42 Money, stake.
43 Seasickness.
44 A luxurious rail car, usually a sleeping car.
45 Hanvey’s eyes are earlier described as “large, and round like a baby’s”; this different description may signify that Hanvey was squinting in the sun’s glare.
Caveat Emptor
JIM HANVEY lolled upon a park bench, his ample and ungainly figure entirely surrounded by landscape. The fingers of his right hand clutched the stump of a cigar which for downright meanness was in a class alone. His fat and florid face was wreathed in contentment and his fishy eyes were partially curtained by heavy lids from beneath which Jim stared amusedly at a group of very small children who romped in shrill disdain of a sign which warned all and sundry that that particular grass was not to be trod upon.
The sun of early September was dropping slowly to rest behind the interminable line of apartment houses on the farther side of Central Park West. It sprinkled in golden radiance through the red leaves above Jim’s uncovered head and mottled the rich green carpet beneath his enormous feet. Jim’s eyes closed slowly as he luxuriously stretched his Gargantuan frame. Then the eyes opened to rest upon the trim figure of a little girl of six who stood regarding him with an expression of grave but frank interest.
“Hmm!” Jim pulled himself together. “Good evening.”
The child made no answer. A spot near Jim’s midsection held her undivided attention. The unwieldy detective matched the child’s gravity with his own. She was a pretty little thing whose raiment, even to Jim’s untutored eyes, bespoke extreme affluence. At length, with absolute ease of manner, she moved forward and touched with her fore-finger, the gold toothpick which hung suspended from the heavy watch chain spanning Jim’s ill-fitting vest.
“That’s pretty,” she commented abruptly.
Jim’s face lighted with pleasure. It was seldom indeed that his pet bit of personal ornamentation received so genuine a compliment.
“Ain’t it?”
“Yup. Awful pretty.” Then, doubtfully. “What is it?”
Jim touched a button and a wicked and glistening point appeared. “A toothpick,” he explained.
“What’s that?”
“It’s—well, you see——” His face went blank. “Just a toothpick, that’s all. Solid gold.”
“Oh!” said the child. “I see.”
Jim felt relieved. He fancied it might be difficult to explain a solid gold toothpick and he thanked goodness for the youngster’s erudition. She continued to finger the bauble approvingly but, so far as she was concerned, the conversation was at an end.
The silence proved somewhat embarrassing to Jim. It was entirely too impersonal for his friendly nature. “What’s your name?”
“Pauline.”
“Pauline what?”
“Pauline Lathrop.”
“That’s a pretty name, Pauline. Where do you live?”
A touch of imitative snobbishness displayed itself in the answer of the little girl. “Riverside Drive. My father is a very rich man and we have three automobiles.”
“Wonderful. Astounding. And what is your father’s name?”
“Mr. Noah Lathrop. He’s an emporter.”
“An emporter, eh?” Remembrance came to the detective. “Sure. Sure enough he is. A joolry importer, isn’t he?”
“Yup. An’ we got three automobiles.”
“That certainly is wonderful, Pauline. I’m awful glad to know about them automobiles. I guess your daddy’s business must be awful good.”
“No,” confessed the child frankly. “Father says it’s gone to hell.”
Jim was a trifle nonplussed. “That’s too bad. I’m real sorry to hear it, Pauline.”
Once again the wordless, contemplative stare of the child. “You’re awful fat.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And you look ugly,” she finished. “But you ain’t.”
“That’s a relief. I ain’t no blue-ribbon entry, at that.”
“I like that gold thing,” continued Pauline. “But I bet you ain’t got three automobiles.”
“No. I bet I ain’t.”
“My Father has, and he says——”
“Pauline!” The voice of a woman came inquiringly through the soft air of a gradually gathering dusk. “Oo-oh! Pauline.”
“That’s my nurse,” she explained to Jim Hanvey. “She gets twenty dollars a week. Her name is Mary.”
