The story told by Evelyn Hatch--Evelyn was her given name--was twice
repeated by John and Brennan the next day, first to P. Q. and then to
the publisher of their paper. It was decided that Hatch's own story
should be obtained and, if possible, put in affidavit form. Following
their conferences with P. Q. and the "chief" they went directly to the
county jail where "Big Jim" was brought down from his cell at their
request.
He greeted them genially, offering them cigars as they led him to a
quiet corner of the reception room.
"I always try to be a good scout with newspaper men," Hatch said,
smiling. "I've had considerable experience with reporters and I've
always found them square and fair. And, without speaking personally, of
course, I can tell you that you reporters do more to eradicate crime
than all the police in the country."
"Hatch," said Brennan, ignoring the compliment, "we've had a talk with
your wife."
"You promised me you'd let her alone," said "Big Jim" sharply.
"We never spoke to her until she told us she wanted to see us," John put
in. "As I was leaving the house after you were arrested she stopped me
and asked me to come back, saying she had something to tell me."
The anger that had blazed in Hatch's eyes when he suspected them of
violating their promise softened to tenderness.
"Poor kid," he said, "it's a hard jolt for her." He hesitated a moment
and then added, "She's the only one in the world who really cares what
becomes of me. Well, what did she have to say to you?"
"You can guess, can't you?" asked Brennan.
"I suppose I could, but I'm not going to," returned Hatch.
"She wants to help you," said Brennan.
"You don't have to tell me that."
"What she told us she revealed with the sole thought of trying to help."
Drawing mild little puffs of smoke from his cigar "Big Jim" waited
silently, thoughtfully, for Brennan to continue.
"She told us about your trouble with 'Gink' Cummings--the whole
business." Brennan watched Hatch's face intently as he spoke. "And to
prove it I'll repeat her story to us, exactly as she told it."
While Brennan was relating what Mrs. Hatch had told them "Big Jim" sat
motionless in his chair, his head bowed on his chest. John watched the
ash in Hatch's cigar turning from a glowing red to a heatless gray. When
Brennan finished Hatch spoke without raising his head.
"Poor little kid," he said, tenderly. He straightened up in his chair,
tossed away his cigar and scrutinized Brennan keenly.
"Every word she spoke is the truth; every word of it, and, more," he
said. "I've decided to take my jolt back in New York so I can get back
to her as soon as I can. She'll wait for me, I know she will. Whether
you can help me or not, I'll tell you everything."
John felt his heart jump in his breast.
"When?" asked Brennan quickly.
"Now," said Hatch.
"Shoot," said Brennan.
"There's no use going over what Evelyn told you again," said Big Jim,
without a second's hesitation. "I'll swear to every word she said. But
there's something she didn't tell you, because she didn't know it.
"Did you notice that I called Gibson by name when he arrested me?"
Brennan nodded.
"Well, where do you suppose I saw him to know him by sight?"
Without waiting for an answer, he snapped out:
"In 'Gink' Cummings' apartment!"
John discovered that he had been holding his breath. Gibson in
Cummings' apartment! A thrill like a mild electric shock shot up and
down his spine.
"The 'Gink's' apartment?" asked Brennan.
"That's the place," Hatch confirmed. "It was about a month ago. I can
give you the exact day and hour later. I went to Cummings to try to
settle things between us, without Evelyn knowing it. We were alone
together when someone knocked on the door. Cummings answered it. As he
left the room he pulled the door to close it, but it swung back open and
I saw into the hallway.
"I saw Gibson enter. I didn't know who it was then and suppose it was
pure curiosity that made me watch them. They talked for a minute and
then Gibson started toward the door of the room I was in. As he did so,
Cummings saw that the door was open and stepped over and closed it. That
was all I saw.
"I heard Cummings say, 'Don't do this again.' When he came back he told
me there could be no settlement between us except I split with him and I
left. The next day I saw Gibson's photograph in a newspaper and it
nearly knocked me off my chair. Just to make sure I hunted Gibson up and
when I saw him I knew I couldn't have been mistaken. Gibson was the man
I saw in Cummings' apartment.
