Читать книгу In the Money - Arthur Somers Roche - Страница 4

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A pretty blonde secretary greeted Granard with a warm smile.

“Go in and get kissed,” she said.

“I’d rather stay here,” grinned Granard. “Izzy wouldn’t delegate the task to you, would he?”

“I’m not sure it would be a task.” Her smile was warmer.

“Let’s go into that sometime,” suggested Granard.

“I’m a working girl; I’m only free from five in the afternoon until nine in the morning.”

“Then I’d have to work fast,” said Granard. “Izzy feels mellow?”

“You saved his life. You’ll have a tough time explaining that to Saint Peter.”

“Maybe a long life of penitence will atone,” said Granard. “You don’t like your boss?”

“I always say that newspaper men are quick-witted,” said the girl. “Go in, hero, and modestly accept Izzy’s thanks.”

She threw open the door of an inner office, and Granard entered the room. Mackleton was seated behind a large flat desk on which were two telephones, memorandum-pads and briefs. The stocky lawyer pushed back his chair and advanced toward his visitor.

“Bill!”

“Save it for your next jury,” said Granard. He dropped into a chair beside the desk. Mackleton’s hand, that had been reaching for Granard’s, dropped futilely at his side. He sat down opposite Granard.

“Bill, you saved my life last night.”

“Well, I’m still a nice chap,” said Granard.

Mackleton shook his head almost sorrowfully.

“You don’t fool me, Bill. You pretend to be——”

“Hard. But underneath my tough exterior, I’m even harder. What did you want to see me about this morning?”

“Well, shouldn’t a man want to say something to a man that saved——”

“Put it in a letter,” said Granard. “Izzy, you said something about taking a vacation in the South.”

“Sure I did.” The lawyer beamed. “And when Izzy Mackleton makes suggestions, he backs them up. I got ten grand for clearing Abbott. Well, if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here to spend it. So here’s something for you.”

Across the desk he pushed a piece of paper. Granard noted the amount of the check payable to himself. Ten thousand dollars. He made no move to touch the check.

“What made you think I’d be here this morning?” he asked.

“You’re a newspaper man. A good newspaper man. You’d know that when Izzy Mackleton drops a hint, it’s a good one.”

“I was badly fooled on a couple of your hints last fall,” said Granard.

Mackleton smirked at him.

“But you hadn’t saved my life then.”

Granard nodded.

“You think a lot of that life, don’t you, Izzy? I’d never have valued it at ten thousand. A dime would be closer.”

Mackleton laughed.

“Always the same. Just a kidder. Well, aren’t you going to take it? Don’t you want it?”

“You know I don’t, Izzy,” said Granard. “Izzy, you didn’t even enter this check on the stub. That’s how safe you felt.”

Mackleton colored. His eyes were guilty. Then he laughed.

“Well,” he said, “if you’d taken it, I would have entered it.” Into his eyes crept admiration. “Bill, you never get fooled, do you?”

“I just told you—twice by you. But not again. Izzy, I canceled my reservation to Montreal. My man is getting me a room on the afternoon train to Miami.”

Mackleton clicked his teeth.

“Extravagant! You should have come to see me before you sent him for the ticket. I didn’t say Miami. Palm Beach is the place. Now, maybe you won’t get a refund.”

“And I want to cry,” said Granard. “And why do you want me to go to Palm Beach?”

Mackleton shrugged.

“You’re a funny man, Bill. You like reporting. Twice you have refused to become an editor. Half a dozen times you have turned down good jobs outside your profession. The money doesn’t mean anything to you. You get a hundred and fifty a week from the Globe, and your private income is about eight thousand a year.”

“You didn’t know about the mole under my left shoulder-blade, did you?” asked Granard.

“I could have found out,” said the lawyer.

“Why the interest?” Granard asked.

“I see a lot of you around Broadway. It’s always good to know things.”

“I’m flattered,” said Granard. “You’re right. If I hadn’t known about Murphy Pantadosi last night——”

“You knew that he was going to try to kill me?”

Granard laughed.

“And you didn’t tip me off?” Mackleton’s face grew white. For a moment Granard thought the little lawyer would be ill. But he managed to recover himself.