Jim’s eyes turned slowly toward the trim little uniformed figure which was bearing down upon them. Faint stirrings of recollection occurred in the detective’s brain. The figure—the face—the voice——And now Mary had taken Pauline’s hand.
“I told you not to run away from that summerhouse. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She exhibited genuine concern—and relief. Pauline appeared not at all interested.
“This man has got a gold toothpick,” she announced triumphantly. “But he ain’t got three automobiles.”
The nurse turned toward the big man with a smile of quiet apology on her lips. Her eyes met the glassy orbs of the detective; and the smile congealed. The color receded from her cheeks and it was patent that she was struggling to recover a poise suddenly lost.
The detective blinked with maddening slowness. “Hello Mary,” he said. “How’s Tim?”
The trim little woman in the nurse’s uniform stood rigid for a moment. Then she turned to the child. “Run on and play with the other children a few minutes,” she ordered. Pauline obeyed willingly enough. The nurse stood regarding Hanvey apprehensively, and eventually the mammoth detective punctured the silence.
“Why the disguise, Mary?”
She spoke in tones so low as to be scarcely audible. “It isn’t a disguise, Jim.”
“No-o? Last time I seen you——”
“Never mind that,” she said nervously. “I’m runnin’ straight now. Lay off.”
“Goshamighty, Mary—I ain’t aiming to do nothin’ else. I’m just curious.”
“I tell you everything’s all right.”
“Sure it is. But why the job? What you doin’ nursin’ a kid?”
He could discern the struggle which she was undergoing. And finally she seated herself beside him. “There ain’t a thing wrong, Jim. Honest there ain’t. I’ve just been workin’ since they sent Tim up.”
“He’s in stir?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“I heard somethin’ about it—but the case wasn’t exactly in my line as I remember. Gov’ment, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “Smuggling.”
“Shuh!”
“They caught him with the goods. He pleaded guilty. He’s doing a two-year stretch in Atlanta.46 He left me flat—that’s why I went to work. I got a nursing job because I naturally like kids. I had to do somethin’.”
“Mm!” Jim’s face betrayed no particular interest. If there was doubt of her in his mind he did not show it. “Funny—you workin’ as a nursegirl while Tim is doing a stretch. Well—I sure hope you stay on the straight an’ narrow. It don’t pay awful good but it’s real safe.”
She sighed with relief. “I’m not pulling anything, Jim. I’m on the level—anyway until Timmy gets out.”
She summoned her youthful charge and they walked off together toward the Seventy-second Street gate. Jim stared speculatively after them. He groped blindly for a match and relighted his cigar. Then, as he inhaled deeply, he gave vent to an expression of doubt——
“Wonder what she lied to me for?”
His somnolent eyes half closed and as he lay back in his seat there came to him the faint limning of the picture in which she had appeared at the occasion of their last meeting—a bank job in Omaha, a successful bank job in which he knew that she had been the brains of the gang. Jim held a great admiratio
n for that little woman; she was courageous and she was clever; she played her cards well and she played them boldly. That last case had been one of his few unsuccessful ones and he had been more than half glad of it. He had been out to get them, but, failing, he felt nothing of resentment—only a keen admiration for the brains which had outwitted him.
But a few minutes since he had seen Mary Lannigan flustered for the first time in the several years of their acquaintanceship. That discomfiture bespoke guilt. Hanvey’s fat fingers groped for the gold toothpick so lately admired by Pauline Lathrop. That golden horror was of inestimable assistance to Hanvey in moments of mental stress. Mary working as a nursegirl. Hmph! There was something behind that—bound to be. Jim Hanvey was reputed to know intimately every worthwhile crook in the country and he counted Tim and Mary Lannigan as among his very best friends. Jim knew, for instance, that Tim had a young fortune47 salted away and that it was not at all necessary for his wife to work as a menial while he enjoyed the hospitality of the United States government. That being the case, Mary’s present occupation was the cloak for something. He was sorry—darn shame Mary couldn’t keep straight. Good kid. “An’ dog-gone her—she’s gone an’ got me all interested.”