"I'm sure that Cummings doesn't realize that I saw Gibson that night. If
he had known it he would never have had me arrested and yet I was afraid
to threaten him with it. I thought that if I told him I had seen Gibson
at his place he would have bumped me off, but now that I'm here in jail
I have nothing to fear. He won't dare to tell the authorities about my
jobs in Los Angeles because if he does he'll make my story stronger.
Besides, all he knows is that I got the money. He doesn't know whom I
got it from or when or how.
"That's my addition to Evelyn's story. That's how I knew it was Gibson
when he stepped in to arrest me. You can see how it worked out. When I
defied Cummings he arranged with Gibson to arrest me. He had Gibson do
it because Gibson is his man and he wants the public to think that they
are enemies. I'm telling you this because after I do my bit back in New
York I'm going straight, with Evelyn. I'm going to pay back every cent I
ever took from anyone and, perhaps, sometime we'll have a home and--what
she said."
Overwhelmed mentally by the condemning information against Gibson which
had been given them by "Big Jim," John was startled by Brennan's first
words after Hatch had stopped speaking.
"What a fat-head I am!" Brennan exclaimed.
Hatch's face showed that he shared John's surprise at Brennan's
ejaculation.
"Oh, what a sap I am!" he continued. "Why, oh, why haven't we shadowed
them? Why haven't we followed them night and day until we found them
together? Why didn't one of us spot the 'Gink's' apartment?"
"You're lucky you haven't," Hatch put in. "You couldn't have gotten away
with it. They probably would have killed you. Anyway, I doubt very much
if they actually meet each other now. The 'Gink' warned Gibson when I
saw them that he was not to 'do this again,' which meant he shouldn't
come to the apartment."
"They're in communication with each other, somehow," said Brennan.
"There's the telephone, or they may be using the mails, or they may have
a confidential agent, a go-between," Hatch suggested.
"I don't think the 'Gink' would take a chance with a go-between," said
Brennan.
Before they left him to hurry back to the office, Hatch agreed to make
an affidavit containing what he had told them, including the portion of
the story told by his wife, and had consented to allow them to obtain a
sworn statement from Mrs. Hatch.
"There's only one thing wrong with what we got from 'Big Jim,'" Brennan
said as they left the jail, "and that is that it comes from a man facing
a term in the penitentiary. It's difficult for people to believe a
confessed swindler like Hatch, although he's telling the truth. Even his
wife's story would be received skeptically simply because she is his
wife. Gibson has such a hold on the city, such a reputation for honesty
and integrity, such influential support, that his mere denial of what
Hatch says would be believed implicitly."
"But consider Hatch's story along with the framed-up Spring street raid
and the information we have of how Cummings opened and closed the town
to convince the people that Gibson is the only man who can stop crime,"
John argued.
"We must look at it from the reader's viewpoint," said Brennan. "It's
the reader whom we have to convince. He wants facts, plain, hard facts.
We have nothing to actually show that Cummings framed the Spring street
raid in collusion with Gibson. We have nothing to actually show that the
opening and closing of the city by Cummings was to build up a reputation
for Gibson. All that is mere inference, suspicion. And the weakness in
Hatch's story is in the fact that he is a crook himself, although you
and I know that he told us the truth."
"Then we haven't enough yet?" said John.
"I'm afraid not."
"But you said last night that Cummings had made his one big mistake."
"And I wasn't wrong when I said it. We don't have to take Hatch's story
simply as it stands. It's up to us now to get corroboration enough to
make it undeniable."
"How?"
"By finding someone who has seen Gibson visit Cummings' apartment, a
janitor, a neighbor, the clerk at the desk, anyone."
"Suppose no one saw him."
"Then we must find out how they are communicating with each other. We
can tap the telephone in Cummings' apartment and those at Gibson's
office and home if it comes to that."
P. Q. and the "chief" upheld Brennan's judgment that Hatch's story
needed more corroboration than that given by his wife and that the
attack on Gibson, exposing him as a fraud, would have to be postponed
until one more link was added to the chain of evidence against him. It
was decided that Brennan and John should concentrate their endeavors in
an effort to discover the method of communication between Gibson and
the "Gink."
