A Dicker
“Not with me,” I said, and started up the stairs.
Curiosity like mine is a curse. I’d gone about four steps up when it
caught me. “What’s your old dicker?” I said.
“If you’ll persuade Sam to give me the ten thousand for producing the
murderer, I’ll split it with you.”
I am tired of apologizing for myself. I will state, merely, that I
managed to say the one thing, under those circumstances, that I should
not have said. “Do you know who the murderer is?” Thereby proving that
I was possessed of about as much diplomacy as an alarm clock.
“Certainly not,” he answered. He had not hesitated; he had looked
straight into my eyes. But I knew that he believed that he had lied.
“See here,” I said. “I take it that one five thousand dollars is as
good to you as another. If you know who committed the murder, and will
produce him, I’ll give you the five thousand dollars myself.”
“Don’t say that, Mary,” Danny stepped out from behind the long
curtains at the end of the south windows.
Canneziano jumped like a spurred bronco. “Spying, eh, my lady?”
She spoke directly to me. “Listen, Mary; don’t ever, for any reason,
enter into any sort of an agreement with this man. If he knows, or
thinks that he knows, who the murderer is, he can be forced to tell
without a bribe. If he had known for one day, one hour, and had
withheld the information, he is, in effect, an accomplice—there is a
legal term for it, but I have forgotten it. I am going out, now, to
find Uncle Sam, and to bring him here and tell him that this man says
that he knows who committed the murder. Mary, you telephone to the
sheriff in Telko——”
“Just a moment, please,” Canneziano spoke smoothly and smilingly. “I
have said, definitely, that I do not know who killed the Gaby. And—I
do not know. I am bored, unspeakably bored. I should like to try my
hand at detecting this—er, villain. But,” he shrugged his narrow
shoulders, “with no impetus——”
“The fact that she was your own daughter——” I began, hotly.
“Don’t, Mary,” Danny interrupted, with a sigh. “There is no use. You
and he do not speak the same language.”
“How is this?” Canneziano said, and went on speaking, very rapidly, in
some foreign language.
Danny stood and stared at him without a mite of expression on her
face. He paused for breath. She said, “I have forgotten my Italian. I
do not understand you, and I am glad that I do not. Come, Mary, shall
we go upstairs?”
In the upper hall she said that she wanted me to go with her to Miss
MacDonald, because she wanted to tell Miss MacDonald what had just
happened.
We knocked on her door. She greeted us pleasantly enough, but there
was a pucker between her eyebrows.
“You have asked us,” Danny began at once, “to tell you nothing about
the case. Does that mean that you do not wish to have us tell you of
day by day developments, which seem to have a direct bearing on the
case?”
“As, for instance?” Miss MacDonald questioned.
Danny told her about what had happened, from the time she had stepped
behind the curtains, until she and I had come upstairs together.
Miss MacDonald’s first question was, “Why were you watching him?”
“Because,” Danny answered, straight, “I think he came here with some
evil purpose. I should like to find out what that purpose is.”
“Why were you so eager to prevent Mrs. Magin’s making a pact with
him?”
“Miss MacDonald, a woman who has dealt with criminals, as you must
have, should not need to ask that question.”
“But,” Miss MacDonald persisted, “you have not dealt with criminals.”
“I have dealt with this man. I know that he is bad and crafty. For
five thousand dollars he would perjure himself over and over again. He
would produce witnesses who would perjure themselves. You know the
ways of criminals better than I do, Miss MacDonald. I know, as Uncle
Sam knows, that it is unsafe to deal with them.”
“Has this man approached you with offers similar to this one, Miss
Canneziano?”
“He has had no opportunity.”
“You are sure of that?”
Danny’s chin went up a trifle. “I don’t understand.”
“I think that you do.”
Danny turned to me. “Mary,” she said, “yesterday afternoon that man
came to my room when I was alone. He slipped in, closed my door, and
locked it. I ran into Gaby’s room, but I could not get out of it
because the doors were all locked. I went into Gaby’s bathroom and
locked myself in. I stayed there for half an hour, or longer, until he
left. Miss MacDonald evidently thinks that he and I were in
conversation during that time. I have no proof that we weren’t. Do you
believe me, Mary?”
“I do, with all my heart,” I said.
Miss MacDonald persisted. “You told no one about this?”
“I did not dare to tell. If John thought that that man——” She stopped
short.
“Yes?” questioned Miss MacDonald.
“I mean that John would fight with him; would whip him within an inch
of his life.”
“Why should you care?”
Danny looked at me.
“She’d care,” I said, answering the appeal in her big, hurt eyes,
“because she is a woman, Miss MacDonald. It may be hard for you to
understand; but women, who aren’t crime analysts, don’t want their men
fighting.”
“Thank you, Mary,” Danny said, and walked hurriedly out of the room.