“Charity?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. I got interested in some of the boys who were laid off when the sash and box mill closed down.”
“How in the world did you get interested in them?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said; “just dropped in on a meeting — natural curiosity, I guess. They’re awfully nice people. You know, Wiggy, we make a mistake looking on laborers as laborers and businessmen as capitalists. We forget that we’re all human beings and, down underneath, all American citizens.”
“Well,” I said, “the first of the month is rapidly approaching, and a Mrs. Frank Whiting is waiting in the outer office. Mrs. Whiting has neither looks nor personality. Moreover, she has no cash, connections, or sex appeal. Her daughter has been arrested for burglary. Mrs. Whiting doesn’t look as though she could be the least bit of financial help to you in connection with your overdraft. However, I have on occasion seen you perform startling feats of financial legerdemain with the juice of a turnip. The point I’m getting at, however, is that Mrs. Whiting’s troubles are very, very serious to Mrs. Whiting.”
“Naturally,” he said, “they would be. What does she look like?”
“Late forties,” I told him. “She looks as though she’d been taking in washing ever since she was twenty. The world has kicked her around, this way and that. She quit fighting back at least ten years ago.”
“Look as though she had any friends who had money?” Barney Killigen asked.
“No. She probably had to hock something to raise the carfare to come downtown.”
“I’ll see her,” Killigen said.
He folded the sporting page of the newspaper, opened the right-hand top drawer of his desk, and dropped the sheet in.
“That,” I protested, “is your important drawer. It contains correspondence I’ve been weeding out for the last two weeks. Things which really require your immediate answer.”
“You wouldn’t expect anything to be more important than the sporting page, would you?” he asked, in surprise.
I quit arguing with him. What was the use?
I went out and brought Mrs. Whiting in. Then I eased out of Killigen’s private office and gently closed the door behind me.
If the woman had had money and the ability to take life in her stride, I don’t think Barney Killigen would even have wasted time talking with her. As it was, I could hear the rumble of his voice, from time to time, and the thin, reedy notes of hers. I couldn’t distinguish words; all I could get was tones and the mutter of conversation through the door.
I could have told her one thing: if Barney Killigen took her case, he’d get results. Heaven knows how he’d get them, or what they’d be. He does things in a weirdly unconventional manner. No one can ever predict what he’s going to do next, least of all Killigen. He has an instinct for the dramatic, an uncanny ability to make his buildups seem convincing, and an unfailing faith in the power of classified advertising in the newspapers. I never could figure whether he delighted in accomplishing a logical result by utterly illogical means or whether the means really were logical, and it was simply the unconventional inhibitions of my mind which made them seem utterly ridiculous at the time.
Of late, I’d begun to suspect the latter as being the case, because, on occasion, I could see some real underlying reason for some of the things Barney Killigen was doing, when Charlotte Ray would feel the man should be committed to an institution.
II
Barney Killigen called for me to come in and take notes when Mrs. Whiting had been closeted with him for about fifteen minutes.
“Wiggy,” he said, “I’m accepting employment from Mrs. Frank Whiting to represent her daughter Estelle. Estelle Whiting is accused of first degree burglary. Now, Mrs. Whiting, I’m going to dictate some notes to my secretary. I want you to listen carefully, and if anything I say is incorrect, correct me.”
She nodded and Barney Killigen started to dictate:
“Mrs. Dwight Chester-Smith’s son, Dwight Chester-Smith, II., was married Monday night at the Chester-Smith home. It was also the bride’s birthday. Wedding and birthday presents were in a room on the second floor and were guarded by Robert Lame, a private detective. Sometime, shortly after midnight, a man pushed a ladder against the building and noiselessly climbed to the window of the room in which the wedding presents had been placed. Lame, the detective, was just finishing a midnight lunch he had brought with him — sandwiches and coffee from a Thermos bottle. The robber pushed his head over the sill, smashed in the glass of the window with the muzzle of a revolver, commanded Lame to stick them up. Lame had no chance to go for his gun. The man reached through the broken windowpane, unlocked the window, raised it, entered the room, and cracked Lame over the head with a blackjack. Lame fell to the floor, unconscious.
“It is, of course, assumed that the burglar collected his loot while Lame was unconscious. It just happened that one of the guests heard the crash of glass and started an investigation. The burglar evidently heard people approaching the room and hurriedly grabbed up some of the more valuable presents and thrust them in his coat pocket. Then he climbed out of the window and down the ladder. An accomplice was waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder. Lame regained consciousness before the robber and his accomplice had reached the car. He staggered to his feet, pulled his gun, lurched to the window, and saw a man and a woman running, carrying a ladder with them. He opened fire with his revolver. The couple jumped in a car and made their escape. Lame reports he was able to make out the first four characters on the license plate. They were ‘IVI3—’
“Estelle Whiting, Mrs. Whiting’s daughter, spent the evening in company with James Grayson, the young man with whom she has been going. She says, and Grayson says, that he took her home about midnight. Mrs. Whiting didn’t hear her come in, doesn’t know what time she arrived. Estelle got up Tuesday morning and went to work as usual at Cutter & Baggs Department Store. She says that Jimmy Grayson called on her about ten Tuesday morning, very much excited, and presented her with a beautiful engagement ring, a large white diamond surrounded by emeralds. He told her a man to whom he’d loaned some money years ago had struck it rich and had given him this ring in payment. Police arrested Estelle about two hours ago, and claim she was the young woman who held the ladder and assisted Jimmy Grayson in perpetrating the robbery.”
Barney Killigen paused, and I caught up on the last few words, held my pencil poised, and glanced up at Mrs. Whiting to see if she had any comments to offer.
“That’s right,” she said, “but you’ve forgotten about the burglar having a hole in his pocket, haven’t you?”
“That’s right, I did,” Killigen said. “Make a note of this, Wiggy. It’s a peculiarly suspicious circumstance. The police are acting on the theory that the burglar, rattled by the sound of persons approaching, hurriedly pushed the gems into his coat pocket. That pocket had a hole. The gems spilled out as he and his accomplice ran, carrying a ladder.”
Mrs. Whiting said, in the voice of woman who has suffered so many of life’s vicissitudes that she has learned to take grief as a matter of daily routine: “I guess that’s all. That’s everything I’ve been able to find out from the newspapers, talking with the detective, and the few minutes’ visit they gave me with Estelle.”
“And she’s being held in jail?”
“Yes. They fixed her bail at fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Now then, do you know exactly what’s missing?” Killigen asked.
“No, I don’t. I know there’s ten thousand dollars in cash and this ring, and they found some stuff there in the driveway which the man dropped when he was running to the car.”