"Shuh!"
"They caught him with the goods. He pleaded guilty. He's doing a
two-year stretch in Atlanta. He left me flat--that's why I went to
work. I got a nursing job because I naturally like kids. I had to do
somethin'."
"Mm!" Jim's face betrayed no particular interest. If there was doubt of
her in his mind he did not show it. "Funny--you workin' as a nursegirl
while Tim is doing a stretch. Well--I sure hope you stay on the
straight an' narrow. It don't pay awful good but it's real safe."
She sighed with relief. "I'm not pulling anything, Jim. I'm on the
level--anyway until Timmy gets out."
She summoned her youthful charge and they walked off together toward
the Seventy-second street gate. Jim stared speculatively after them. He
groped blindly for a match and relighted his cigar. Then, as he inhaled
deeply, he gave vent to an expression of doubt----
"Wonder what she lied to me for?"
His somnolent eyes half closed and as he lay back in his seat there
came to him the faint limning of the picture in which she had appeared
at the occasion of their last meeting--a bank job in Omaha, a
successful bank job in which he knew that she had been the brains of
the gang. Jim held a great admiration for that little woman; she was
courageous and she was clever; she played her cards well and she played
them boldly. That last case had been one of his few unsuccessful ones
and he had been more than half glad of it. He had been out to get them,
but, failing, he felt nothing of resentment--only a keen admiration for
the brains which had outwitted him.
But a few minutes since he had seen Mary Lannigan flustered for the
first time in the several years of their acquaintanceship. That
discomfiture bespoke guilt. Hanvey's fat fingers groped for the gold
toothpick so lately admired by Pauline Lathrop. That golden horror was
of inestimable assistance to Hanvey in moments of mental stress. Mary
working as a nursegirl. Hmph! There was something behind that--bound
to be. Jim Hanvey was reputed to know intimately every worthwhile
crook in the country and he counted Tim and Mary Lannigan as among
his very best friends. Jim knew, for instance, that Tim had a young
fortune salted away and that it was not at all necessary for his wife
to work as a menial while he enjoyed the hospitality of the United
States government. That being the case, Mary's present occupation
was the cloak for something. He was sorry--darn shame Mary couldn't
keep straight. Good kid. "An' dog-gone her--she's gone an' got me all
interested."
At first Jim determined to play hands off. He wasn't a policeman; it
was no duty of his to make trouble for crooks who were not engaged
in work which held his immediate attention. But there was something
bizarre in the very thought of this excessively clever little woman
acting as nursemaid to a snippy little girl who boasted of her father's
trio of motor cars. Two other facts paraded before him, demanding that
he adduce something from their proximity to one another.
One of them was that the father of the girl whom Mary nursed was a
jewelry importer.
The second fact had to do with Tim Lannigan's incarceration for
smuggling. Smuggling was not in Tim's line.
That night Jim reluctantly omitted his regular picture show and did
a little investigation. Information came readily to hand principally
because Jim knew just where to turn. When he retired near midnight he
knew considerably more about Mary Lannigan's job, but there were one or
two blank spaces which had aroused his curiosity beyond measure.
One vital thing he had learned--and that was that the name of Noah
Lathrop had been mentioned more than casually in the case which
resulted in Tim's journey to Atlanta. Just what Lathrop had to do with
it no one could adequately explain, but there was undeniably a sinister
significance.
He was at the park again the following day but Mary and the child
did not appear. The next afternoon Jim was on Riverside Drive at the
hour he knew a nurse would naturally go walking. Pauline recognized
him first, nor, in the eagerness with which she greeted him, did he
lose sight of the apprehension which blanched the pretty face of Mary
Lannigan.
"That," proclaimed the tactful Pauline, designating Jim's gold
toothpick, "is vulgar."
"G'wan. Why?"
"Gentlemen," she explained, "do not use _gold_ toothpicks."
Jim turned quizzically to Mary. "Aint she the bright kid?" He grew
serious then--"Come out of it, Sister. I aint gonna eat you."
He walked with them to Central Park. In response to his unspoken
command, Mary sent Pauline to play with the other children and she and
Jim sat together on the bench. It was Jim who spoke first, after he had
lighted one of his offensively fragrant cigars.
"Get me straight, Mary--I don't want to cause you no trouble ... but
you've got my curiosity aroused something terrible."
For a moment she didn't answer. She sat staring at the path where her
toe was etching aimlessly in the dust. And finally she faced him with
a flash of her old-time spirit. "I want you to lay off, Jim. I'm not
pulling anything crooked."
"If you're runnin' straight I aint got no choice, have I?"
"Yes--you have."
"How you make that?"
"You can queer things for me--and," earnestly, "I don't want 'em
queered, Jim--I don't want 'em queered."