* * * * *
That night John saw Consuello again and realized with a suddenness that
shocked him that he loved her.
The tremendousness of his realization that he was in love with her
frightened him, and yet he was gloriously happy. Exultant joy, a rapture
faintly akin to the ecstasy that had thrilled him the first Christmas
morning he could remember, gave a buoyancy to his brain, his heart, his
soul. He knew that he had loved her from the moment he met her and
regardless of what the future held for them he would go on loving her
forever.
Returning to his desk after the conference in the "chief's" office on
the story told by "Big Jim" Hatch, John found a sheet of copy paper
stuck in the roller of his typewriter. That was the office boy's way of
leaving memoranda of telephone calls for the reporters.
"Call Miss Carrillo at the studio," John read. He went immediately to
the telephone booth.
"There will be a pre-view of the picture, my latest, here tonight and I
thought you might like to see it," she said. "Reggie is so busy
campaigning that he can't be here," she added.
"I would like it," he told her.
"Can you come?"
"Yes, certainly."
"Splendid," she said. "The pre-view will be at 7:30, but can't you get
here earlier so we can have dinner together and talk?"
"At six, then," he suggested.
"At six," she assented.
He wondered why it was he felt relieved when she said that Gibson would
not be there with them.
It was dusk when he reached the studio a few minutes before six. She had
waited for him in her dressing room to which he was escorted by the
maid.
"There's a little place a few blocks away where we always go for dinner
when we're kept late," she said. "I discovered it myself. I delight in
finding little out-of-the-way places to eat. Reggie can't understand it.
He's uncomfortable every minute of the time we're there."
"You would have liked my father," he said. "Almost every week he treated
mother and me by taking us to dinner at some genuinely picturesque place
he had found. Sometimes it would be a little Spanish restaurant in
Sonora Town, sometimes an Italian cafe in North Broadway and sometimes a
French table de hote, which I liked best. Mother was like you say
Gibson is, uncomfortable every minute, but father and I enjoyed it
immensely. One night, when mother wasn't with us, we had tamales at one
of those wagon lunch places drawn up at the curb near the Plaza and
lighted by a sputtering kerosene range and a lantern that gave it an
appearance of being a ship's cabin. I'll never forget it."
"You miss your father greatly, don't you?" she said. The sympathy in her
voice was like soothing music.
"Everything in me that amounts to anything I owe to him," he said.
They walked to the "little place around the corner," as Consuello
referred to it. The dinner was served to them at a corner table in a
spotlessly clean room of "Mother" Graham's cafe, which was only large
enough to accommodate a dozen couples. The proprietress, "Mother"
Graham, who took as much pride in her cookery as the chef of the most
expensive cafe, greeted Consuello effusively.
"And how's my little darling, tonight?" she asked. "'Mother' Graham
shall serve you herself, for it's not every night that I see your dear
face."
The dinner was plain, appetizing home cooking; delicious brown chops,
crisp cool salad, fragrant coffee and hot rolls; berries and cream.
Once John caught a glimpse of "Mother" Graham pointing out Consuello to
a pop-eyed girl and her youthful escort as "Jean Hope."
"I am being envied," he said across the table.
"By whom?"
"By everyone who sees us. I do not blame them, for I am to be envied."
"Because you are with Jean Hope?" she smiled.
"Because I am with Consuello Carrillo," he answered. "I do not know Jean
Hope yet. I am to meet her, tonight."
"You saw her before the camera," she reminded him.
"But never on the screen," he returned.
"And what if you don't like her?"
"My consolation will be that she is only a shadow, a make-believe."
"You are different," she told him, "and it's not because you lack
imagination. Most everyone does not disassociate a film player from her
shadow. They think of her always as the type or character in which they
admire her most. To them she is always the same, always perfect, a
picture, a memory. How disappointed those dream lovers would be if they
could suddenly be brought face to face with the player as she really is,
with her little vanities and human frailties."
"Disappointed or disillusioned, which?" he asked.