At first Jim determined to play hands off. He wasn’t a policeman; it was no duty of his to make trouble for crooks who were not engaged in work which held his immediate attention. But there was something bizarre in the very thought of this excessively clever little woman acting as nursemaid to a snippy little girl who boasted of her father’s trio of motor cars. Two other facts paraded before him, demanding that he adduce something from their proximity to one another.
One of them was that the father of the girl whom Mary nursed was a jewelry importer.
The second fact had to do with Tim Lannigan’s incarceration for smuggling. Smuggling was not in Tim’s line.
That night Jim reluctantly omitted his regular picture show and did a little investigation. Information came readily to hand principally because Jim knew just where to turn. When he retired near midnight he knew considerably more about Mary Lannigan’s job, but there were one or two blank spaces which had aroused his curiosity beyond measure.
One vital thing he had learned—and that was that the name of Noah Lathrop had been mentioned more than casually in the case which resulted in Tim’s journey to Atlanta. Just what Lathrop had to do with it no one could adequately explain, but there was undeniably a sinister significance.
He was at the park again the following day but Mary and the child did not appear. The next afternoon Jim was on Riverside Drive at the hour he knew a nurse would naturally go walking. Pauline recognized him first, nor, in the eagerness with which she greeted him, did he lose sight of the apprehension which blanched the pretty face of Mary Lannigan.
“That,” proclaimed the tactful Pauline, designating Jim’s gold toothpick, “is vulgar.”
“G’wan. Why?”
“Gentlemen,” she explained, “do not use gold toothpicks.”
Jim turned quizzically to Mary. “Ain’t she the bright kid?” He grew serious then—“Come out of it, Sister. I ain’t gonna eat you.”
He walked with them to Central Park. In response to his unspoken command, Mary sent Pauline to play with the other children and she and Jim sat together on the bench. It was Jim who spoke first, after he had lighted one of his offensively fragrant cigars.
“Get me straight, Mary—I don’t want to cause you no trouble…but you’ve got my curiosity aroused something terrible.”
For a moment she didn’t answer. She sat staring at the path where her toe was etching aimlessly in the dust. And finally she faced him with a flash of her old-time spirit. “I want you to lay off, Jim. I’m not pulling anything crooked.”
“If you’re runnin’ straight I ain’t got no choice, have I?”
“Yes—you have.”
“How you make that?”
“You can queer things for me—and,” earnestly, “I don’t want ’em queered, Jim—I don’t want ’em queered.”
There was a little break in her voice which puzzled him. She was deeply moved—that, in itself, was a novelty. He took her hand gently between both of his enormous ones and patted it as a father might have done.
“I ain’t tryin’ to butt in on your affairs, Sister, but I’d like to get the lowdown on this. I’ll say right off—wait a minute, I’ll come clean with you before you spill anything. You got me curious night before last with that straight stuff an’ all. I know—an’ you know I know—that Tim has a pile salted away which means that I didn’t swallow your bunk about needin’ the twenty-per-an’-cakes you’re gettin’ for nursin’ that kid which has a father who owns three automobiles.
“As I say, that sort of started me off an’ I did a little checking up on my own hook. I learned, among other things, that Noah Lathrop’s name sort of figured in the smugglin’ case which sent Tim South—that indicatin’ pretty clear that you ain’t workin’ in Lathrop’s house for no reason which ought to make Lathrop comfortable. So knowin’ what I know, if you want to loosen up—why, go right to it Sister an’ I’ll be all ears, like any other jackass.”
Her head was bowed and it was plain that she was thinking intensively. On the grass nearby the children romped, their shrillings cutting through the balminess of the September evening. From Central Park West came the clanging of Eighth Avenue cars and the occasional sirening of automobile traffic. A man and woman on horseback rode down the bridle path near them and a park policeman strolled by and ostentatiously looked away as he, with considerable surprise, recognized the obese Hanvey.
