DENNISON TALKS ONCE MORE
By noon next day, Bat Scanlon had gotten into communication with
Ashton-Kirk; the two had lunch in the quiet depths of a rathskeller,
where they ate and talked, and afterward smoked, to the drone of some
stringed instruments.
Scanlon told of his experiences of the previous night, and the
criminologist listened with the keenest interest.
"So," said he, at length, "our friend, Big Slim, proves to be a person
of some parts. I must meet him. And the Swiss!" Here Ashton-Kirk uttered
a little clicking sound, expressive of great admiration. "If criminal he
be, he is of the superlative sort. As you have just remarked, when that
kind _are_ crooked, their angles are of the deadliest. It will be my
good fortune, perhaps, when meeting the burglar, to encounter this
gentleman also."
"But Nora," questioned Bat, coming to the point which was of most
interest to him, "what of her? What about her being in that place?"
Ashton-Kirk bent his brows, and one well kept hand smoothed the shaven
chin.
"You say," and there was an inquiring glint in his eyes, "she was rather
on friendly terms with the burglar."
"Why," replied Bat, reluctantly, "I wouldn't say friendly, exactly. She
was laughing and did seem very much at her ease while she talked to him,
I'll admit that. But what of the other things? What of the creeping
across the room with the gun in her hand--of her listening at the wall?
And what of the look of fear I saw on her face when that fellow opened
the door for her to go out?"
Ashton-Kirk nodded.
"Of course," said he. "We must not overlook anything." Glancing at his
watch, and apparently dismissing this particular point from his mind, he
added: "It's now two-thirty, and I want to run around to the Polo Club.
Will you come along?"
Mr. Scanlon was willing, and so they made their way from the rathskeller
into the sunlight. The Polo Club occupied a magnificent modern building
in a prominent location. They passed in at a door which was opened by a
man in uniform, ostentatious in its soberness; at the end of a room,
rich in rugs and paintings, they encountered another man, stout and
impassive.
"Is Mr. Dennison here, do you know, Hocking?" asked Ashton-Kirk.
"Yes, sir, in the smoking-room," replied the man, impassively, but with
certainty.
In the smoking-room they came upon Dennison, purple of jowl, with his
white fat hands folded across his paunch, smoking a cigarette and
looking out at a window.
"Oh, how are you?" lifting his eyes, but never stirring. "How do,
Scanlon?"
"Quite comfortable here of an afternoon," said Ashton-Kirk as he dropped
into a chair at the other side of the window. "I had no idea."
"How could you have?" complained Dennison; "you drop in only once or
twice in a year, and then only of a night, and when old Hungerford is in
town."
Ashton-Kirk smiled as he thought of those rare nights with Hungerford
over the chess board--nights when he matched himself against an
intelligence almost mystical, and out of each contact with which he
emerged, drenched with new understanding.
"I suppose that's so," he admitted. "But I should get here oftener." He
looked interestedly at the other, and added: "Get over your little jolt
of the other night all right?"
"I'm pretty shaky." Dennison looked at Bat who had possessed himself of
an easy chair. "I don't know if Scanlon knows anything about how I'm
doing or not. He's giving me confounded little attention. Never in, it
seems, when I get there, and one of his understrappers must put me
through."
"It all depends on yourself at this point in the race," spoke Scanlon,
easily. "In a week or so _I'll_ be ready to take you on. I'll be able to
see what I'm doing then."
"Oh, I say, I'm not so beastly fleshy as all that!" protested Dennison,
indignantly.
"Don't pay any attention to him," said Ashton-Kirk, smiling. "A thing
such as you went through would be likely to upset any one."
"Of course it would," agreed Dennison, eagerly. "Tom Burton and myself
were pretty intimate, and to find out suddenly that he'd gone down like
that! Of course it would upset any one."
"You knew Burton for a long time, did you?"
"Not so very; maybe for seven or eight years. I met him at Danforth's
place one night when he was playing roulette in big luck. That was about
a year before he married Nora Cavanaugh, the actress." Dennison lighted
a flat Turkish cigarette and inhaled a deep draught of smoke. "I was
kind of surprised to hear about him being married, for he'd always
talked against that state. He said it got a man into a great lot of
trouble."
"Where was it you saw him on the night of his taking off?" asked the
investigator.
"Why, at Danforth's. Things were a little dull," as though feeling an
explanation of his presence in the gambling-house were necessary, "and I
thought I'd drop around and get a little excitement out of the game if I
could. Burton was there and had just been cleaned out; he was in an
impatient sort of humor and was damning things at a tolerable speed.
Nothing vicious, you know, but just enough to show his ginger."
"Had you much of a conversation with him?"
"Yes; quite a long one." Dennison puffed at his cigarette, quite pleased
that he had an interested audience for his, for the time, favorite
topic. "You see, when Tom was in hard luck, he was a great fellow for
going back and calling up a lot of disagreeable things that had happened
to him. Maybe that doesn't sound very cheerful, but it wasn't so bad to
listen to. Burton had a past that was a bit different, you see. While
I'm sure he was a first-class sport in all essential things, still he
had mingled with a lot of people such as one seldom hears of outside
novels. His comments upon his family were also rather frequent. Usually,
if a fellow dislikes his family, he keeps it to himself, but Burton,
when he was in the dumps, talked about it. His son, Frank, who draws the
sporting cartoons for the _Standard_ came in for an especially strong
dressing down that night. It seems he makes a remarkable salary--for
he's devilish clever, I think--and yet, when his father was broke, and
called on him at odd times, over the telephone, for a little tide to
carry him over the bar, he always turned him down flat. Tom regarded
this as rank ingratitude. He was the boy's father, he said, and was
entitled to certain consideration and respect. He boiled over the thing
and said he meant to square the account some day."
