The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

“Well, well,” Lott said, as the girl sat down, “we now have with us Beatrice the Beautiful Brakeman’s Daughter. Where have you been keeping yourself, Beatrice? I haven’t seen you in six weeks.”

Klug watched the girl curve her painted lips in a smile.

“My name isn’t Beatrice,” she said, “and I never saw you before.”

Lott chuckled.

“Your fault — not mine, then. Beatrice, meet my friend Mr. Martin Klug. He seems to be a nice boy in spite of his name. But he is wasting his youth and ambition robbing freight cars. Stupid occupation, isn’t it? Now, if some day he should walk into a bank at twelve o’clock — when the bank cops go and get something to eat — and stick a gun through the wicket of the paying-teller’s cage and dip a hand in after it and pick up a package of bills—”

The girl looked at Klug.

“I’ve got ten cents,” she said. “Will they back me up a wash of phoney suds for that much?”

“Not while I’m around with a quarter!” Lott said quickly.

He lifted a finger for a lantern-jawed waiter’s attention, gave the order and looked at the girl.

“Ten cents is your capital, you say? Beatrice, you surprise me. A swell looker like you and only a thin dime! What’s the matter with you? Did you ever happen to fall out of a chair when you were a child? You should be riding around in your limousine. Ten cents! Are you laughing, Martin Klug?”

“I don’t see anything funny in that,” Klug growled.

“I was the upstairs maid in a private house,” the girl said moodily. “Mrs. Cabbler was the madame. She’s an old woman with warts on her face. She’s about seventy years old, I guess.”

Lott chuckled.

“Seventy, eh? Their necks crack easy when they’re that age!”

“I worked there three weeks up to yesterday,” the girl went on. “I only wanted to get some money together to buy a pair of long white gloves — the kind that come up to your elbows. I’ll never be happy until I get long white gloves that come up to my elbows. Look at these dirty things I own. They’ve been cleaned twelve times—”

“Never mind about the gloves,” Lott said. “Tell my young friend and myself what happened. You haven’t the gloves you yearn for and therefore it stands to reason you weren’t paid. You worked three weeks and weren’t paid. Why not? What was the trouble? There was trouble of some kind, wasn’t there?”

“Yes. Mrs. Cabbler left a ten dollar bill on the bureau in her bedroom. Someone hooked it. She called me in. She said I took it. She discharged me. She wouldn’t give me my wages.”

Rider Lott looked hard at the blond youth.

“You hear that, Martin Klug? Mrs. Cabbler said Beatrice took ten dollars from the bureau in her bedroom and discharged her without paying her wages. Clearly an unlawful act.”

“A dirty trick!” The youth said thickly.

“No,” Lott disagreed pleasantly, “a perfectly proper course to take. Beatrice took the money. But she was forced to give it back. Then her madame took her revenge by discharging her without pay. Only natural, isn’t it?”

“She’s a devil, that Mrs. Cabbler!” the girl said viciously. “She looked me in the eyes and seemed to know everything. I gave her back the ten dollars. I didn’t know what I was doing, hardly. Now I’ll never get those long white gloves that come up to the elbows.”

“I’ll buy them for you,” Martin Klug said, “when I get some money.”

Lott picked at his left cheek.

“You’ll never get any if you stick to robbing freight cars. No money in that, my friend.”

The girl pushed aside her glass.

“I wish I hadn’t given Mrs. Cabbler back that ten spot. She’s got more now than she knows what to do with. Once I was passing along the hall and her bedroom door was ajar. She was counting her money. The whole top of the bed was covered with bills. She keeps it in a trunk under the bed. It is a small black trunk.”

Rider Lott looked across the table again.

“You hear that, Martin Klug? Mrs. Cabbler is seventy years old. She has a trunk full of money. Money isn’t much use to a person seventy years old, is it? Young people should have money. You’re young — so am I, for that matter.”

He turned his beady eyes on the girl.

“I don’t suppose you have the front door key, the back door key, the side door key or any other key, have you, Beatrice? I mean to Mrs. Cabbler’s house.”

The girl moved restlessly.

“My name isn’t Beatrice. But I have the key to the basement door. Just for spite I wouldn’t give it back to her. She doesn’t know I have it.”

Rider Lott stretched out a thin, pale hand.

“Give me the key you have.”

The girl opened her satin handbag, fumbled in the depths and drew out a key. She gave it to Lott. He dropped it in a pocket and looked at Martin Klug.