He scratched his head without being able to answer. And the more I thought about it, the more excited I started to get.
“D’you suppose something happened to the guy that used to own it?” I whispered. I really meant did he suppose the guy that used to own it had been murdered, but I didn’t tell him that because I was afraid he’d laugh at me. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to swipe a man’s glass eye, even if they did murder him, and then throw it away.
I remembered what my old man had said that morning. A clue is any little thing that don’t seem to belong where it’s found. If this wasn’t a clue, then what was? Maybe I could help him. Find out about somebody being murdered, that nobody else even knew about yet, and tell him about it, and then he could get re— whatever that word was I’d heard him and her use.
But before I could find out who it belonged to, I had to find out where it come from first. I said, “Whereabouts did you find it, Scan?”
“I didn’t find it,” he said. “Who tole you I found it? I swapped it off a guy, just like you swapped it off me.”
“Who was he?”
“How do I know? I never seen him before. Some kid that lives on the other side of the gas works, down in the tough part of town.”
“Let’s go over there, try and find him. I want to ask him where he got it.”
“Come on,” he said, “I bet I can show him to you easy. He was a little bit of a runt. He was no good at swapping, either. I cleaned him just like I cleaned you. That’s why he had to go inside his father’s store and bring out this peeper, he didn’t have anything else left.”
I got sort of disappointed. Maybe this wasn’t the right kind of a clue after all. “Oh, does his father sell them kind of glims in his store?”
“Naw, he presses pants.”
I got kind of relieved again. Maybe it still was a useful clue.
When we got over there on the other side of the gas works, Scanny said, “Here’s where I swapped him. I don’t know just where his father’s store is, but it must be around here some place, because it didn’t take him a minute to go back for that glim.” He went as far as the corner and looked down the next street, and then he said, “I see him! There he is!” And he stretched his mouth wide and let out a pip of a whistle.
A minute later a dark, undersized kid came around the corner. The minute he saw Scanlon he started to argue with him. “You gotta gimme that thing back I took out of the shop yesterday. My fodder walloped me for picking it up off the eye-nink board. He says maybe the customer’ll come back and ask fer it, and what’ll he tell him?”
“Where’d it come from?” I butted in. I tried to sound tough like I imagined my old man did when he questioned suspects.
He made his shoulder go way up until it nearly hit his ear. “I should know. It came out of one of the suts that was brought in to be cleaned.”
“From the pocket?”
“Naw. It was sticking in one of the cuffs on the bottom of his pants. They were wide open and needed basting.”
“In the cuff!” Scanlon piped up. “Gee, that’s a funny place to go around carrying a glass eye in!”
“He didn’t know it was down there,” I said impatiently. “It musta bounced in without his knowing it, and he brought the suit over to be pressed, and it stayed in there the whole time.”
“Aw, how could that happen?”
“Sure it could happen. Once my father dropped a quarter, and he never heard it hit the door; he looked all over for it and couldn’t find it. Then when he was taking his pants off that night, it fell out of the cuff. He carried it around with him all day long and never knew it.”
Even the tailor’s kid backed me up in this. “Sure,” he said, “that could happen. Sometimes a thing rolls around to the back where the cuff is tacked up, and the stitching holds it in. People have different ways of taking their pants off; I’ve watched it in my fodder’s shop when they’re getting a fitting. If they pull them off by the bottom, like most do, that turns them opside down, and if something was caught in the cuff it falls out again. But if they just let them fall down flat by their feet and step out of them, it might still stay in, like this did.” He was a smart kid all right, even if his old man was just a tailor and not a detective. I had to hand it to him.
I thought to myself: The only way a thing like that could fall into a man’s trouser cuff without him seeing it would be from low down, like if the owner was lying flat on the floor around his feet and he was bending over him shaking him or something. That made it seem like maybe I could dig up a murder in this and help my old man after all. But I had to find out where that eye came from.
I said to the tailor’s kid, “Do you think this guy’ll come back, that left the suit?” If he’d really murdered someone, maybe he wouldn’t. But then if he wasn’t coming back, he didn’t have to leave the suit to be cleaned in the first place, so that showed he probably was.
“My fodder promised it for him by tonight,” he said.
I wondered if there was any blood on it. I guessed not, or the guy wouldn’t have left it with a tailor. Maybe it was some other kind of a murder, where wasn’t any blood spilled. I said, “Can we come in and look at it?”
Again his shoulder went way up. “It’s just a sut,” he said. “Didn’t you ever see a sut before? All right, come in and look at it if you gotta look at it.”
We went around the corner and into his father’s shop. It was a little dinky place, down in the basement like most of them are. His father was a short little guy, not much taller than me and Scanlon. He was raising a lot of steam from running a hot iron over something.
“This is it, here,” the kid said, and he picked up the sleeve of a gray suit hanging there on a rack with two or three others. The cuff had a little scrap of paper pinned to it: “Paulsen — 75c.”
“Don’t any address go with it?” I said.
“When it’s called for and delivered, an address. When it’s brought in and left to be picked up, no address, just the name.”
His father noticed us handling the suit just then and he got sore all of a sudden and came running at us waving his hands, with the hot iron still left in one. He probably wasn’t going to hit us with it, he just forgot to put it down, but it was no time to wait and find out. He hollered, “Kip your hands off those clinink jobs, you hear me, loafers? What you want in here, anyway? Outside!”
When we quit running, outside the door, and he turned back and went in again, I said to Sammy, that was his kid’s name, “You want these five immies I got with me?”
He looked them over. They weren’t as good as some of my others, but they were probably better than he was used to playing with. “Why should I say no?” he said.
“All right, then here’s what you gotta do. When the customer that left that suit comes in to get it, you tip us off. We’ll be waiting down at the corner.”
“So what do you want from him?” he asked, spreading his hands.
“This feller’s father is a—” Scanlon started to say. I just kicked him in time, so he’d shut up.
“We’re just playing a game,” I changed it to. I was afraid if we told him, he’d tell his father the first thing, and then his father would probably tell the customer.
“Soch a game,” he said disgustedly. “All right, when he comes I’ll tell you.”