There was a little break in her voice which puzzled him. She was deeply
moved--that, in itself, was a novelty. He took her hand gently between
both of his enormous ones and patted it as a father might have done.
"I aint tryin' to butt in on your affairs, Sister, but I'd like to get
the low-down on this. I'll say right off--wait a minute, I'll come
clean with you before you spill anything. You got me curious night
before last with that straight stuff an' all. I know--an' you know I
know--that Tim has a pile salted away which means that I didn't swallow
your bunk about needin' the twenty-per-an'-cakes you're gettin' for
nursin' that kid which has a father who owns three automobiles.
"As I say, that sort of started me off an' I did a little checking up
on my own hook. I learned, among other things, that Noah Lathrop's
name sort of figured in the smugglin' case which sent Tim South--that
indicatin' pretty clear that you ain't workin' in Lathrop's house for
no reason which ought to make Lathrop comfortable. So knowin' what I
know, if you want to loosen up--why, go right to it, Sister, an' I'll
be all ears, like any other jackass."
Her head was bowed and it was plain that she was thinking intensively.
On the grass nearby the children romped, their shrillings cutting
through the balminess of the September evening. From Central Park West
came the clanging of Eighth Avenue cars and the occasional sirening of
automobile traffic. A man and woman on horseback rode down the bridle
path near them and a park policeman strolled by and ostentatiously
looked away as he, with considerable surprise, recognized the obese
Hanvey.
At length she commenced speaking, her voice coming as though from a
great distance. "It's important, Jim, first of all, that you understand
I'm telling the truth. If there's anything I say that aint true--it
aint because I think it aint. I'm giving you the works as I know
'em. I'm telling you--well, first of all, because I want to get it
off my chest. And second, because you'd get wise anyway. And third,
because--Oh! just because.
"I'll commence right at the beginnin', Jim. It started six months ago
when Tim went to Europe. You know he's a real gent and every once in so
often he works the card graft on the big steamers--not often enough for
them to know him. Only when business is dull.
"Well, he was over there loafing around waiting for a certain party to
sail for America again, this party being the grandest sucker which ever
stood a couple of raises for the privilege of drawin' to an in-between
straight. About that time Mr. Noah Lathrop was in Paris doing some
jewelry buying. He goes over there once or twice every year. His firm
is one of the biggest on Maiden Lane. And in Paris at the same time
Lathrop and Tim were, was Walter Yeager."
"Yeager?" Hanvey exhibited keen interest. "In Paris?"
"Yeh. All set for a job. An' get this, Jim--I aint tryin' to get Walt
in bad. He's had a tough enough time already. But even if Walt does run
foul of trouble I can't help it. I'm out to do what I can for Tim ...
that's all I'm thinking of."
Again that little catch in her voice. Jim closed his glassy eyes
sleepily and motioned for her to continue.
"To hold a long story down, Walt Yeager was onto something soft in
Paris. He pulled the job and got away with it--about three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars worth of stones that are stones. It turned the
Paris police inside out and stood 'em on their ear. It was as nifty a
piece of work as you've ever heard of, an' Walt got away with it in a
way you'd be proud of if you knew the details.
"Well, there was Walt with the jewels and nothin' to do with 'em.
The European markets had nine eyes peeled an' Walt didn't dare bring
'em to this country because when he came through the customs there'd
be a stir and a talk--and flooie! So, Walt hearing that Lathrop was
doin' his semi-annual buying, an' knowing that he wasn't more than ten
miles above a shady transaction, went to him, confessed that he had
stolen jewels and asked him what they'd be worth in cash, delivered at
Lathrop's New York office.
"Lathrop was interested, of course. It was a graft for him. He'd run no
risk buying the stuff in New York and since his house has a first class
rep he knew he could slip 'em on the market one by one and the trade
would never be no wiser. They dickered around for awhile and agreed on
one hundred and forty thousand dollars cash, F. O. B. Maiden Lane. And
that's where Tim was pulled into the deal.
"Walt Yeager wasn't willing to declare those jewels at the customs
and he wasn't game to try and smuggle 'em. So he told Lathrop that in
order to carry the deal through Lathrop must hire some one to do the
smuggling. Yeager and Lathrop both inquired around and learned that Tim
was over there--he bein' at that time in Bremen waiting for his sucker
friend. He had gone there from Paris. Lathrop went to Germany, found
Tim and offered him five thousand dollars for the job of smuggling.
"Tim grabbed it. It seemed like a cinch. And that's where Lathrop done
Tim dirt--because," she turned her blazing eyes on Jim Hanvey--"the
dirty crook never told Tim that the jewels he was supposed to smuggle
was stolen goods!"