“Why should I? You lied to me last fall. You needed a little scare. Fool me again, Izzy, and I won’t be there when the next man decides to give you the works.”

Mackleton stared at him.

“And if you hadn’t happened to be quick——”

Granard smiled amiably.

“You get it, Izzy. I wouldn’t be here asking you why you think I ought to go South. And you haven’t told me yet.”

Slowly Mackleton shook his head. He seemed to be debating something with himself.

“Still, you did save my life,” he said reluctantly.

“Maybe, under the circumstances, you’d better tear up that check quickly,” said Granard. “Write another for five thousand, and your sense of proportion will be satisfied. I won’t take that one, either, but you’ll feel better.”

“Bill, you’ve got no use for me at all?”

“Not the slightest,” Granard assented cheerily.

“That’s what I like about you. I wish I could afford to be as honest as you are.”

“You wouldn’t like it, Izzy. You’ll do better the way you are. And time is passing. Why do I go to Palm Beach?”

Mackleton surveyed his visitor wonderingly.

“Last night I was filled with gratitude. You got me right. I was just showing off when I wrote that check. But I did want to do something for you. And I knew, whether it was vacation or not, you’d rather get a line on a story than anything else. You know, Bill, you’re a lot like the newspaper men I used to know twenty-five years ago. Like Frank O’Malley and Lindsay Dennison. You can write, and you know news. And you love your work.”

“So you want me to go to Florida. Get on with it, Izzy.”

“You were in the Cypress Club last night. Anything there strike you as funny?”

“Only your yelp when Murphy drew that gun on you. Izzy, that made us square for your lies last fall.”

“But nothing else?” The lawyer ignored Granard’s derision.

“Nothing particular. Except, maybe, that Jimmy Trimp seems to be in the money again.”

“What made you think that?”

“His wife wore a sable coat that must have cost in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. All his friends seem prosperous lately. I’ve noticed them around here and there. Like the good old days of prohibition. Big tips to headwaiters. All that sort of thing. Heavy spending.”

“You notice things, don’t you?”

“Anyone with his eyes open would notice things like that. But what happened at the Cypress Club last night that I should have noticed?”

“Only what you’ve just told me. Now, if you go down to Palm Beach and sort of breeze around, maybe you’ll get a line on where the money comes from that buys sable coats for the wives of the men like Jimmy Trimp.”

Granard lighted a cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and studied the olive face of the criminal lawyer.

“That wouldn’t be much of a story. I’m afraid the Globe wouldn’t pay the telegraph charges. I’m a reporter, Izzy, not a gossip-writer. Make it clearer.”

“I wouldn’t know how,” said Mackleton.

“You’d make it clearer to a jury,” objected Granard.

“Then there’d be some facts; there’d be a case; there’d be a crime and a defendant.”

“And just now there’s only the fact that Jimmy Trimp’s wife wears a sable coat. Not much of a story in that.”

“No? Well, if you can’t see the lead, I can’t show it to you.”

Granard ground his cigarette in an ash tray on the desk.

“What’s the idea, Izzy? Do you want to be coaxed? You surely don’t expect me to change my plans, go to Florida instead of Canada, on this sort of a tip?”

Mackleton’s thick lips parted in a smile.

“You’d cancel a trip to Africa and go to the North Pole on less than this. Bill, there’s a story in Palm Beach.”

“Of course there is. There’s a story in Belfast, Maine, and another in Peoria. There’s a story everywhere, news everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that I’d sit six months in Maine or Illinois waiting for something to break.”

“You won’t have to wait very long in Palm Beach,” Mackleton assured him.

“Is Jimmy Trimp going down there?”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied the lawyer.

Granard stood up; irritation was in his eyes and voice.

“I hope Murphy Pantadosi gets brooding and takes another try at you, Izzy.”

He drew his coat closer about him and started for the door.

“Don’t get sore,” cried Mackleton. “If I could tell you any more, you know that I would.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.” Granard paused and looked back at the lawyer. “You don’t know, you say. But you must have an idea. What kind of a story do you think is going to break down there?”

