Jim Hanvey, Detective

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  Jim had him worried. Whitey knew—none better the ability of the ponderous detective, knew that he would not be absolutely safe until he was actually married to the girl. It wasn’t that Jim had discovered proof of any past transgression so much as there was danger that Jim might frame him.

  Whitey knew well the romantic strain rampant in the soul of the ponderous visitor, realized that Jim believed he must save the girl. And he realized that, all other methods failing, there was every likelihood that Jim would frame a robbery or a bit of crookedness in such a manner that he would appear guilty. “He might even plant a jewel robbery,” reflected Kirk, “and plant the loot in my room. Then, if they caught me…”

  Early the following morning he went riding with Madge and forewarned her of that possibility. Madge was horrified and indignant, but there was in her eyes a queer, questioning light which had been absent the previous night. Madge was seeing a great deal of smoke and instinctively she found herself wondering whether, after all, there might not be a bit of fire. She cast aside the idea as unworthy—but it persisted subtly and she was downcast and constrained for the last hour of their time together.

  But she was blessed with a strain of sterling loyalty and active fighting qualities. Immediately upon her return home, she sought an interview with her father. It was brief, surfeited with mutual pain, and very much to the point. Father and daughter were honest with one another.

  “Why are you opposed to my engagement, Dad?”

  “The disparity in age, for one thing.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t like Kirk.”

  “You believe he is not—all that he might be?”

  “Yes, Dear.”

  “Why?”

  “I have had him investigated.”

  “Yet you never heard of a man who was as evil as they say Warren is who has never been caught, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why persecute him? Why not play fair? Why make me unhappy?”

  “Believing what I do, Madge—”

  “The police are down on him—for no reason. They’ve been persecuting him for years. If what they say were true, Dad—” and her voice crescendoed bitterly—“they’d have proved something. But it’s not true, and I want you to know that I shall stand by him in spite of you and Mother and this fat Mr. Hanvey and all the rest of the world.”

  Weston crossed the room and took her face between his hands. “I like you to talk that way, Daughter. I like my little girl to be a good sportsman. I’m not trying to persecute Warren Kirk: I’m trying to get at the truth. You have no objections to that, have you?”

  She thought it over for a moment—“And if you discover that these allegations are untrue?”

  “Then you may marry him whenever you wish.”

  She walked slowly from the room. She and her father had always been pals. He was fair to a fault—and honest. She responded to the fairness of his present attitude. She loved the Warren Kirk she thought she knew. If he was not that man…If, beneath the polished exterior, there was blackness…She went quietly to her room to ponder.…

  When she came downstairs shortly before the luncheon hour Jim Hanvey was waiting for her. His huge figure overflowed a chair in the reception hall and he lumbered to his feet at her descent. Somehow, despite the nature of his mission, she could not find it in her heart to dislike him. There was something infinitely pathetic and appealing about the man—a vague, elusive quality which excited the maternal instinct in her breast. The cheap, ready-made clothes which flapped so grotesquely about the ill-shapen figure were not funny…she liked Jim Hanvey and she admitted it frankly. He bowed now with elephantine lack of grace.

  “Good mornin’, Miss Madge.”

  “Good morning.”

  Jim glanced around apprehensively. “I’ve been sittin’ here waitin’ for you. I wonder if you’d talk to me for a minute?”

  She arched her brows in surprise. “Certainly.”

  “Let’s go where no one can hear us.”

  They repaired to the library. Jim hitched his chair very close to hers. “I want you to understand just one thing, Miss Madge—I’m a friend of your’n.” He cleared his throat. “I want to come clean with you—if you’ll let me.”

  “Please do.”

  “Well, first off I want to tell you why I’m here. I’m here—” his fishy eyes closed slowly, opened even more slowly and then fixed glassily and compellingly on hers—“I’m here to break off this match between you an’ Whitey.”

  Her lips parted and she leaned forward. “Why?” she cried. “Do you, too, believe that he is—a—a—not what he should be?”

  Jim Hanvey’s ponderous head rolled from side to side.