"You are right," she replied, "they would be disillusioned rather than
disappointed. There is a difference. For instance, I would be
disappointed rather than disillusioned in Reggie if he should blunder
and miss his opportunity of becoming mayor of Los Angeles."
Her words struck him like a blow. They brought to him the realization
again that she faced a disillusionment of which she had no warning. How
could he save her from it? Would she go on believing in Gibson? It would
be like her to defend him until the last, to go with him to a place
where his disgrace was not known and begin life all over again.
"Suppose," he said, watching her intently, "that it was not
disappointment but disillusionment."
"You mean--in Reggie?" she asked, apparently unable to comprehend what
he had said.
Unable to speak the word, he nodded. She laughed lightly and he forced
himself to smile.
"I know him too well to ever be disillusioned," she said.
"Love, they say, is blind," he ventured.
"I know his faults as I do mine," she said slowly, "and love him for
them. You see, we've known each other since we were children."
He could not reply. The awfulness of the truth dumbed him and an
impetuous desire to protect her swept through him. But he was powerless,
helpless. A wild idea of sacrificing his loyalty to his paper by warning
Gibson of the impending exposure of his perfidy so that he might
renounce "Gink" Cummings and be worthy of Consuello's love flashed in
and out of his brain.
His silence seemed to mystify her. When she spoke it was as though she
might have a vague premonition of his confused thoughts.
"But there's no need for my having an apprehension that he will blunder,
is there?" she asked.
"We all make mistakes," he said, conscientiously trying to assure her.
He realized, however, that his answer sounded evasive and fearful of
further questioning he added, hastily, "His election is conceded by
everyone."
They rose from the table. To "Mother" Graham, perched on a stool behind
a cash register near the door, he paid for their dinner and they stepped
out into the street. Night had descended quickly. The cool, refreshing
breeze from the ocean that tempers the warmth of the day was coming in
gently, caressingly, soothingly from the west, and worries fled away
with it like dead leaves whisked from the trees.
During the pre-view, which lasted an hour and a half, John had but few
chances to converse with Consuello. She was busy with Bonwit, the
director, and a half dozen others whom John decided were the technicians
whose business it was to revise the film before it was released. They
sat grouped in a semi-circle and several times certain scenes were
flashed on the screen repeatedly for closer observation.
The girl he saw on the screen was much more like Consuello in real life
than the girl he had seen before the camera. The make-up that had
transformed her features for her part in the picture was indiscernible
on the screen and marvelously the real Consuello was before him. The
"close-up" for which she had posed alone, holding the bouquet of
daisies, was even prettier than it had been when she enacted it. He
realized now what were the results sought by the camera men in shifting
the reflectors. Like a halo, sunlight shone around her face, through the
loose tresses of her hair, giving it an ethereal appearance.
So intently did he study every move, every expression of Consuello's on
the screen that he had completely overlooked the story of the
photoplay. The scene in which the actor embraced Consuello and gazed
fervently heavenward was far more impressive than it had been when it
was enacted and the "close-up" of his features, over her shoulder, John
decided was really an excellent bit of facial expression.
When the pre-view was completed and the lights were flashed on again in
the small room, Consuello came directly to him.
"Now, what do you think of 'Jean Hope,' do you like her?" she asked.
"I adore her," he said, without restraint.
The almost timid look of incredulousness he remembered having noticed
when he told her she was beautiful at the Barton Randolph lawn fete came
into her eyes. For a fraction of a second they looked into each other's
faces and something that she saw told her that his adoration was not
only for the image of herself that he had seen upon the screen. She
caught her underlip between her teeth and looked down.
"We can go now," she said, a note in her voice that he had never heard
before.
They did not speak as they walked toward the gates of the studio and it
was then he realized that he loved her. In that moment he was
transported to an indescribable happiness. She seemed a fairy creature
at his side, too beautiful to touch, too wonderful to speak to.
An automobile stopped beside them. Bonwit, at the wheel, leaned out
over the side.
"Can't I give you two a lift home?" he asked.
John looked toward Consuello and heard her say:
"No, thanks; it's only a few blocks home and we'll walk--it's such
a--a--a glorious night."