“I wouldn’t make a guess. And something else, Bill; we never had this talk; I never tipped you off to go South.”

Granard’s keen eyes studied Mackleton. Something in the lawyer’s voice puzzled him.

“Izzy, are you afraid of something?”

Mackleton attempted bluster.

“Who? Me? What would I be afraid of?”

“Practically anything,” jeered Granard. Speculation appeared in his eyes now. Izzy Mackleton had given him the vaguest, most nebulous reason for going to Florida. But Izzy had made the suggestion out of gratitude. That meant that the lawyer knew definitely that something was going to happen in Palm Beach. Mackleton was afraid to say more than the little he had said. Mackleton wanted assurance that this little would never be repeated by Granard.

“Okay, Izzy. If you’ve been playing games with me, you’ll be terribly sorry. Because I know games myself. I’m just mean enough to play one on a little shyster that did things to me.”

“The things you say when you’re kidding,” said Mackleton. “I’m not playing a game, Bill.”

Granard nodded curtly. He completed buttoning his coat across his chest and walked through the door. He didn’t offer to say good-by.

“There’s no lipstick on you. Didn’t Izzy give you a nice big kiss?” The pretty blonde secretary grinned impudently at him.

“The terrible way you talk about a kind employer,” said Granard.

“It’s the mean side of me,” said the girl. “You wouldn’t believe how gentle the other side is.”

“I’m a modest man. I wouldn’t dare look,” said Granard. He walked toward the outer door. The girl followed him. Izzy Mackleton had an enormous practice, but he had no partners, no clerks, no office staff, nothing but an office-boy. On another floor of the building was a firm of lawyers who attended to details for Mackleton. But the blonde secretary was the only person, with the exception of Mackleton himself, who worked in this suite of offices. There was no one to overhear the girl as she spoke.

“When I went to school, I read about a monkey and a cat and a fire and some chestnuts,” she said.

Granard stopped short.

“Izzy doesn’t look like a monkey,” he said. “Give your boss a break.”

“You don’t look like a cat,” she retorted.

Granard looked at the door of Mackleton’s private office. It was still closed.

“Tell me all, sweetheart. Withhold no confidences from your Uncle Bill.”

The girl shrugged. She turned away, and Granard was given opportunity to stare at her rather lovely back. The office dress she wore hid little of a most delightful figure.

“That’s all—and sweetheart, to you,” she said.

It was Granard’s turn to shrug, and he did so. Then he opened the outer door and went into the hall. He descended in the elevator to the lobby and pushed his way through the revolving door to the street. The wind blew harder here in Times Square than it had blown on Central Park South. Pedestrians, bent over, sought to protect their faces from the biting crystals. A traffic policeman beat gloved hands together and stamped his heavily shod feet upon the ground. Granard, standing on the curb, held up a futile hand to a dozen taxis. But cabs, usually plentiful, were occupied today. In despair Granard started for the subway. He leaped back to the sidewalk just in time to avoid a taxi that skidded perilously close to him. It stopped and a man alighted. As he paid the driver, Granard recognized him. It was Jimmy Trimp. If he recognized Granard he gave no sign. He pulled his hat over his eyes and pushed through the gale toward the revolving doors through which Granard had just come.

“Where to?” asked the driver as Granard stepped into the cab.

Granard glanced at his wrist-watch. It was eleven-thirty. He gave the man the address of his own apartment. Up Seventh Avenue and across Fifty-ninth Street the car proceeded. The traffic, Granard decided, had never been more impeded than on this early March day. It was ten minutes before twelve when he entered his apartment. Martin was there.

“The Globe called five minutes ago,” said the man. “I didn’t expect you back here. It was the city editor. He told me to be sure and have you call him from the station. I said I didn’t expect to see you until I met you at the train. I have the tickets and I’ll have your bags in your compartment. The train leaves at two-five. Shall I prepare lunch for you?”

Granard shook his head.

“I’ll get a bite somewhere; perhaps on the train.”

He gave Martin his coat and sat down by the telephone, dialing the number of the Globe. In a moment he was connected with the city editor.

“Bill Granard speaking. Is this Carewe?”