  “No ma’am!” he said explosively, “I don’t!”

  “What?” Her voice rang with incredulous amazement.

  “Whitey ain’t no crook—and that’s what I wanted to tell you. He’s on the level, that kid is. They’ve been out to get him for the last ten years and they’ve not succeeded. Why? The reason is because he’s straight. But they’ve had it in for him. If he’d ever slipped—even an inch—they’d have got him. That’s what I wanted to tell you—that I’m here as your friend. Of course I think he’s pretty old for you—but that’s your business and his. Your father thinks I’m gonna try to hang somethin’ on Whitey. I’m not. But it’s better for a friend of his to stick around than to tell the old man how I really stand and have him hire some one who has it in for Whitey. He wouldn’t have a chance then. They’d frame him. And I just wanted to explain this to you so you’d know you can trust me.”

  Impulsively she clasped his big right hand in both of hers. Her eyes were shining: “I don’t know how to thank you. And I do trust you—Oh! so much! It’s horrible, what they’re saying about Warren—and I know it isn’t so. I—well, do you mind if I tell Warren that you’re here to help him—to help us?”

  “No,” returned Jim dryly, “I don’t mind. Tell him. He’ll be awful interested.”

  And Whitey was interested when she told him the following morning. He was more than that, and the amazement which was writ large upon his features was reflected in the fury which surcharged his voice.

  “It’s a damned lie—” He did not catch the startled, hurt glance which she bestowed upon him. “Jim believes I’m crooked. He’s here to prove it to you. And when he says he’s our friend, he lies.”

  She cringed slightly. The intensity of the man troubled her. It was something which her immaturity could not understand; a new vision of this hitherto soft-spoken, gentle, thoughtful man. A tremor of doubt assailed her. Girl-like, she could not comprehend the bitterness which seemed so unnecessary. For the moment Whitey Kirk had stepped out of character.

  Later she told Jim that Kirk was distrustful and Hanvey insisted that the three of them meet for a chat. Kirk violently opposed the suggestion. Things which he could not fathom were happening too swiftly for his comfort. He was afraid of Jim and did not know how to combat this new tack—this brummagem friendliness. It was Madge who insisted that the trio talk things over, and Madge who made evasion impossible. Lowering55 and sullen he greeted the impassive Jim who puffed placidly upon one of his murderous cigars and appeared happily oblivious to the rancor in the other’s manner. But Madge was noticing—and she was vaguely uncomfortable for Jim.

  “What’s your game, Jim?” Whitey Kirk came straight to the point.

  “Game? Who said I was playin’ a game?”

  “You know perfectly well that when you told Miss Weston you were here in the rôle of friend, you lied.”

  “Mph! You don’t care who you call a liar, do you?”

  “No I don’t, and——”

  “Well——” softly—“I’m too much your friend to get sore at you about doin’ it. Ain’t that the sensible thing, Miss Madge?”

  “It is
.” She clipped her words short with a mannerism keenly remindful of her father. “And I must say, Warren, that you seem unnecessarily severe.”

  He swung wrathfully upon her. “I tell you that your father has employed this man to destroy our happiness—to break off our engagement—”

  “He told me so himself,” she answered with some asperity.

  “He did?”

  “Certainly. And he said he was remaining here because he is our friend and because if he resigned any other man who assumed the task would be our enemy. Isn’t that simple?”

  “Yeh,” chimed in Jim, “ain’t it?”

  Kirk gazed at him through half-closed eyes. “I still don’t get the drift—”

  “It’s just this,” explained Hanvey. “Everybody says you’re a crook—but you ain’t—are you?”

  “No.”

  “Folks just think you are. They’re terrible unjust to you. You’re really a gent and you’re engaged to a swell young girl. All you want is a chance to marry her. Well, I’m here to see that you get that chance.”

  “That isn’t true!” snapped Kirk bluntly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you know good and well——” He pulled himself up sharply, suddenly remembering that his fiancée was an auditor “—that you think I’m not on the level.”

