WHAT DANNY SAW AT QUIGLEY'S
Bat Scanlon touched the cue ball, deftly; the ball it struck broke away
at a sharp angle and vanished into a pocket.
"I'm getting case hardened," was the big athlete's mental comment. "A
day or two ago this news would have rocked me to the foundations; now
I'm not even jarred."
But, as he straightened up, he said to the burglar:
"So friend husband went out under the care of the lad with the concave
face! Well, well! That is some startling tidings."
"I could send him to the chair if I wanted to," said Big Slim,
longingly. "But I never hook up with the 'bulls' for anything. So I'll
just either 'gun' him, or you'll slug him, whichever way it turns out."
"Keep the gun hid," advised Bat. "You can't get away with that stuff.
I'll take this fellow on, and in a morning or two you'll hear how he's
holding down a bed in a neighboring hospital with enough bruises and
contusions to fill a peach basket."
"All right," said Big Slim, grinning appreciatively. "The job's in your
hands. Don't be too long, for Bohlmier's waiting, and it was his idea in
the first place."
"It might come off in an hour,--who knows?" said Bat. "But," with a
glance at Fenton, "it does seem a pity to crush all that enthusiasm. He
must be happier at this minute than he's been for years."
The broken-nosed man's excitement seemed to increase; he talked with
many gestures; now and then he laughed in a delighted sort of way and
slapped Hutchinson on the shoulder. The latter smoothed his waved hair
and looked vastly interested; now and then when an opportunity came in
Fenton's flood of talk he asked a question, and after each answer he
seemed to advance a key toward the high pitch of the other.
"In a second or two," remarked Bat, in a low voice, "he'll be rumpling
his hair; and if he ever does that, he'll never get over it."
For at least a half hour the talk went on between the two; at the finish
Hutchinson was quite as excited as Fenton.
"It's a pipe," Bat heard him declare in an exultant tone; "a regular
pipe. All we got to do is to----" Here the voice sank and he went on,
his hands clutching Fenton's arms in a strong grip. The intense
eagerness of the two, the excitement which one had imparted to the
other, interested Bat. So many curious and unaccountable things had
happened of late that he had gotten into the habit of looking for them,
and it was with difficulty that he separated even ordinary occurrences
from the matter which had been so growing in his mind. It might be, so
ran his thought, that this incident had its place in the chain he had
seen making--a tangled, hopeless chain to him, without beginning or end.
"But then again--and it's a thousand to one against--it might be nothing
at all," was Bat's next judgment. "I'm getting all mixed in my signals
and----"
Here he became aware that Big Slim was talking to him; the burglar had
run the game out and had put away his cue.
"As you've taken on this thing for me," he was saying, "I'm going across
the river to look up some prospects."
"All right," said Bat, nodding. "Go ahead. I'll stick around a while."
With a wink and a gesture of the thumb toward Fenton, Big Slim went
away. Bat carelessly stepped nearer to the two men and seemed greatly
interested in a racing chart posted upon the wall.
"I told you there was a chance," Fenton was saying. "Didn't I? I knew
the thing would pull up at Quigley's some time or another, didn't I?"
"I didn't think much of it," said Hutchinson, with the air of one who
was wrong, and is quite delighted with his bigness in acknowledging it.
"But I can see now that I didn't look at it right."
"Leave it to me," said Fenton, smiling expansively. "Little tricks like
this are right in my line. And now I'll tell you what we'll do;
we'll----"
But Hutchinson stopped him.
"Wait," said he. "Don't be in a rush. This ain't the kind of a thing to
hurry through. You've got to take your time; you've got to think it
out." The broken-nosed man seemed impressed by both the manner and the
words of the other; and, noting this, Hutchinson went on: "Sleep on it.
That's a good way. And I'll do the same. Then I'll run in to your place
to-morrow afternoon, and we can put your ideas into good shape."
Fenton seemed to consider this quite a sober, steadying notion, and
after a few moments more of conversation the man with the ornamental
hair went back to the superintending of his pool tables, and the other
took his departure.
Bat followed him. The big athlete was not at all sure but that Big Slim
would be lurking somewhere outside in order to see if he made any move
to carry out his promise against Fenton; and to be seen close upon the
trail of the broken-nosed man would be excellent testimony of his good
faith.
"And then," he told himself as he went along, Fenton in plain sight, "I
want to locate this party, anyway. It will be useful in the show-down."
Fenton stepped out of the little back-water in which Gaffney's place
lay, and into the full flood of the glittering, high-smelling avenue.
Here there was a danger of losing him in the press and Bat increased his
speed, working his way nearer to his quarry. In a few blocks there was
another turn, this time into an unfrequented street which had a familiar
look. Bat fell back here, and took to the opposite side, holding close
to the buildings and walking upon the balls of his feet so as to avoid
the usual ringing heel strokes. At the mouth of an alley, Fenton
slackened his speed and then disappeared. Bat, from the other side of
the street, inspected the place, with mouth twisted awry.
"I've got it," said he. "That's the alley I slipped into the night I
tagged after Bohlmier and his pal. And in the said alley is located the
house they went into. I wonder," and here he stroked his jaw, "if this
fellow with the broken nose has anything to do with the room they broke
into through the wall?"
The more he considered this point, the more likely it seemed to be true;
and if it were, then Ashton-Kirk had known of Fenton long since.
