes upon the tiny, indomitable figure of the little woman by his side. He tchk’d once or twice and mopped his forehead with a lavender handkerchief.
“You’ll lay off me, won’t you, Jim?”
“Huh?”
“You’ll give me a free hand in this matter, won’t you? Let me play it my own way?”
He thought for a moment before replying. And then, slowly and deliberately he shook his head. “Nope.”
He saw her figure stiffen, watched the delicate hands ball into tiny fists. “Jim.…” There was horror and unbelief in her tone.
“Nope, Mary—I ain’t gonna play hands off in this little game of yours. Not for a minute. I can’t.” He, with difficulty crossed one enormous leg over the other. “But I tell you what I will do,” he volunteered conversationally.
“What?”
His voice was toneless.
“I’ll help you.”
For a second she did not move. “You—you’ll help?” she choked.
“Sure.”
“H-h-help me to clear Tim?”
“Sure.”
She faced him then, her face flushed and radiant, the light of happiness flaming from her fine eyes. “Jim Hanvey!” she said, “I love you for that!”
He fidgeted in embarrassment. “It is kinder funny—a detective workin’ for a crook. But it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Of course, I mightn’t be of any help——”
“You will, Jim. You will. Oh! it’s wonderful. I’ve been so alone——”
“Aw! dry up, Sister. It’s my job to nab the whole bunch of you when you’ve done something to be nabbed for. But I like you—every one of you—and I’m damned if I can sit back and see you go up for something you didn’t do. Specially when you’ve been double-crossed by an honest man.”
And long after she and little Pauline had disappeared beyond the traffic of Central Park West, long after gray dusk had merged gently into velvet night, long after the shrill playcalls of children had been superseded by the low-toned dialogue of occasional passing couples and the insistent, rhythmic k-chnk, k-chnk of oarlocks from the adjacent lake—long after all of that Jim Hanvey sat upon his park bench and mused upon the vagaries of circumstance.
Jim Hanvey had experienced a long, a colorful, a varied career. Now, for the first time, he found himself embarked upon a professional enterprise on behalf of a criminal, the object of his attack being a person in that class of society for which men such as Jim Hanvey served as bulwark.
The situation was bizarre—rather outrageously so, but it held an irresistible appeal to Jim. He was a lonely man who counted his friends among those whom he professionally hunted. The better class of criminals knew Jim and liked him. They outwitted him if they could—but they played straight with him, just as he did with them. To most of them it was a source of wonderment that he had not long since joined their ranks. In answer to their frank questionings he invariably returned an answer astounding in its simple logic——
“A feller is either born crooked or straight. I was born straight—that’s all. You can’t blame me for that any more than I can blame you for bein’ crooked.”49
But now he was to attain the unspoken ambition of many years: he was to expend his talents in an effort to free one of his criminal friends from an unjust charge. Let Tim Lannigan serve his time for smuggling—he was guilty. But Jim had checked up on Mary’s story and knew that she had spoken the truth. That being the case it
behooved him to see that Tim served a sentence for what he had done and was extricated from the predicament into which he had blundered.
That he had undertaken a task of no mean proportions was plain to him. In this particular matter the position of Noah Lathrop was impregnable. There was no possible proof that Lathrop had connived with Walter Yeager to purchase the stolen gems. There was even less proof that Noah had hired Tim to do the smuggling. Certainly there was no chance to enlist the services of Walt Yeager. It wasn’t Walt’s fault, anyway. He had played fair with both Tim and Lathrop by the tenets of the criminal code. It was unfortunate that Lathrop had betrayed Tim—but it was too much to expect that Walt would do anything so absurdly Quixotic as to confess to the robbery in order to save Lannigan. And there wasn’t even an outside chance to convict Yeager of the original theft.
