Love and Learn (Witwer)/Chapter 4
One of the other nights me and Hazel went to see an endless reel super-production called "Murdered in Fun!"—one of these movies where "the audience stood up and cheered," according to the advertisements. Well, about the middle of this deliberate insult to the adult intelligence, Hazel and me stood up and jeered, departing for the great outdoors with most of the other indignant patrons of the mute drama. Calling this magic lantern atrocity terrible would be giving it a boost, no fooling!
The scenarioof "Murdered in Fun!" was remembered by a first-class maniac named Galahad O'Mercy and it had everything in it but the Johnstown Flood. It was one of these mystery pictures where suspicion is sprayed on everybody in the cast and then at the welcome finish you find out it was really the camera man who shot the old banker right in the library. But honestly I wasn't fooled a bit when the web of circumstance was wove around the hero, heroine, comedian, ingénue and so forth to make each appear to be the criminal. Personally, I suspected the producers of the film!
But speaking of detectives reminds me of Oliver Thurston, and what Oliver Thurston reminds me of I am much too ladylike to mention. However, after I tell you about him, maybe you can guess it.
To begin with, Thurston was a jig-saw puzzle to me from the first, and generally I can read the sturdy menfolk with one swift glance. Oliver just didn't click with me, and somehow he seemed all wrong for a first-class, blown in the flask, Simon-pure sleuth! This gentleman didn't check up like the gum shoes of the books, plays and movies a-tall. He should have been middle-aged, slightly gray and stoop-shouldered, wearing horn-rimmed cheaters, packing a magnifying glass and a bulldog pipe, dressing in fearful taste and being slightly more bashful than a rabbit. Instead of that, Thurston was tall and broad-shouldered, a regular fashion plate, handsome in a cold-eyed, man of the world manner and about as timid as a hungry lion in a sheep pen. He was passionately in love with himself and took it for granted that everybody else was, too.
Around the St. Moe they certainly gave him ample reason to think he was good, the awed hired help treating him with a reverence that burned me up. Honestly, he had 'em buffaloed, but it was different here! Before he'd been registered a week he fell right in line, filing his application to take me out, donating candy and flowers and stalling around the switchboard till the other girls were gnashing their teeth with envy. They said Thurston was just grand. I thought he was apple sauce, and from my actions he must have thought I was as cold as Nanook's nose. Without being able to put my finger on the reason, I just didn't like him. You've met people like that, haven't you?
One morning the newspapers are full of a big diamond robbery that baffles the local police. Jerry Murphy, moored at my board as usual, points to the headlines in a paper which, with the copper's instinct, he's carrying rolled up like a club.
"They'll never nail them babies," he says scornfully. "This is the softest slab in the world for a crook. When I think 'at I'm slavin' away keepin' law and order in this cave for a hundred and twenty bucks the month and a swell mob can go down in Maiden Lane and glom ninety grand for a few minutes' work, it's all I can do to keep honest!"
"What gives you the crazy idea that you're honest," I says, "when you're taking thirty dollars a week from this hotel for hanging around my switchboard all day? What a swell detective you are! All you've shown me since I've been here is that you got adenoids!"
"Is it my fault 'at they don't pull off a big job in this joint and give me a chance to display my wares?" says Jerry indignantly. "I only wish I could lure a flock of high-class crooks in here and I'd show you some stuff, Cutey! But you can't get the boys within radio distance of the St. Moe since I been on the job. The word's went out through them secret underground channels 'at Jerry Murphy, the new Sherlock Holmes, is on watch at the St. Moe, and they duck this place like the outside was nothin' but smallpox signs! Why, say, Cutey, when I was on the po-lice force I was the gossip of New York. Remember 'at fatal trunk murder on Tenth Avenoo about twenty years ago?"
"No, you big goof," I says angrily. "Twenty years ago I was busy being born!"
"Well, even so, you must of heard the nurse talkin' about it," says Jerry unruffled. "It was the mest sensational murder since the Custer massacre and as full of mystery as boardin' house hash, I was only a young rookie copper, crammed with ambition and brighter than Jackie Coogan. For a month you couldn't pick up a newspaper without findin' my name in it!"
"For catching the murderer?" I asks breathlessly.
