CHAPTER XX
MICE AND MEN—AND TRIXIE BURNS
"OF course you'd be pulling off a thing like that when I'm on duty and not with you for the fire works!" Dennis mourned, when later still that afternoon McCarty presented himself at the engine house and reported his recovery of the emeralds. "Whatever put you in mind of that Bodansky again?"
"When I was going over the whole case in my head from the very start I saw a kind of a picture before me of that young crook slinking along to his job and it came over me all of a sudden that 'twas not by accident he picked on the Creveling house. I only wonder I never thought of it before." McCarty shook his head. "'Twas easy enough to make him talk when I once got him going, and then I took Martin and Yost and trailed up Third Avenue looking for the little jewelry shop of my new friend Kosakoff. We found it all right and him mending watches behind his counter as meek and respectable appearing as the next one! He had a gold pair of spectacles on himself, down on the tip of his nose, and a full set of white whiskers that would do credit to Santa Claus, and not the sharpest dick in the business would have taken him for Bronheim's right-hand man.
"He made out to be hard of hearing at first and acted the scared, bewildered old innocent to the life, knowing nothing about anything and having his business ruined and his good name took away from him because of some mistake of the hard-hearted police, but he sang a different tune when I opened up on him. I took a chance and told him that Spanish Lou and Diamond Harry had been run in and were down at headquarters telling all they knew, and then I sprung it that we were looking for those emeralds. He swore by all the little fathers of Russia that he never saw them nor heard of Crawford, but when Martin pulled out the warrant and the bracelets he saw that the game was up and made a grab down behind the counter. Then Yost—"
"And where were you while them two lads were making the pinch?" inquired Dennis.
McCarty grinned.
"I got to him before he reached his gun," he remarked modestly. "I took a glass case with me that was filled with cuff-links and such, and there was a bit of a commotion around the place for a while, but Kosakoff was willing to talk when he woke up after the little nap he decided to take, sudden, when he first hit the floor. Some more of the boys had come over from the station house to keep the crowd back and we got him into the room at the rear of the shop, and made him come across.
"He knows who 'Crawford' was all right, though he won't admit it, nor that he had the least suspicion the emeralds were the same the papers were making such a holler about when the girl was held for trial and jumped her bail. It seems that a swell who gave the name of 'Foster' had sold him a pearl necklace and some other junk and when 'Crawford' came he said 'Foster' had recommended him there. Creveling had only meant to borrow those emeralds from his wife, not steal them, for he arranged with Kosakoff to hold them for three months and agree to sell them back to him for thirty thousand; he must have been in a tight squeeze, for he only got two-thirds of what they were worth, and then dug down for ten thousand for Ilsa's bail when his wife was determined to send her up."
"Well, why wouldn't she be?" Dennis asked. "Did Hill's wife make sheep's eyes at you that you can see only her side of it? It was tough luck, of course, her being innocent and all, but Mrs. Creveling didn't know that and you can't blame her for wanting the thief punished."
McCarty shook his head.
"I'm not so sure, Denny, that 'twas a matter of principle with her so much as protection. I've got an idea that after she started the rumpus about the robbery and called in the police she got more than a suspicion of the truth, but 'twas too late to back down from the stand she had taken and Ilsa was the goat. Mrs. Creveling is a hard woman, with the hardness that comes only to the proud when something has made them suffer and they don't take it right. There's some that tribulation makes gentle and forbearing and some that it turns to stone and she's the last sort. I'm thinking her husband broke her heart and if it hadn't been for her pride she'd have kicked him out long ago. 'Tis not love for him now that's made her so set on finding his murderer, but other women have been the cause of her suffering and she suspects some woman is at the bottom of his being shot. As long as all this notoriety and scandal have been brought down on her anyway, she's going to find that other woman and make her suffer too, or I miss my guess."
"And she had never a word of regret for all the harm she'd done Ilsa when you told her the truth?"
"Oh, yes." McCarty's lip curled. "It's her own lawyers that'll help quash the indictment, and her own influence through old Alexander that'll smooth out the little matter of bail jumping, and a handsome settlement she'll make on both Hill and Ilsa. I took the satisfaction of warning her that the matter of settlement might be decided by the courts if Ilsa brought action against her and I hinted that the both of them more than suspected the truth. She'll move heaven and earth to keep it from coming out, of course, and I shouldn't wonder if them two was fixed for life."
"'Twas a grand bluff you handed her about finding the man that made the fake emeralds, and that he could prove Creveling brought the real ones to him!" Dennis remarked. "Where did you get hold of the fakes, anyway?"