“You’re a hell of a newspaper man,” growled Carewe. “You stop a killing in a night club and don’t give it to your own paper. How come?”

“Vacation began at six yesterday,” laughed Granard. “Anyway, that one was off the record. How did you hear it?”

“The Globe doesn’t cease to function just because you’re on a vacation,” said Carewe. “You wouldn’t care to be interviewed by a reporter from our paper, would you, Mr. Granard? We have some of the nicest young men who’d like to question you. Or if your tastes run that way, we could send up a girl reporter.”

“You couldn’t be kinder, Mr. Carewe. But my mother told me that only common people liked publicity. Let it go, Sam.”

“But the other papers may carry it,” protested the city editor.

“Isn’t that too bad?” commiserated Granard. “Wouldn’t it be awful if the Globe was beaten on such a tremendous story? What can they print? Pantadosi got rough, and I changed his mind. Forget it.”

“You’ve changed your mind about Montreal, your man told me. You’re too swell, anyway. A manservant, and trips to Palm Beach. Who’s been slipping you money for keeping things out of the Globe?”

“All the big people,” laughed Granard.

“Why Florida?” insisted Carewe.

“I don’t know. Call it a hunch. Maybe I need more freckles. Sam, what do you know about Jimmy Trimp?”

“I hear he’s in the money,” said the city editor. “Why?”

“I just wondered what you knew. I hang around Broadway, but I haven’t heard any talk. Have you?”

“Nothing, except that he went broke after prohibition. He opened up a place on the Jersey side and lost a mint. He tried to run a wheel somewhere in the Fifties——”

Granard chuckled.

“I know about that. I went in there one night. You stumbled over the wires that control the wheel. It was too raw. He didn’t make anything there. Haven’t heard what his racket is?”

“Funny you should ask,” said Carewe. “Only last week I suggested a Sunday special. What’s happened to the bootleg millionaires? I thought it was a swell idea.”

“It was and it is,” agreed Granard. “But you don’t know where Trimp is getting it?”

“Haven’t an idea. A lad that knows his Broadway and his Park Avenue the way you do ought to be able to get the answer.”

“When I come back from my vacation I’ll look into it,” promised Granard.

“You will not,” said Carewe. “The Rennsler breach-of-promise trial begins two weeks from Monday. You’ll be sitting in that courtroom for three weeks. Well, have a swell time and if you run into anything that’s young and rich and lovely and wants a husband, don’t write—telegraph. Even if it’s just rich, let me know.”

“Send your photograph to the train. Maybe I can have the wedding all arranged before you leave New York,” said Granard.

He hung up the receiver. Funny, but when one was all packed and ready to go somewhere, the brief time of waiting for train or boat was always a bore. He looked at his watch. Nearly two hours before the train left. Of course, he’d better allow plenty of time for the trip to the Pennsylvania Station. The blizzard was getting worse. But even such time allowance left him with well over an hour to kill. Well, he might as well go over to the Colony and eat luncheon. He had breakfasted several hours earlier than usual and felt hungry.

“I’ll meet you at the train, Martin,” he said. He let the man help him on with his overcoat. As he descended to the street and as he rode in a taxi the short distance to the Colony Restaurant, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. What was Izzy Mackleton driving at? Why did the fact that Jimmy Trimp, ex-bootlegger, was in the money cause Izzy Mackleton to suggest a trip to Palm Beach to Granard?

The lawyer hadn’t been talking idly, either. Something was going to happen in the Florida resort that would be of tremendous interest to the half million readers of the Morning Globe. But what could that happening have to do with a man like Jimmy Trimp? Why did Mrs. Trimp’s possession of a sable coat cause Mackleton to tell Granard to go South?

There was something else, too, that was puzzling. Ruth Tyman, Mackleton’s pretty blonde secretary, was notoriously close-mouthed. Newspaper men had cross-questioned that pretty girl scores of times, trying to get from her information concerning cases in which Mackleton was engaged. But they had always failed. But this morning she had gratuitously mentioned the fable of the monkey and the chestnut. What chestnuts did Mackleton want Granard to pull from the fire?