"Burton as the wronged father is funny," observed Scanlon. "Why didn't
he have a little quivery music, and some paper snow flakes to fall on
him? That would have increased the effect."
"Maybe he wasn't altogether wrong," said Dennison, as though feeling
bound to defend his friend. "A son has certain duties toward his father,
I believe. But Burton couldn't expect much of that sort of thing from
his children; for it seems they weren't trained right. You know their
mother must have been a queer sort; set in her ways, and always
complaining. She had the country school teacher's idea of life, and what
part of it should be lived; and Burton never hit it with her properly.
She brought up her children with the same views as her own; their father
was always pointed out as the kind of person they must avoid. And with
that sort of thing sounded in their ears continually, of course their
attitudes, as they became older, were to be expected."
"Well, from all accounts," said Scanlon, "they have a pretty good
argument on their side--neglect and all that. Burton wasn't your idea of
a family man, was he?"
"Well, no, not exactly," confessed Dennison. "But then, I don't put
myself up as a judge of such things. However, I've got a notion it would
be hard to live with a silent, religious wife, a son you knew hated you,
and a daughter who had--er--well--spells."
Ashton-Kirk bent his head forward a trifle and a look of interest
glinted in his keen eyes.
"Spells?" asked he. "What do you mean?"
Dennison smiled broadly.
"That's an expression I got from an old colored man who used to work for
my father years ago. Queer how such things stick to one, isn't it? But I
don't just know how to describe what Burton told me about his daughter
in any other way. She wasn't an epileptic. That's a thing one goes down
under; and _her_ case was just the reverse. She was, as a rule, propped
up in a chair, as weak as a kitten; but when these things took her, she
grew immensely strong and sort of wild."
"I see," said Ashton-Kirk. And Scanlon, as he watched, saw him, so to
speak, store the fact carefully away in his memory. "Can you remember
anything else Burton talked about that night?"
"Why, yes, to be sure." Dennison looked at the still figure of the
investigator through the light rifts of smoke. "You seem to have a
fair-sized interest in the matter," he added.
Ashton-Kirk nodded.
"Yes," he replied. "There is more to it than the police have shown; and
I'm interested in the son's predicament."
"Nasty mess for him," agreed Dennison, pursing up his thick lips.
"Terrible kick up, that's a fact. Glad I'm not in it." He smoked for a
moment or two and then proceeded. "What was on Tom's mind most of all
that night was the condition of his pocketbook. According to his
statement it was pretty flat. He'd come into Danforth's with about fifty
dollars--all he had--hoping for a little luck at the wheel; but even
that slipped away from him."
"Did he have anything in mind, do you know, that would get him out of
his difficulties?"
"I suggested that he try his son once more," said Dennison. "But he
didn't seem to take kindly to the notion. After a while he began to hint
at some little matter--I couldn't quite get its nature." Ashton-Kirk's
eyes narrowed as Dennison proceeded: "And he seemed to have some
confidence in its turning out well."
"You say you couldn't _quite_ get its nature." Ashton-Kirk was still
regarding the man steadily. "Am I to take from that that you _did_
understand a part of it?"
Dennison stirred uneasily.
"Why, yes," he replied. "I think I did. As I said a while ago, I've
always believed him to be a sport who was strictly on the level--though
I'll admit there are a lot of men I know who think just the other way
around. But, though I do believe it, I'll agree, as I said before, he'd
been a little different and had mixed with a queer lot of characters.
Well, from what he dropped, the matter he had in hand that night had one
of these people somewhere in the background."
"You got no details?"
"Not any. Part of the time he talked _at_ me--not _to_ me, at all. He
was regretting certain things; how he'd given up opportunities of profit
so as to hold a place for himself in the society he moved in. He argued
that if a man could bet on the turn of a card, or a wheel, in a place
like Danforth's--which is an illegal establishment--why could he not do
certain other things, which were also merely illegal, without losing
caste. He had a habit of arguing this way when he was broke; but I never
took him quite seriously. As a matter of fact, I never was sure as to
what he meant; once or twice I asked, but he always turned the matter
off, and began to talk about something else.
"He was always close about details or confidences in things like that,"
proceeded Dennison. "I've sometimes thought this reticence is what made
the talk about him. But he was very angry that night; he stormed up and
down," and here Dennison gestured with his cigarette, with the manner of
one who is determined to hold back nothing. "And he did drop something,
after a little, something, I'll admit, that made me wonder what was up."
"Have you any objections to telling what that was?" asked Ashton-Kirk,
smoothly.
"No, of course not." Dennison looked exceedingly virtuous. "If it'll do
any good, it ought to be known. I think I told you, last time we met,
that when Tom Burton left me that night he said he was going to see a
man on some business--something that would bring a profit. Remember?
Well, he didn't mention the man's name; but without realizing it, right
in the middle of the talk he let out the nature of his occupation."
"What was that?" asked Scanlon.
"The man was a burglar."