"I was not bluffing," McCarty retorted with dignity. "Where do you suppose I've been the day, after seeing Kosakoff off for the station house? I started to hunt up all the makers of imitation junk in town and the fourth one I struck remembered the fine paste emeralds he made and put in the original old settings for a customer named Edward C. Crawford—he did not show much imagination in thinking up an alias for himself, did he? I pulled out a picture of Creveling that I'd cut from the newspaper, but with the name torn off, and he said it was the same man all right. Kosakoff, under pressure, had identified the same picture."
"But the fake emeralds?" persisted Dennis. "You'd think after stealing them away from his wife he would have hid them good until he was able to have them replaced by the real ones."
"He did, Denny, and that's why 'twas easy enough to trace them." McCarty chuckled. "Of course he'd not leave them around the house or try to hide them from Alexander's prying old eyes in one of the office safes, and I didn't size him up as the fellow to trust anybody much, especially in a case like this. He seemed to like the name 'Crawford' since he'd used it twice already, so I got a list of all the little out-of-the-way branch banks and trust companies where they rented safety deposit boxes and started out to look for one that had been hired by Edward C. Crawford a matter of two months ago. Well I knew he wouldn't dare tackle any of the big, prominent places, for Eugene Creveling's face must be pretty well known in banking circles. I sent Martin to Brooklyn and Yost to the Bronx and checked off all the places where Creveling or his father or Alexander had kept accounts, which narrowed the search down a lot. Inspector Druet lent me one of the Department's cars and 'twas well he did, for where do you think I found what I was after? Over on Staten Island, no less, at a branch of the Tradesman's and Artisan's Bank."
"You've the luck!" declared Dennis. "But who was this guy 'Foster' that Creveling said had recommended him to this Kosakoff? The one that sold a pearl necklace?"
"There's no knowing, but it may turn out to be one of the suckers who got cleaned out at Cutter's poker table and sold some stuff belonging to some woman of his family to cover his losses. I figure out that he must have told Creveling and that put the brilliant idea into his head, for he wasn't the kind to think it up all by himself."
"Well, I'll say you worked quick," commented Dennis. "A matter of twenty-four hours and you've cleared up what the best fellows in the detective bureau haven't been able to do in two months, but you're no nearer yet to the man who killed Crev—!"
"Denny, for the love of the saints, will you put on a new record!" McCarty exclaimed in exasperation. Then he glanced at his watch and chuckled once more. "And put on your regular clothes while you are about it, for 'tis nearly six o'clock and you're going to a party to-night."
"A party, is it?" Dennis eyed him suspiciously. "If 'tis another of Mr. Terhune's little—"
"'Tis not. You're going to a theater this night—a big one on Broadway—to see what they call a musical comedy, and you'll be taking a lady out to supper afterwards; one of the ladies in the show."
"Not if I know it!" retorted Dennis firmly. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Mac, at your time—"
"'Tis a wonder I've not, trailing around with you all these years," interrupted McCarty. "I thought we'd be going on Saturday night but Terhune's little moving picture interfered; 'twas for that I mentioned a dress suit to you, but it's just as well to go as we are, for you'll feel more natural. I've bought the tickets already and left a note to be given to the girl when she reaches the theater."
"What's it you've got up your sleeve, Mac?" demanded Dennis. "What's the name of the show and who is the girl? I know well what you're taking me along for, but I'll never in the world be able to talk to her!"
"If you think it is for conversation I'm inviting you, Denny, I could just as well take a deaf-mute, provided he'd not got rheumatism in his fingers!" McCarty replied with withering scorn. "As for the girl you've had her on your knee many's the time."
"Me?" Dennis turned a scandalized face on his friend. "I'll have you know, Timothy Mc—"
"The show," McCarty put in innocently, "is a fool thing called 'Bye-bye Baby.' "
"I've heard that name somewhere lately, besides seeing it on the bill-boards," Dennis reflected aloud. "Wasn't somebody telling me—? Mac! 'Tis the show Terry Burns's daughter is in, her that threw over Eddy Kirby for a stage career, as I was after telling you the other day! 'Tis little Bea herself we'll be taking out for supper!"
"It is," McCarty admitted briefly.
"But why? Well I know you'll not be taking an evening off in the middle of a case to go gallivanting to the theater nor yet to be seeing the daughter of an old friend. What's she to do with the shooting of that man Creveling?'"
"Nothing, you loon!" McCarty exclaimed disgustedly. "Do you mind how we came to be talking of her the other day? I was telling you that some of the girls from that same show were at the party Waverly attended on Thursday night at Sam Vedder's apartment. It come to me that if little Bea wasn't there herself she could introduce us to one that was, and I'd like to find out how Waverly acted that night; whether he was just having a good time without a care in the world or if there seemed to be something on his mind.—'Tis six now, and you're off duty. Hurry up and come on."
But Dennis refused to be hurried and no stage door satellite could have been at more pains with his sartorial appearance. McCarty left him at length to follow at his pleasure and returned to his rooms to add an extra touch or two to his own attire and he was struggling with a new, tight collar when the telephone rang.
