Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
“All light, sir.” The little waiter turned away.
“I’ll tell you, Artie. We know the warrants was both sworn out by men named George L. Bolton and Fred A. Marvin. One lives upstate somewhere and the other’s from the Main Burg. Of course we know they both work for Steele. What we don’t know is, how did they get their evidence on Harrison’s? What did they testify to? Who are they, to us? Do we know them under some other names?”
“Why are you so keen to know this?”
“So they won’t get any more evidence!”
“Humph. You’d silence them, also, I suppose?”
“Aw — no, no, no, Artie! Now, here! Now, listen! No one will harm either of those guys. We don’t have to. All we want is to keep them from getting any more on the place — keep them out, if they’ve been workin’ from the inside. They’ll have to bring the evidence up to date if they want to get a new search warrant. All you gotta do is find out how they worked it — and, if you can, how soon Steele’s thinking of trying it again.”
He paid the checks.
“You better jump at it, Williams,” he advised, as they went out. “It’s a pipe for you, compared to a ferret’s job. You ain’t doing no harm by telling us that. If it was anything serious, you might have something on your conscience. But, hell, man! What’s a gambling joint?”
Chapter XXXVIII
The Gun-Moll
Steele had managed to obtain a small room in a house at 135 Warrington Street without awakening the suspicion of any one in the neighborhood. From the front window his operatives could keep watch on Harrington’s house at No. 142 throughout the night without exposing themselves to view — or to a possible bullet.
The room, however, did not provide a view of the back alley; and when Thompson and Brown decided that traffic at the main entrance between eleven and twelve was light for Friday evening, the latter slipped out of the lodging house and took a position at the corner of Warrington and Columbia Streets.
On the opposite corner, four tough-looking men were grouped, smoking, and the detective saw that they glanced frequently in his direction. He made sure that the safety catch of his automatic pistol was raised. Across Columbia Street two other men were talking in the darkness of a doorway. Brown watched the alley leading to the back of Harrison’s, but observed no one enter or leave by this route.
A large, red-faced policeman approached, after about five minutes, crossing diagonally from the east side of Warrington Street. He looked at Brown with obvious suspicion, sauntered past, then suddenly squared around.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded heavily.
“Sir?” returned Brown, at a loss for an instant.
“I said, what are you hanging around here for?” the officer challenged in a louder voice, noticing the youth’s rather timid response.
Brown hesitated. He could not show the policeman his credentials, because of the groups of men who were watching.
“I was waiting to meet some one,” he ventured.
“Well, do you think this is a proper time of night to be loafing around corners?”
“But I haven’t been loafing, sir,” the operative protested.
“Go on — I’ve been watching you for the last twenty minutes. If you’ve got any business here, state it. If you haven’t, get out — and if I see you hanging around here again I’ll take you over to the box.”
“All right, sir,” Brown replied meekly.
He walked back the way he had come, and the officer continued up Columbia Street in the direction of the Canton Cabaret. Of course Brown did not immediately go back into the house at No. 135. It was important that he should avoid being accosted again by the policeman, if possible. He had observed the figures 517 on the man’s cap; and he walked rapidly to station five, which is on East Needham Street. A lieutenant at the desk was talking with a sergeant, and both looked at him curiously.
“A few minutes ago,” Brown apologized, addressing the former, “I had to give Officer 517 a false explanation of why I was standing on Columbia Street. I came in to set it right.”
“On Columbia Street, sir?” The lieutenant took up his pen. “What part of Columbia, please?”
“At the corner of Warrington.”
The sergeant, standing by the desk, leaned forward with perceptible interest.
“And you say you gave the officer a false explanation?” the man at the desk asked.
“Yes — on account of several men who were near-by. I’m an operative of the National Detective Agency; there are my papers. I may have to work in, that vicinity for some time. We have a room there.”
The lieutenant handed back the credentials. “All right, Mr. Brown,” he said, smiling. “Thank you for coming in and explaining. I’ll tell the officer, the next time he reports.”
The detective returned to Warrington Street, but found two of the men still on the corner; and it was after one o’clock before he was able to enter the lodging house. Thompson was waiting for him in a darkened room.
“I think they’re wise to us, Brownie.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean, they’re all looking up. Every party that’s come out of that joint for the last half hour. They’ve been looking up at the windows on both sides of the street.”
“The devil you say!” exclaimed Brown, in consternation.
Meanwhile, Kendall McArthur was in the midst of a trying experience.
He had met Little Evelyn on Columbia Street; and — not warned by the unusual brightness of her eyes — noticing only her face, which seemed whiter and thinner by comparison, he had urged her to go home. McArthur had not had any experience with “snowflowers.”
For that matter, he had had little with any kind of girls, except for one very brief period following the Armistice in France, when his head had been turned slightly by the honors heaped upon him. He had distrusted all young women, had believed that they were deceitful and treacherous by nature. He could not explain his interest in Little Evelyn — only he knew that it had begun with pity.
The girl would not go home. She wanted more money.
“You promised to loan me another century,” she said.
“But there were conditions,” returned the inventor.
“You said if I’d quit for a week. A week!” she scoffed. “Listen — I can make a century in one night. Loan me a hundred, will you, please? Loan me a half century.”
“M-mm! To make another transaction in dope, I suppose?”
She looked at him, her eyes glittering for an instant. “What do you care what I do with it?
“Take me to the Canton,” she commanded, smiling prettily. “I’m hungry.”
But in the restaurant Evelyn would not behave properly. McArthur had not seen her before in a really dangerous mood.
When Wing Shinn had gone for the order, she leaned toward the inventor, meeting his gaze earnestly.
“Listen,” she advised. “You loan me that money, or you’ll be sorry.”
“I’d loan it to you, Evelyn,” he replied quietly, “if I thought you’d keep your part of the bargain. I think, if you’d quit this business for a week, you might quit forever. But I don’t intend to supply drugs for a hop-joint!”
She was still gazing at him. “Listen,” she repeated, her lips twitching slightly. “Loan me the money.”
McArthur shook his head at the horror of it.
“Well, you kite!” said Little Evelyn, mistaking the gesture for a refusal. “You fiddler! You Bible-stiff! You rotten kite! Let me tell you something! You give me that century, or I’ll go to headquarters and tell them you gave me the other! I’ll tell them you told me to buy coke with it, you sky-pilot! I’ll tell them you started me in the racket!”