  “Aw, Son, you’re doin’ yourself an awful injustice. I never knew a straighter, nicer feller than you in my life. I’ve always been your friend. I’ve always told these other dicks who’ve been after you that it wasn’t no use—that they’d never get the goods on you so they might as well quit tryin’. Honest, I have.”

  Kirk turned away. “One warning, Madge,” he flung harshly over his shoulder, “this man isn’t to be trusted.”

  She stared after his retreating figure, her own countenance aflame with embarrassment. Jim Hanvey, alone of the trio, seemed unperturbed. His attitude of disinterestedness was superb, and when she would have apologized for Kirk he cut her short. “That’s all right, Miss Madge. I don’t hold it against poor Whitey. They’ve been houndin’ him for so long he’s just naturally suspicious of everybody. Don’t you go lettin’ this little scene worry you. Just remember that I’m your friend. Real—sure-enough friend.”

  She left him there and scarcely had she disappeared within the house when Kirk returned. His face was pallid and the gray eyes were blazing beneath the thinly pencilled brows. Jim greeted him with a broad grin. “Back again, Whitey?”

  “Yes. What I want to know——”

  “I’ll tell you one thing you ought to know—that is you pulled an awful bone just now. The way you acted you almost convinced me I was wrong and that you really are a crook.”

  “Come off that, Jim. What are you driving at?”

  “Just trying to help you out. You an’ Miss Madge. Terrible swell kid. I’m strong for her.”

  “You can’t hang anything on me.”

  Hanvey met his eyes squarely. Then the detective’s lids closed with interminable slowness. At the termination of the protracted ocular yawn he gave vent to a single comment. “Nobody in this world ever batted a thousand,” he said.

  That night the three principals in the little drama gave themselves over to intensive thought. Jim speculated least of all. He was more than merely satisfied with the results of his preliminary work, although he was yet somewhat appalled by the difficulty of the task he had undertaken—and with the urgency of success. He shuddered in his big, simple heart at the thought of the girl’s future should his efforts meet with failure. Whitey was all right in his own sphere—but this girl did not belong there and he knew that Whitey could never fit himself into her world.

  As for Whitey Kirk, that gentleman was victim to a severe and obsessing worry. He had been apprehensive from the moment of Jim’s arrival on the scene and had already laid a predicate of defense against any possible move of the detective. But the first move had caught him unprepared—it had come from an unexpected quarter and he found himself off guard. Jim’s expressed friendship was the one thing with which he did not know how to cope. He realized that he had pulled a strategic blunder that afternoon—all through the evening Madge had been cool and unlike her naturally effusive and effervescent self. Madge was thinking—and Whitey didn’t want Madge to think. Her nimble brain contained too much of her father’s powers of logical deduction.

  Kirk could not vision the goal toward which Jim was heading. That Jim had a definite objective, he did not doubt. He knew that the protestations of friendly interest were untrue—but he could not prove they were untrue. The very fact that Hanvey’s strategy was unintelligible to him caused additional worry. He could face a definite attack. This one, subtle and evasive, bewildered and rendered him horribly vulnerable.

  Madge sat at her window, staring seriously across the silhouette of hills. In her eyes was a brooding reflective light which was at once doubting and speculative. Instinct informed her that Jim Hanvey was her friend. She could not help but trust him. And she had that day made the startling discovery that there was something to Warren Kirk beside suave gentility. She had glimpsed beneath the surface and had seen there a hardness and a grimness which she—eighteen and in love—had never suspected.

  There was little sleep for her that night and she did not come down the following morning until long after breakfast. She had forgotten an engagement to ride with Kirk and learned with an inexplicable measure of relief that he had gone alone. In the morning room she found Jim Hanvey smoking one of his vile cigars and worrying himself over the proper place to drop the ashes. She settled herself for a chat—and so, eager and friendly, Whitey Kirk found her when he returned from his ride. He remonstrated with her, and, as she had discovered a granite something in him the previous day, so he now learned that there was a strain of firmness in her which did not brook opposition.

