"Mr. Zalnitch is busy and can't see you."
The girl, evidently a stenographer or secretary, looked coolly
competent in her white shirt-waist and well-made skirt. I was
surprised to find a young woman of her evident education and refinement
in the employ of such a man.
"Did you give him my message?" I asked.
"Yes. He said he was not interested."
I felt vaguely disappointed that my strategy had not worked. I had
given the name of Anderson, and had represented myself as the head of
the Steamfitters' Union of Cleveland, anxious for instructions on how
to settle a labor problem in our local union. I had done this, feeling
that if I gave my own name, he might refuse to see me. Apparently my
alias was to have no better success.
"When will he be free, can you tell me?"
"I couldn't say," the girl answered. "He is very busy at present, but
if you will come in and wait, perhaps he may see you later."
It seemed to me there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on the
girl's face as I stepped across the threshold into the small
waiting-room, but I hadn't a chance to observe more closely, for she
turned her back on me at once and immediately resumed her typewriting.
The room in which I found myself was one of a dingy suite in an old
warehouse that had been converted into a newspaper building to house
_The Uplift_, a weekly paper, edited by a Russian Jew named Borsky and
financed by Schreiber. It was a typical anarchistic sheet, and had
been suppressed for a time, during the war. Opposite where I sat was a
door from which the paint had peeled in places. This evidently led
into Zalnitch's office, for I could hear the murmur of voices behind
it. The rooms were ill-lighted and unclean, and it made me mad to see
as nice a girl as the stenographer working herself to death in such
dingy surroundings and for such a man as Zalnitch.
I watched her as she worked and marveled that any one could make her
fingers go so rapidly. I noticed with admiration and dissatisfaction,
that unlike my stenographers, she didn't have to stop to erase a
misspelled word every two minutes. I wondered what salary Zalnitch
paid her and if she would like to change employers.
"I hope you will pardon my interrupting your work--" I began.
"You're not," the girl responded, without even glancing up.
"May I ask if you are entirely satisfied with your employment here?"
"Why do you ask?" she inquired, stopping for a moment and fixing me
with clear gray eyes.
"I am badly in need of a competent stenographer and I thought you might
prefer working in a place where the surroundings are pleasanter and the
pay probably higher."
She studied me a moment, as though card-indexing me, then having
apparently decided that I was in earnest and not merely trying to
flirt, that elusive smile again played about her mouth.
"You are the first steamfitter I ever met that found himself badly in
need of a stenographer."
Caught! I bit my lip at my stupid blunder, but had to laugh in spite
of myself.
"Your make-up is all wrong, Mr. Anderson--if your name is Anderson. I
don't know what you are trying to do, nor why you picked out
steamfitting as your mythical life-work, but I do know you aren't a
detective."
This time the smile came out in the open. I liked her immensely. She
might make an ally. She would at least know what had happened in the
office during the last few days.
"Miss--?"
"Miller," she added.
"Miss Miller. I am a lawyer, and my sister is about to be accused of a
terrible crime which she didn't commit. I think I know who did commit
it, but so far I haven't been able to connect him definitely with the
crime. I think you can help me. Will you?"
"What makes you think I can help you?" she asked.
"Because you are so situated you can observe the person I believe to be
responsible for the crime," I replied.
Her gaze changed from pleasant questioning to indignant surprise. When
she spoke her voice was coldly final.
"I think you have made a mistake in judgment of character. Please let
me finish my work now."
"Miss Miller, please don't think for a minute that I--"
Behind me a door opened and, as I turned, I found myself looking into
the wrathful eyes of a stunted little man with an enormous head. Any
one who has once seen Zalnitch can never forget him. His wizened,
misshapen body is a grotesque caricature of a man's, which, surmounted
by his huge head with its bushy hair, makes him look for all the world
like some scientist's experiment. In the doorway to Zalnitch's private
office stood Schreiber, a heavy-jowled, unsmiling mastiff of a man.
"What do you want that you should be keeping my stenographer from
working?" Zalnitch's voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "Get out of
here! You have no business here. Get out!"
"Zalnitch, I came here to speak to you."
"Get out!" he screamed. "I won't talk with you. I have no time to
waste, even if you have. I know who you are. You're the
brother-in-law of Felderson, the blood-sucking millionaire who sent me
to jail. I won't talk with you, do you hear?"
As he grew more excited I seemed to grow cooler.
"Zalnitch, I'm going to swear out a warrant against you for my
brother's murder."
For a moment the little man blinked at me in amazement; then he threw
back his head and laughed, a shrill, giggling squeak. With his fists
he pounded his misshapen legs.
"You arrest me for his murder? Hee-hee! You hear, Schreiber? He is
going to--to arrest me!"
Suddenly he stopped, as quickly as he had started.
"Go ahead! Arrest me! Try to send me to prison again. I'll make you
sweat blood before you are through. You think I killed him--your
brother? I wish I had. I'd be proud to say I killed him! You hear?
I wish I had killed him. I wish he were alive so I _could_ kill him."
The little monstrosity emphasized each of his staccato sentences by
stamping a puny foot on the floor. His gloating over Jim's death was
more than flesh could stand.
"Stop!" I yelled. "If it wasn't you that killed him, it was one of
that murderous gang of cutthroats and anarchists that was with you. If
it wasn't you, then it was Schreiber's son--that Prussian jail-bird, or
one of his friends."
Zalnitch's eyes blazed. "You call us anarchists and cutthroats. You,
who are a product of the rotten government that has ground down and
oppressed the people I represent. Because we rebel, you throw us in
prison, making a mockery of your boasted liberty. So they did for a
time in Russia. You call us 'cutthroats.' It's a good term. I hope
to God we earn that title."
Finding that the talk was turning into a political harangue, I turned
my back on Zalnitch and started toward the door. Schreiber followed me.
"Chust one minud." There was heavy menace in his look. "You galled my
son a chail-bird a minud ago. He vas in chail because he did righd,
but dot don't matter. You're egsited, because your brodder vas gilled.
Ve don't know nodding aboud it. Ve heard aboud it de nexd day. I
don'd have nodding against Velderson, bud if you dry to pud my son,
Karl, in chail again, someding vill happen to you. I'm delling dis to
you vor your own good."
Disappointed at the interview, I closed the door behind me and started
down the hall. I don't know just what I had hoped to find out, but I
thought Zalnitch would betray himself in some way--must in some way
show his guilty knowledge of Jim's death. Instead, he had laughed at
me when I threatened to arrest him, even wished he could claim the
credit for the crime.