"Hello!" he said curtly.
"Are you there McCarty?" Terhune's voice came to him over the wire. "If you are not busy I wish you would drop in at my rooms this evening. A new phase of the case has occurred to me which I would like to discuss with you."
McCarty gave an exasperated wrench at the collar and flung it on the floor.
"I'm sorry, sir," he replied firmly, "but I've got an engagement for this evening."
"Then break it," advised Terhune coolly. "This is of the greatest importance. I have come to the conclusion after careful study of the situation that the man who killed—!"
Very softly and deliberately McCarty hung up the receiver and rolling up a bit of paper he stuffed it under the bell on the top of the telephone. He was standing with a smile of infinite satisfaction, listening to its persistent but impotent whir when Dennis appeared at last.
They dined hurriedly at their favorite chop house and reached the theater just as the orchestra was starting the overture. From their seats in the third row Dennis craned his neck around and surveyed the house, taking a professional interest in the arrangement of the exits while McCarty studied the program and snorted.
"A fine kind of a job for Terry's daughter!" he commented. "She must be doing well, though; I see they've given her a lot of parts. She's a villager in the first act and a model and a hunt ball guest—whatever that is!—in the second, and in the third she's 'Babette.'"
"That'll mean she's got a line to speak," Dennis remarked. "If we can't spot her from the rest till then we'll know her when she opens her mouth, if she's grown up to be like her mother, God rest her soul! You could hear her to the Battery when Terry came home late."
"We'll know her, all right." McCarty smiled slyly, but Dennis had no time to inquire the reason for his certitude, for the curtain ascended and mundane things were lost to him.
"That's her!" McCarty exclaimed after an interval. "Third from your left."
"That tall girl with a bunch of violets on her as big as a platter and hair like brass in the sun?" Dennis sniffed incredulously. "You're dippy, Mac! There was never a blonde in the family."
Nevertheless he watched her assiduously during that act and the one which followed, and when in the third his prediction was verified and Babette fed a line or two to the comedian he sank back in his seat.
"True for you, Mac," he muttered. "She could shoot up like a water tower and bleach out the honest brown hair of her but that's the voice of Moira O'Malley Burns!"
Later he sat in solitary state in the taxicab from which he had refused to budge at the stage entrance to the theater, while McCarty waited at the door and furtively scanned the faces of the girls in plain or elaborate attire as they emerged to hasten off alone up the street or be whirled away in waiting cars, and he thought miserably of the hour before him. How was he ever to talk to this strange, changeling daughter of Terry, the fight promoter?
But when Miss Burns, with the grinning McCarty in tow, appeared at the door of the taxi, she unexpectedly lifted the anticipated burden from his shoulders.
"How de do, Mr. Riordan?" She touched his hand with her gloved fingers and settled with a little whirl into the seat beside him. "It was awfully good of you two old dears to look me up. This is the first night I haven't had a date in a month! And I want to thank you so much for my violets; I got fined for wearing them in the first act but it was worth it to see old Sylvester's face when she made her entrance! She's the worst cat in the business!"
"Violets?" Dennis turned a suspicious eye on the other "old dear" who was gazing steadily out of the window. "I never—"
Miss Burns was oblivious to the denial.
"We're in for an all-summer run!" she went on. "When Dolly Whitfield leaves to head the Number Two company I'm going to have her part; that's why I changed my hair. You remember that song the tenor sings at her in the second act 'Just a Strand of Your Golden Hair'?—Where are we going for supper?"
In a daze Dennis followed her into the glittering restaurant and listened while she commandeered the services of a waiter captain and ordered as to the manner born. The object of their party had passed completely from his mind until McCarty seized an opportunity when frogs' legs poulette had temporarily dammed the flood of their guest's volubility, to remark:
"It must be grand to be so popular, out at parties every night and all! To think of little Beatrice Burns wasting an evening on two old codgers like us when she might be meeting society swells!"
"I'm 'Trixie' now," the young lady reminded him a trifle sharply. Then her manner softened. "'Beatrice' hasn't got pep enough for Broadway these days. Of course I meet society men all the time, but I'm always glad to see old friends."
"There's a man I know that's seen your show a lot." McCarty felt his way with care. "Sam Vedder's his name and he's in with a lot of society people—"
"Sports, you mean!" Trixie laughed. "We all know Sam! He's crazy about Whitfield but she can't see him. He gave a supper party for her one night last week in his apartment up on the Drive and he certainly knows how to do things right even if he is only a kind of a con. man, as they say. This was my souvenir."
She exhibited a gold card case attached to the chain of her mesh bag and Dennis glanced swiftly at McCarty, but the latter was examining the trinket admiringly.