"Yes, he was onto him," mused Scanlon, his thoughts turning to that
night's meeting with the disguised investigator in the same building.
"Kirk's had him spotted."
He lingered for some time looking into the gloom of the alley; then it
occurred to him that nothing further could be done there, and that a
great deal might be done somewhere else. Instantly he started along the
street, heading for the same cab stand which Ashton-Kirk and himself had
patronized on the night of which he had just been thinking. Here he
secured a taxi, and in a short time drew up at the investigator's door.
Stumph admitted him, and as he mounted the stairs toward the study, he
heard the voice of Ashton-Kirk.
"Hello! Glad to see you." The investigator greeted him with a
hand-shake. "Do you know that your office staff is also here?"
"Danny?" said Bat. "No, is he? What's the idea?"
"Came to make a report, I suppose. Didn't you get my note saying I had
borrowed him for a while?"
"Oh, yes," said Bat. "That's so."
He followed the other into the study, and there they saw Danny, his red
hair glowing under the lights and deep in the pages of some illustrated
papers. But he got up and stood looking at his employer with a grin.
"Hello, Mr. Scanlon," said he. "I hope you ain't mad or nothin' for my
going away and leaving the office."
"I've explained all that, Danny," said Ashton-Kirk, and Bat nodded
good-humoredly. "And now let's hear what you have to tell."
"I tried to get you on the telephone an hour ago," said Danny, as they
all three sat down at the table. "Maybe it was longer than that. But Mr.
Stumph said you wasn't in, and then I told him I was coming around to
wait till you got here."
"Quite right," smiled the crime specialist, approvingly.
"When we left the office," Danny told Scanlon, "we took a taxi. And we
went to the Chandler Building. And up on the sixteenth floor we went
into an office which was empty. Mr. Ashton-Kirk told me I was to stay
there and was to watch things that happened in the place across the
hall."
"A sort of speculator in precious stones," said Ashton-Kirk, to Bat. "He
buys and sells; and his buying is not always aboveboard. He is also a
pawnbroker in a large way."
"I see," said Bat.
"There is a glass in the door of the place," proceeded Danny, eagerly,
"glass that you can see through. And I could look through the keyhole of
the office I was in right into Mr. Quigley's."
"Quigley's!" said Bat, anxiously, for this was the name he had caught in
the excited conversation between Fenton and Hutchinson.
"That's the name of the man who keeps the diamond place," Danny informed
him. "There was little boxes, like stalls, right up at a counter, and
all with doors on them. People went into these, and then nobody could
see who they were. Mr. Quigley would stand back of the counter and talk
to them; you could see _him_, all right, and the safe where he keeps his
money and watches and things. There was a good many people went in--some
of them ladies--and I thought I'd get a sore eye from peeping through
the keyhole; but there wasn't anybody," to Ashton-Kirk, "like the one
you told me about."
"You are sure?" asked the investigator.
"Now wait!" begged Danny, who had no desire to spoil the effect of his
story by over-haste. "At noon time the waiter from the lunch place came
up and handed me in the eats you said he would. While I was feeding
myself, I stood up close, to the door so's I could hear if any one
stopped at the shop across the way. If they didn't, then I didn't have
to peep."
"A good idea," approved Ashton-Kirk.
"So that's what I done after that," said Danny. "When I heard anybody
open Quigley's door I looked out to see if it was the lady you wanted.
After a while I heard somebody walk down the hall and stop outside my
door. They didn't go in at the diamond place, and they didn't go on
along down the hall, so I peeped to see who it was. I knowed it would be
a man, because he walked so heavy.
"But he stood so close up to my door that I could see only a piece of
his back; after a bit, though, he got across the hall, and I had a good
shot at him; he was kind of bent over and was looking into Quigley's,
too. While he was there I heard somebody else coming, and this time it
was a lady, because she came click-click-click like ladies do with their
high heels. And as soon as he heard the noise, the man at the door of
the diamond place beat it along the hall in a hurry. And then the lady
went into Quigley's."
"What sort of a lady?" asked Ashton-Kirk.
"I don't know," replied Danny, apologetically. "She had a veil on that
covered over her face; but she was a young lady; I could see that by her
dress and her shoes and her hat. She went into one of the little stalls,
and Mr. Quigley commenced to talk to her. And then the man who had been
looking in at the door came back and began to look in again, only this
time he seemed like he was excited about something. He was afraid to
stand up and look straight in like he did before; he only peeped in at
one edge, and so I could see in, too. After Mr. Quigley talked to the
lady a while I seen her hands, with gloves on them, reach out of the
stall toward him, and they had a necklace in them that I'll bet was
diamonds."
"A necklace! Was that all?"
"I didn't see anything else. So they talked about it for a long while; a
couple of times Mr. Quigley give it back to her and shook his head like
as if he didn't want to give that much money for it. But she always got
it back to him, and then he put the necklace in the safe and gave her
some money. The man that was looking in at the door blew away again as
the lady came out. She still had her veil on, and as she went up the
hall I opened the door, making believe I was just going out on an
errand, or something, for my boss. And when I got in the hall I seen the
man come from around a corner and stare after the lady like as if she
was the only one in the world."
"Did you notice anything about this man that would make you know him
again if you saw him?" asked Ashton-Kirk.
"Sure," said Danny. "I'd know him all right. He's got a broken nose--the
flattest one I ever saw."