"For lettin' him go," says this clown coolly. "I nailed him as he run out of the house and the big stiff talked me out of it! Say, can I throw a party for you some night this week?"
"Nothing stirring, Jerry!" I says firmly. "I've told you that before. I can't afford to be pegged bounding around with you while we're both working here. It would cause embarrassing talk in the hotel and"
"'At's all right, Cutey," butts in Jerry soothingly. "Don't you worry your pretty head about them embarrassin' me. If any of these monkeys sees us playin' around I'll say it wasn't you at all I was with, but some other crazy admirer of mine. By the way, I see this Mr. Thurston is givin' you quite a play."
I looked up in surprise because, honestly, that was the first time I had ever heard the hard-boiled Jeremiah call anybody "Mister" since I've been one of the show places of the St. Moe. Jerry would address President Coolidge as "Cal," no fooling!
"Thurston would give any woman a play, Jerry," I says contemptuously. "He's just like you—always looking for the best of it. The next time you see him parked at the board here you have my permission to chase him!"
"I think you're out of order there, Cutey," says Jerry seriously. "Mr. Thurston is a high-class fellah, what I mean, and the rumor around here is 'at he's a perfect gent. And if 'at ain't sufficient, he's one of the greatest detectives which ever solved a bafflin' mystery from one look at the murdered man's sleeve garters! Nobody's hep to what he's here for, because like all guys which knows their business he's under cover, but you can gamble it's big stuff. Prob'ly got somethin' to do with 'at diamond robb'ry. All I got to say is if he's after them mugs they might as well confess. He's the bat's larnyx, I'll tell the cross-eyed world!"
"Oh, be yourself!" I says impatiently. "I never heard of Thurston till he blew in here, and I don't believe anybody else ever heard of him either, outside of his parents. What mysteries did he ever solve? He looks like a big false alarm to me and if he doesn't keep away from me I'm going to send you out for a cop and have him put under glass for a while!"
"Well," says Jerry thoughtfully, "he may look all wrong to you, but he looks like a million to me in 'at swell scenery he wears. I only wish I had the art of dressin' like 'at baby does! He sure wears a wicked tuxedo. Nevers the less, should he speak out of turn with you, Cutey, I'll smack him down, and 'at goes for Jack Dempsey?"
At this critical minute who should come along but the very person we're talking about. Not Jack Dempsey, but Oliver Thurston. He curls: his lip contemptuously when he sees Jerry, but our charming house sleuth greets the private detective like a dog greets its master. Really, I thought for a minute Jerry was going to tip his derby to this big fathead, and 1f he had I would have crowned him with my inkwell!
Jerry didn't linger long now that the great Thurston was on hand, but found himself needed in a place called Elsewhere. The second he waddled away Thurston bends over the board.
"If that big animal is annoying you, Gladys," he says, throwing his chest out a foot, "I'll be pleased to take him outside and give him a thrashing he'll never forget!"
Sweet spirits of niter! Both of these huskies ready to leap at each other's throats at a word from me! Don't you love that? I felt like the heroine in a movie—a very dull movie.
"You needn't commit suicide on my account," I says coldly. "Jerry Murphy may have plenty to learn about this and that, but he's nobody's fool in a rough and tumble. I've seen him go and I'd advise you not to choose him!"
Then I reached over and threw my fur about my shapely shoulders. I was very properly dressed, but georgette is rather sheer and with Thurston's eyes—beady even when he smiled—boring through it I honestly felt positively naked! I loathe men who look at you like that, don't you?
"I don't think I should have much trouble with Murphy, in spite of his prowess," sneers Thurston in an affected drawl. "Eh—I was a champion amateur boxer at one time, you know."
"Fawncy that!" I drawled back. Then I looked him up and down with a cold smile and added, "You hate yourself, don't you?"
Thurston frowns, and honestly his eyes become slits.
"Why are you so antagonistic to me?" he asks, like he can't understand how anyone can't resist him. "Don't you like me?"
"Do you expect me to leap up and kiss you?" I says evasively.
"Stranger things could happen," he remarks, with what I bet he thought was a killing smile.
"But not to me!" I snapped. "I don't like to slam the door in your face, but really I must ask you to shove off. It's against the rules for us girls to kid with the customers, and if you don't go away you'll get a ticket for violating the parking ordinance here."