"Sam told me about that party and some of the people who were to be there," he observed. "Several of your company—"
"Only the girls. He left it to Whitfield and she asked eight of us. The men were all Sam's friends: Chedsey, the hardware man, and Danton—you know Danton's Flesh Cream?—and Mayer of the Imperial Cloaks and Suits, and Jeffrey Hunt and Roy Goodsell and Fales Ogden and a couple of bookies whose names I don't remember." Trixie paused for breath. "Lots of money and good sports, but Ogden was the only real swell."
Dennis stiffened and McCarty's grip tightened upon his fork.
"Sam said something about a fellow named Waverly," he remarked with studied carelessness. "Maybe he was one of the bookies—?"
Trixie made a little grimace.
"No, he wasn't. Who doesn't know Doug Waverly? Disgusting beast, but he's what you'd call a society swell, all right. It's funny Vedder spoke of him to you; trying to make out he's intimate with people that have got class, I suppose. Waverly goes around with Ogden a lot but he wouldn't trail with a sporting man like Sam."
"Then he wasn't at that party last Thursday night?" McCarty persisted. "Maybe he came after you left."
"Well, he must have come with the milk if he did, for we girls all left together at five in the morning." Trixie stifled a yawn as she picked up her gloves. "I haven't been to bed before dawn in ages, and I've got to cut out the parties soon for a while and get down to study on Whitfield's part."
"I understood from your father that you were going to make a grand career for yourself," Dennis remarked. "You'll never be doing it on two hours' sleep and broiled lobster, Trixie."
"Oh, you're as bad as father!" She tapped him playfully on the cheek and he reddened violently. "It's as much a part of the show business to mix in and get a following as it is to wear your clothes right and sing on the key, and I'm not looking to play 'Juliet,' you know."
They discovered that she had ceased to live at her father's old house uptown but had leased an apartment in the theatrical district with another show girl so the ride homeward was a mercifully short one and she forcibly kissed them both good night with a final admonition to come and see her in the new part.
"If I was Terry, I'd spank her!" Dennis growled as he rubbed his cheek vigorously. "At my time of life to go back to the lads in the engine house with the mark of painted lips on my face!"
McCarty had given fresh instructions to the chauffeur and now he settled back in Trixie's vacant seat.
"You'll not be going back just yet," he announced. "We'll pay a little call first on Mr. Samuel Vedder and find out why he lied to an officer of the law!"
"Mac, I'm thinking you had a hunch that Waverly's alibi was cooked up!" Dennis declared accusingly. "'Twas not to find out how he acted the night that you took that scatter-brained daughter of Terry's out, but to find out if Waverly was there at all."
McCarty smiled grimly.
"Have it your own way, Denny. 'Twas just a lucky shot but it hit the mark. There's an old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men ganging agley, and it's usually a woman that upsets them. Waverly thought he was slick and Vedder played up all right, but one little word from Trixie Burns and that fine little alibi goes up in smoke."
Mr. Samuel Vedder was at home and received them after some protest, in barbarically striped pajamas and an exceedingly bad temper.
"You fellows have got an awful nerve!" he grumbled. "I don't care if you are from police headquarters, you've got nothing on me and this is a hell of a time to rout a man out of his bed! What do you want, anyway?"
"The names of the men who were your guests at that supper party here last Thursday night," McCarty responded shortly.
A change came over the dark, smooth-shaven face of Vedder, but he replied with an assumption of ease:
"I don't know what for; it was a perfectly regular party. Let me see—there was Fales Ogden and Roy Goodsell and Henry Mayer and Douglas Waverly—"
"Stop right there, Mr. Vedder," McCarty interrupted sternly. "Mr. Waverly was not in your rooms last Thursday night. You ought to have coached Chedsey and Danton and the rest of them if you were going to stick to that lie for him."
Vedder shrugged.
"So that's it, is it? They've been talking.—Well, I only tried to do a favor for a friend and it's not my funeral; I wasn't on the stand."
"Come through now, then. What did you lie for when I 'phoned you last Friday morning?"
"Because he asked me to. Douglas is an intimate friend of mine and he called me up and told me he'd been out all night and he thought the wife had put a couple of dicks on him, but he managed to lose them. I'd met him the day before and invited him to the party and he said he had another date, but I suppose that's what made him think of using me for an alibi. He said if any one called up to tell them that he'd been here at a little stag party and I was glad enough to help him out." Vedder paused and regarded them shrewdly. "It's a horse of another color, though, if headquarters is taking an interest in him.—Say! That's the night his friend was shot—!"
"Oh, nothing like that!" McCarty laughed. "This is a little matter about a private gambling establishment that we've got the goods on. By the way, if you're such a friend of Waverly's you must have sat in more than one game with him; what's his particular hunch, his mascot, his lucky card? He's got one, hasn't he?"
"Sure he has!" Sam Vedder laughed. "He says it has brought a streak of luck down through the family for generations; it's the nine of diamonds!"