At length she commenced speaking, her voice coming as though from a great distance. “It’s important, Jim, first of all, that you understand I’m telling the truth. If there’s anything I say that ain’t true—it ain’t because I think it ain’t. I’m giving you the works as I know ’em. I’m telling you—well, first of all, because I want to get it off my chest. And second, because you’d get wise anyway. And third, because—Oh! just because.
“I’ll commence right at the beginning Jim. It started six months ago when Tim went to Europe. You know he’s a real gent and every once in so often he works the card graft on the big steamers—not often enough for them to know him. Only when business is dull.
“Well, he was over there loafing around waiting for a certain party to sail for America again, this party being the grandest sucker which ever stood a couple of raises for the privilege of drawin’ to an in-between straight. About that time Mr. Noah Lathrop was in Paris doing some jewelry buying. He goes over there once or twice every year. His firm is one of the biggest on Maiden Lane. And in Paris at the same time Lathrop and Tim were, was Walter Yeager.”
“Yeager?” Hanvey exhibited keen interest. “In Paris?”
“Yeh. All set for a job. An’ get this, Jim—I aint tryin’ to get Walt in bad. He’s had a tough enough time already. But even if Walt does run foul of trouble I can’t help it. I’m out to do what I can for Tim…that’s all I’m thinking of.”
Again that little catch in her voice. Jim closed his glassy eyes sleepily and motioned for her to continue.
“To hold a long story down, Walt Yeager was onto something soft in Paris. He pulled the job and got away with it—about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of stones that are stones. It turned the Paris police inside out and stood ’em on their ear. It was as nifty a piece of work as you’ve ever heard of, an’ Walt got away with it in a way you’d be proud of if you knew the details.
“Well, there was Walt with the jewels and nothin’ to do with ’em. The European markets had nine eyes peeled an’ Walt didn’t dare bring ’em to this country because when he came through the customs there’d be a stir and a talk—and flooie! So, Walt hearing that Lathrop was doin’ his semi-annual buying, an’ knowing that he wasn’t more than ten miles above a shady transaction, went to him, confess
ed that he had stolen jewels and asked him what they’d be worth in cash, delivered at Lathrop’s New York office.
“Lathrop was interested, of course. It was a graft for him. He’d run no risk buying the stuff in New York and since his house has a first class rep he knew he could slip ’em on the market one by one and the trade would never be no wiser. They dickered around for awhile and agreed on one hundred and forty thousand dollars cash, F. O. B. Maiden Lane. And that’s where Tim was pulled into the deal.
“Walt Yeager wasn’t willing to declare those jewels at the customs and he wasn’t game to try and smuggle ’em. So he told Lathrop that in order to carry the deal through Lathrop must hire some one to do the smuggling. Yeager and Lathrop both inquired around and learned that Tim was over there—he bein’ at that time in Bremen waiting for his sucker friend. He had gone there from Paris. Lathrop went to Germany, found Tim and offered him five thousand dollars for the job of smuggling.
“Tim grabbed it. It seemed like a cinch. And that’s where Lathrop done Tim dirt—because,” she turned her blazing eyes on Jim Hanvey—“the dirty crook never told Tim that the jewels he was supposed to smuggle was stolen goods!”
Jim nodded heavily. “I see.…Lathrop was dishonest. Even with Tim.”
“Exactly. And he played safe seven different ways. He saw to it that Tim and Walt Yeager engaged passage on a French liner for New York and he had it framed with Walt that he wasn’t to say a word to Tim until they were pretty close to the customs when all Walt was to do was to turn the stuff over to Tim, watch Tim smuggle it through and then get it back from him and deliver it to Lathrop. Tim was to make the trip knowing that some one was going to slip him some jewels just before they got to customs. And as true as I’m telling you, Jim, he didn’t know it was nothing more than a smuggling job. It never occurred to him that there might be something behind it.
“Lathrop never even come back on the same ship with them. He sailed a week ahead from Southhampton. Tim and Walt came over together from Havre48 and a couple days before they reached New York, Walt slipped Tim the stuff.
Jim Hanvey, Detective Page 13
