“The minute Papa saw him,” Agatha explained, “he ordered him out of the house, but he had been here a bit before Papa came home. We all had the chance to meet him. Papa has never been more right. The man is capable of anything.”
We explained that Chicago, no less than California, was out of our jurisdiction. That didn’t matter. Sara was about to be summoned to her grandfather’s bedside and they were certain she would bring that dreadful man with her. There was only the one reason she hadn’t already been summoned. They were waiting until we would have set up the necessary precautions for her safety. They knew just what those precautions were to be. On Franklin Frail’s arrival in New York, they wanted us to pick him up as a potential murderer and they wanted us to lock him up just on the potentiality. Kent was there and he was a lawyer. We reminded him of constitutional guarantees. We suggested that they simply refrain from calling the granddaughter to the old man’s bedside.
“She must be brought here,” Agatha proclaimed. “We must have them where the man can at least be watched. He is a criminal, after all.”
Kent protested that. All he wanted of us was that we reassure the old man. He hoped further that we might give a bit of advice on the best available procedure for protecting the life of his client’s granddaughter. He wanted it to be a method that would also protect his clients, the Bardon family. He deplored their carelessness in matters of slander. He could deplore, but he couldn’t silence Agatha.
“Am I to understand,” she asked frostily, “that you can pick on Everett and you can’t touch this horrible man, Frail?”
“Your nephew,” Gibby said with strained patience, “committed a crime. He was legally charged with it A grand jury found a legal indictment. He was brought to trial and convicted. He was sentenced to jail and he served the minimum part of his sentence. He is now out on probation, which means he’s out on the State’s hope that he can behave himself well enough to be worthy of the trust the State of New York has put in him. Meanwhile, the State has the right and the duty to keep a close eye on the boy and tell him how he must behave. He’s getting the fairest break any law can give him. Nobody’s picking on him.”
“Sara’s husband” — Agatha sniffed — “has done much better.”
“You’re prepared to accuse him of a crime? What was it? When was it? Where was it?”
“There’s nothing to that,” Emory Kent said quickly.
“Nothing?” Agatha protested. “He raped the child and she had to marry him.”
Hepburn guffawed. “Sara’s a Bardon,” he said. “Who could ever rape a Bardon?”
“If you will allow me, both of you,” Emory Kent growled.
They allowed him. There had never been any question of rape. The charge had been burglary. Sara Bardon had met Franklin Frail at some sort of party. The man had seen her home. Later that night, she had wakened. Someone was in her house. She had picked up the phone and called the police. When the police arrived, they surprised Frail in the living room. He had by then opened a wall safe and was in the process of emptying it. At that point, Sara had apologized to the police for bothering them. It had all been a silly mistake on her part. She should have known it was Frail. This was nothing. He had just come to get something she was keeping for him in the box. If he had wakened her, she would have got it for him, but he had been too considerate. So sorry, gentlemen.
“A month later,” Emory Kent said, finishing the story, “they were married. She never brought charges. The matter died right there, so there’s nothing to that.”
He didn’t have to tell us. You can’t be in a DA’s office without knowing all there is to know about that sort of deal. They do it all the time. You have them set to bring charges and they come down with the notion that they can do better than the law does. They’ll reform the character. In a situation like this one at the Bardon house, Gibby wisely doesn’t trust himself to speak. He lets me take over. I’m a milder type. As mildly as I could manage, I suggested that they hire a team of private detectives to watch over the young woman. Old William might find something of that sort reassuring.
“Anyhow,” I said, “if the man does turn illegal at all, it’ll be swiping money out of his wife’s purse or taking her jewelry out and hocking it On his record he sounds sneaky, not violent.”
We rose to go. Agatha wailed a protest.
“What about Everett? Doesn’t anyone care about poor Everett?”
Gibby took over on that. “Who’s going to kill poor Everett?” he asked. He was trying not to sound hopeful.
It wasn’t for her nephew’s life that Agatha feared. It was for his freedom. Consorting with known criminals is a violation of parole. Sara Frail had to be called. Her husband would come with her. Franklin Frail was a known criminal and he would be under the same roof with the reformed Larceny for Larks Lad.
“I would suggest,” Gibby growled, “that Everett take that up with his parole officer.” We got out of there.
3.
I was ready to wash my hands of the whole thing; and when we saw the DA about it, he saw it my way. Gibby, however, was restive; and all he could say toward explaining his feeling was that once the cry of murder had been raised and raised to us, we were in trouble. He agreed that there was no sane reason for expecting murder to happen as the Bardons feared, but he didn’t like our having been forewarned of it.
“Murder,” he said, “can always happen and if it just does happen up there, how’s it going to make us look?”
At the time, the question seemed academic; and actually, before any murder did happen, we had another problem with the Bardons. We learned of it from a newspaper story date-lined Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Frail, about to fly to New York because of the grave illness of Mrs. Frail’s grandfather, had been delayed at the Chicago airport when Mr. Frail with one punch had flattened one Steve “Cockeye” Brooks.
You would have to know about Cockeye Brooks to begin to understand how very peculiar a story this was. You will recall that Mrs. Frail was that granddaughter of old William’s about whom we’d been consulted. What you can’t know is that Cockeye Brooks was a small-time thug. People don’t punch Cockeye Brooks. Cockeye Brooks doesn’t go running to the cops. Cockeye Brooks doesn’t bring charges against anyone. It is always the other way about. People bring charges against Cockeye Brooks. People, in fact, on one of several occasions, had brought such charges and on these charges — simple assault — Cockeye Brooks had done time in Sing Sing. He had, in fact, been a contemporary of Everett Bardon’s at that same institution.
See what I mean? The Bardons wanted Sara Frail at her grandfather’s bedside. They wanted Sara without her husband. They consult us in the matter. We suggest private detectives. Cockeye Brooks turns up and, according to the Frails, for twenty-four hours he follows Mrs. Frail wherever she goes. He makes himself so annoying that Mr. Frail has to do something about it. Mr. Frail does. Brooks doesn’t retaliate in kind. Instead, he calls the cops and he brings charges. Mr. Frail is held by the Chicago police. Mrs. Frail has to come on to New York without her husband.
The Bardons had obviously made their arrangements and they were arrangements that didn’t look well for Everett Bardon and for the terms of his parole. Since to some extent we in the DA’s office were privy to these arrangements, they didn’t look well for us, either. To me it seemed a simple nuisance. Gibby grumbled along with me but his grumbling was unconvincing. I had the feeling that he rather welcomed the opportunity for another look at the Bardon crowd. They had engaged the Gibson curiosity and curiosity is a passion with Gibby.