Mary Lannigan had the correct idea. A man as crooked as Lathrop had shown himself to be in this instance had been crooked before. He would be crooked again. He had indicated that he was moulded of conscienceless stuff. Somewhere in his past there must be a skeleton which he would not care to have displayed. And in order to prevent that display he might even be willing to confess his guilt as a smuggling accessory. In that way—and in that way alone—Tim Lannigan could be saved from facing trial—and certain conviction—for the crime which he had not committed.
Jim first of all boarded the Southern for Atlanta where he had two long and earnest conversations with Tim Lannigan. Tim’s story verified that of Mary in every way. The big, handsome, red-headed crook was pitifully embarrassed at the knowledge that Jim was working for him. Too, he made no attempt to conceal his emotion at tidings of Mary’s activity in his behalf. Jim found him bitter against Lathrop and not at all so against Walt Yeager. “Poor Walt! He was crossed up pretty near as bad as I was. And he’s flat now. Gosh! To think of getting away with a job like that and then have a falldown. It’s tough!”
“Sure is,” agreed Jim.
Acquainting himself with Noah Lathrop’s personality without meeting that gentleman was a more difficult undertaking. He made occasion to be near him two or three times when Lathrop was unconscious of the sleepy-eyed surveillance. Jim found Lathrop a rather undersized, slender man of obtrusive pomposity and disagreeable manner. He spoke in a loud, nasal voice which carried unpleasantly a considerable distance and his utterances were all dogmatic. Jim found his Great-I-Am50 attitude annoying and at the same time amusing. There was a laughable similarity between father and daughter. Jim could well fancy the boast of the man—
“I pay four thousand a year for my apartment on the Drive and I maintain three cars.” Jim’s big fingers fumbled with the gold toothpick. Somehow, it seemed a little less vulgar than Pauline had led him to believe.
Jim held frequent conferences with Mary Lannigan. She had nothing to report but there was no lessening of confidence or determination. He was amused by her grim defiance—the indomitable will to power behind the masklike manners and pretty, girlish face. No wonder the smugly complacent Noah Lathrop was unsuspicious of the dynamite within his house; to all appearances Mary was merely an innocuously pretty young woman temporarily engaged in the nursing profession—against the day when she would be carried off to wife by some six-foot truck driver.
“I know I’m right, Jim. The man’s rotten all the way through—and he handled this affair in a way which proves that it ain’t the first time he’s pulled something. Sometimes when I watch him I get mad enough to scream—I can imagine him chuckling to himself about his cleverness. Not a thought for the man who he thinks is going to do the long stretch in France. Her teeth clicked suddenly. “Oh! what’s the use of letting myself get all worked up? I guess my game is to lay low and keep grinning.”
“You said it, Sister. And when you get something on him—talk it over with me. We’ll make him dance a hornpipe.”
She looked up gratefully into his expressionless eyes. “You can do that, Jim. Until you promised to help I was only a crook without a chance. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found what I was hunting.”
Jim shrugged. “It’s you who’s got to do the discovering Mary. Just keep those bright eyes wide open——”
“I sure ain’t gonna do nothin’ else.”
“—And let me know every least little thing that goes on. Listen in on his dining room conversation all you can. A feller as stuck on himself as that bimbo—an’ as crazy about hearin’ himself talk—is certain to blab something around the house.” Jim lighted a cigar. “He may even have some interesting papers lyin’ around.”
“No,” she said with perfect candor, “I’ve searched everything. Even the safe.”
“Good.” He rose heavily to his feet. “Keep it up, Sis. We’ve got all the time in the world, plus—an’ the best thing we can do is to use it. By the way, how’s my little friend Pauline?”
The girl made a wry face. “Ugh! Nasty little minx.”
“Huh!” grinned Jim, “think what she’ll be like at forty.”
A fortnight dragged by. Jim busied himself with routine matters without, however, allowing the main focus of his attention to waver from the Lannigan matter. Occasionally he made it a point to meet Mary in the park. She had nothing to tell him and he talked things over with her only for her own sake—to keep her courage and optimism keyed to the proper pitch. There was something heroic in her doggedness. He shook his head in wonderment at the thought that until recently she had been playing a lone hand—just as grim, just as determined—“I sort of reckon,” he mused, “that she sort of might be what you’d call kinder crazy about that Tim Lannigan.”
