Читать книгу Prisoners in Devil's Bog - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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It was only a matter of seconds when the door of the International offices opened and the pretty typist stepped into the hall. Her high heels clicked briskly along the tiled floor and she looked neither to the right nor left, but hurried straight to the elevators.

Skippy, meanwhile, had backed down farther into the shadow and was standing on the landing, his slim body almost rigid against the cool wall. There was a moment’s silence in which he stood tense, listening, until at last the metallic clang of the elevator door opening and closing echoed down to him.

He relaxed immediately and his face crinkled in a smile. With a weather eye on the landing above and the landing below he hastily removed his coat and tore from his new white shirt a goodly strip of the muslin. This had the effect of setting his collar and tie somewhat awry but he hadn’t time to worry over that detail. He was too busy improvising a presentable sling in which to rest his left arm. He had a momentary impulse to bandage his head also, but he was too true an artist to overdo the thing.

Be that as it may, luck was with him, for a moment later, when he presented himself at the International offices, he found a small group of men, presumably detectives, talking earnestly in the reception room. One glance at Skippy and two of the men hurried forward to open the door just beyond.

“Here y’are, kid—this way,” said one, smilingly. “You’ll see a door to your right marked Carlton Conne—Private—that’s where you’re to go. Mr. Conne wants to see some of you kids.”

Skippy grinned amiably.

He was not afraid, as he trudged manfully into the holy of holies to confront the famous head of the world-renowned detective agency, whose picture he had so many times seen in the newspapers.

The great detective was not an awe-inspiring spectacle. He sat in his shirt sleeves, his chair tilted back and his feet resting on the desk. He was a stocky, middle-aged man with a bristly moustache and a crisp, aggressive look. Also he was smoking a long black cigar (Skippy soon learned that this was a fixed habit with the man) which he dexterously moved from one end of his mouth to the other as he talked. When he listened, he had a way of tilting it at an upright angle which gave him a very shrewd and sophisticated air. It was this attitude that captivated Skippy.

“Well,” he said in his gruff, yet kindly manner, “you’re one of the kids that got in the way of that stolen car, eh? Your arm’s busted, eh?”

“No sir,” Skippy answered promptly with unabashed frankness. “My name’s Skippy Dare an’ I just wanted to get in here—kind of—so—so I could talk to you. But....”

Carlton Conne brought his feet down from the desk and stared. “But the sling—what’s it for?”

“That typewriter girl,” said Skippy rapidly, “she said I couldn’t see you about a job—that you didn’t need nobody.”

“You mean you talked to Miss Purdy, our reception clerk?” asked the detective with an enigmatic scowl.

“Yeah, I guess that’s who it was. She was in that first room out there with the big soft rug an’ she was pretty all right, but she was cranky an’ wouldn’t lissen. I tried to tell her I wanted a job right away an’ be a detective an’....”

Carlton Conne lifted his feet from the floor and set them back again on the desk. He shifted the cigar about in his mouth three or four times, then interposed: “So you got in here under false pretenses, eh?” Before Skippy could answer, he added, “What put the sling idea into your head?”

“While I was talkin’ to the—to Miss Purdy, a feller come out an’ said about the stolen car an’ all an’ how you wanted the kids that was run down so’s you could talk to ’em. So right away I thought about the sling an’ I sneaked into the hall an’ hid on the stairway till she goes out for lunch. Then I fixed the sling from the taila my shirt.... I’ll be good at disguises, Mr. Conne—that’s why I know I’d be a good detective.”

“Oh, you do, eh?” A mirthful gleam lighted the detective’s eyes, but his face was wrinkled into a scowl. “I suppose your other disguise today consists of working papers, eh? You can’t be more than fourteen.”

“Gee, how’d you guess!”

Carlton Conne looked at the boy sharply. “S’pose you’ve been blowing in all your spending money on cheap detective magazines and going to these rotten mystery thrillers, eh?”

“Nope, I don’t like them magazines, Mr. Conne. An’ I don’t like mystery thrillers ’cause I ain’t so dumb that I don’t know those things couldn’t happen in real life. Gee, I can only go to the movies once in a while an’ when I go I like to see somepin’ that makes me laugh. Since my father died I don’t get no spendin’ money ’cause my aunt’s terrible poor an’ she says I gotta be glad she can even lemme sleep an’ eat.”

“And she had to put you out to work?” Carlton Conne tilted his cigar thoughtfully. “And you decided you wanted to be a detective. Why?”

“I always wanted to be a detective,” Skippy answered unabashed, “ever since they railroaded my father. When they let him out I wanted to be one more’n ever an’ when he died an’ I come back to lookin’ for my aunt I almost was sent to Reform ’cause I got hungry an’ went into a restaurant an’ ate a whole lot more’n I had the money to pay for. So anyway they found my aunt an’ she took me from the station house an’ promised to take care of me. But all the time since, I been thinkin’ how if I was a detective I’d know the difference between a kid that was bad and a kid that was hungry. Gee, I know crooks like anything, Mr. Conne, so that’s another reason I’d make a good detective. A bunch of ’em lived ’round me when I was on the barge waitin’ for my father to get outa jail. River pirates an’ all! They’re my special—my specialty!” he bragged.

“And ‘Reform’s’ your special fear, eh?” Carlton Conne asked, blinking his eyes.

“Yeah, I was scareda that like anythin’,” Skippy admitted with a shudder at the memory. “When my father was on trial I shivered in my boots afraid they’d send me there.”

Carlton Conne brought his feet down onto the softly carpeted floor and pulling up his chair, scrutinized a letter that lay open on his desk. After a moment’s silence he glanced up at the boy and swiftly surveyed him.

“Suppose I were to tell you that I want you to go to Reform School!” he said enigmatically.

“Huh?” Skippy asked, wide-eyed.

“Sit down!” Carlton Conne said briskly. “I want to talk to you!”

Skippy did as he was told.