  “I think you’re unjust and unreasonable, Warren.”

  “I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Has Mr. Hanvey ever harmed you?”

  “It isn’t his fault that he hasn’t. He has tried.”

  “How do you know?”

  Kirk’s face flushed. That was a question which was embarrassing to answer. He knew well enough, but—“I know—that’s all.”

  “That isn’t sufficient for me, Warren. I like Mr. Hanvey and I believe he’s our friend.”

  Kirk’s face hardened unpleasantly. “He may be yours, Madge; but he isn’t mine.”

  They had walked down the rosepath together and now she left him abruptly and returned to Hanvey. He gave no slightest indication of interest in their conversation. He stared stolidly at nothing at all and allowed her ample time to recover her mental equilibrium.

  Kirk again tried to solve the riddle. Jim was proceeding with a smug complacency which worried him. Mentally, he checked over the list of his criminal exploits. He was positive that each had been excellently covered but he wasn’t sure. Now. He had been sure until Jim appeared on the scene. But nothing could explain Jim’s air of confidence save the certainty that he had uncovered some supposedly closed trail of Kirk’s. But if Jim Hanvey was planning to discredit Kirk in the eyes of the girl, his actions gave no hint of that fact. It was the following morning, after a hearty tiff between Whitey and Madge, that he found her crying in an arbor and slumped down beside her consolingly——

  “Aw! c’mon, Kid—that ain’t no way to carry on. Whitey didn’t mean nothin’ by what he said.”

  She faced him squarely. There were tears in her eyes but no suggestion of weakness in the firm line of her jaw. “It isn’t what he said, Mr. Hanvey—it’s what he didn’t say.”

  “Well then—he didn’t mean nothin’ by what he didn’t say. Whitey’s a swell feller, Madge. A nawful swell feller. Best in the world. He’s got his faults—we’ve all of us got them. But I’m strong for Whitey an’ I’d give anything in the world if he’d b
elieve that.”

  “So would I,” she said. “I trust you, Mr. Hanvey. I don’t know why—but I do. Perhaps it’s because I like you so much.”

  Jim blushed like a schoolgirl. “Gee! them words is music to my ears. There ain’t many folks have said that to me, Miss Madge. Y’know—it seems that when folks meet up with a fat man they think all they got to do to prove they’re good fellers is to give him a razzin’. Goshamighty, a fat feller likes friends as much as a skinny one. More, I’ll say. He needs ’em more.” He breathed heavily with the exertion of prolonged declamation. “That’s why I wisht Whitey would like me an’ trust me like you do. Matter of fact I’ve just been achin’ to solve his problem, but he wouldn’t let me get within firin’ distance—you’d think I was gonna eat him.”

  “You’ve been aching to solve what problem, Mr. Hanvey?”

  “His an’ yourn.”

  “How?”

  Jim looked away. “I don’t exactly like to tell you. If Whitey was to suspect I was hornin’ in on his affairs he’d get plumb peeved. Reckon I’d better wait. But it is a terrible good solution.”

  “What is it?”

  Her interrogation fairly crackled. Jim grinned. “Anybody listenin’ to that would know you was your father’s daughter, Sis.”

  “What have you in mind?”

  “Nothin’ special—just an easy way out. Somethin’ Whitey would of thought of long ago if he’d been twenty years younger.” He stared reflectively at the sky—“Elopement!”

  The color receded from her cheeks. For a moment she sat motionless, then leaned forward earnestly. “Would he?”

  “Elope? Goodness goshness! yes! Feller who wouldn’t elope with you would be a wooden indian.56 ’Course I suppose he’s figured that it’d get you in dutch with your folks, but I’ve been studyin’ them out, an’ I know they’re so nuts about you they’d forgive you right away. Ain’t it so?”

  “Yes.…Mr. Hanvey, I’ve been hoping that Warren would suggest that. I have, really. I know it sounds unmaidenly to say it—but I’ve been so worried and so uncertain. And recently Warren has acted so peculiarly—since you came here, that is.…I wish it was over and done with.”