It was not until another week had passed that anything happened. It was early October and the air was chill with the portent of coming winter. Jim Hanvey was sprawled on the lounge in the untidy living room of his apartment reading the pugilistic news in a current sporting weekly. The air was fetid with the odor of his vile cigar, his stockinged feet were cocked upon the table and he had allowed his flowered suspenders to drop comfortably about his tremendous waist. It was a considerable effort to answer the summons of the telephone and his voice was none too gentle—
“Hey! Hello! What you ringin’ so much about?”
“Jim? This is Mary.”
His expression altered like magic. He caught the nuance of excitement in her carefully modulated tones.
“Yeh?”
“Are you alone?”
“Entirely.”
“Can I come up—now?”
“You tell ’em. I’ll fix it with the telephone boy so’s he won’t start no scandal.”51
A half hour later she was with him. She threw open the window despite his protest. His eyes were fixed steadily upon the attractive vividity of her face. Then he yawned and appeared to sink into an indifferent lethargic doze. It was only when she had drawn up a chair and placed her hands on his arm that the sleepy eyes uncurtained with an indication of interest.
“A’right, Sister—shoot.”
She found difficulty in selecting a starting point, and when she did eventually speak it was with an incoherence which was rather unusual—“He’s slipping, Jim—and I’m watching.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes—I do. I knew it would come…if I just watched close enough. Of course I’ve had to keep pretty much out of the way and I haven’t learned all that I might, but—”
“At that,” interjected Jim dryly, “you learned a heap more an’ a heap faster than I am now.”
She laughed—a semi-hysterical little quaver—and pulled herself together. “Jim, Noah Lathrop is up to something.”
Jim nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”
“He’s had a visitor at the house for the last two evenings. Who do you think it is?”
“How many guesses do I get?”
Her eyes burned into his, her voice trembled. “Teddy Nelson!”
; Jim nodded ponderously and, although his expression lost none of its impassivity, his tone indicated a lively interest.
“Teddy Nelson, eh?”
“Yes—Teddy. And they’re talking turkey.”
“Teddy usually does.”
The girl sat back and inspected the bovine face of the detective. “You got any recent suspicions of Teddy?”
Jim’s head inclined. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Unconsciously, she lowered her tone. “He’s got the Rawlings’ pearls.”
Jim yawned with his eyes. “Right the first time, Sis. You take the head of the class.”
“You knew?”
“Sure. An’ I ain’t the only dick which does. They’ve been watchin’ Teddy ever since them pearls were stolen. The only reason they didn’t nab him long ago was because they didn’t know where he had ’em cache’d—it wasn’t gonna do ’em a bit of good to grab Teddy unless they got the pearls, too.”
She shook her head slowly—“I didn’t know they suspected Teddy of that job.…”
“There ain’t but a half dozen men in the country could of done it,” explained Jim, “an’ Teddy was the only one with a perfect alibi, so they knew it was him. But it ain’t Teddy they’re after—it’s the stuff.”
“So-o…and you think he’s trying to sell ’em to Lathrop?”
“It’s a cinch. He can’t sell ’em nowhere’s else. There ain’t a fence would dare handle ’em and the easiest way they could be put on the market would be through a first class wholesale jewelry house. Yeh—I reckon Mr. Noah Lathrop is just about aimin’ to slip his head into a noose.”
The girl rose to her feet and paced the room. “It’s the first thing I’ve discovered…I wish I thought he’d dare buy those things—I wish we could catch him with the goods.”
Jim’s toneless voice came as though from another room. “You keep those eyes of your’n peeled, Mary. If he’s gone this far with the deal the chances are he’ll go through. An’ if you can get wise to the hour when they pull it I’ll be on hand.…”
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