"Will you dine with me tonight?" he asks eagerly.
"Mr. Thurston," I says, "I might as well tell you once and for all that I wouldn't go out with you if it was a felony not to. As who's this says, 'You may be all the world to your mother, but you're an awful bust to me!'"
"Is that so?" softly says Thurston, but he's fit to be tied—I can see it. "Is that so? Well, I'll make you a little wager that I'll take you out within a month!"
"Blaah!" I says politely. "You sound like a scenario, Step into number four booth, please!"
"Why?" he asks, a bit puzzled.
"I've got your number!" I says sweetly, and turned my back to him.
That was the beginning of one of the most exciting adventures I've had in an exceedingly exciting life!
Amongst the inmates of the St. Moe was Abigail Monkton, a charming tot of some fifty hard winters, enjoying the delights of her second childhood. Abigail was richer than a cup custard and as foolish as you'll find 'em outside of a sanitarium. Among the things Miss Monkton had failed to do in the mad rush and bustle of living was get married, and she was now making a frantic attempt to rectify that annoying error. Abigail was staging a stand against the ravages of time that proved she was as game as she was silly. Her weapons in a futile daily battle against the advancing years were rouge, powder, mascara, belladonna, lip sticks, expensive wigs, extreme clothes, much display of jewelry, ceaseless massages and manicures, baths of every known variety in the deadfalls called beauty parlors, and instruction in the latest dance steps from all the best known masters but St. Vitus.
Well, this gold-plated old maid was a scream to my little playmates of the telephone switchboard, but honestly Abigail was too tragic to me to be just a giggle. I pitied her, in spite of the fact that her continual "girlie" and "dearie" got on my nerves plenty. Likewise I was a bit steamed up about her for making my popular sex ridiculous by going boy-crazy at fifty. She specialized in advice to the lovelorn, inviting the confidences of the other girls at the board and listening as breathlessly as a chambermaid at a keyhole to their alleged adventures and difficulties with their Johns. Realizing that Abby got quite a kick out of this stuff, these impish young ladies took the brakes off their lively imaginations, enjoying her eager attention just as much as she enjoyed their cuckoo stories—which was ample! Old enough to be their grandmother, Abby always addressed the bunch as "we girls," and when I bawled 'em out for kidding Old Mother Goose with their fairy tales they told me to tend to my own activities, because it was all fun and Abigail was a find that they didn't intend to lose now that they had her all built up. They could always put the bee on her for pin money between pay days, and an especially good love story in which one of 'em played the wronged victim would bring a hat or a gown from the champion listener of the world. Terrible, weren't they?
Being twice as flirtatious as Potiphar's wife, Abigail knew where the sterner sex gathered and honestly she lingered around the switchboard like the odor of boiled cabbage in a Sixth Avenue kitchenette. She vamped one and all, featuring coy glances and kittenish snickers, to the great entertainment of the males. But as I feared, it was Oliver Thurston that goaled her. One glance at the handsome Nick Carter and Abby was overboard!
With a cynical grin I watched her set sail for him, and while her work was fearfully crude and amateurish, I must say she got results. Edging up beside Mr. Detective one day when he was making a stall of looking up a name in the phone book so he could pester poor little me, Abigail's first imitation was to cough and drop her handkerchief. That's all been done away with in the new rule books. Following a life-long and expensive habit, Thurston turned his comely head at the feminine cough, immediately seeing the bit of silk on the floor and the "you-chase-me-and—I'll-chase—you" expression on Abigail's face. His own features were a three-second movie, really! A harsh laugh stopped at his tonsils and his cold, rather cruel eyes narrowed. Then off comes his chapeau, as with a drawing room bow and a dazzling smile he recovers the handkerchief and returns it to the delighted Abigail Monkton.
Thus began Abigail's mock romance, caused by Cupid changing from an angel-eyed chubby little darling to a hard-faced, devilish little brat!
After that day Thurston seemed as unable to keep away from Abby as a sardine is unable to keep away from a can. They were always meeting in the lobby and the wires between their rooms were busier than Busy himself. The other girls were convulsed by the stuff they eavesdropped, but honestly I wouldn't be bothered listening in to any sweet nothings passed between a Romeo of thirty and a Juliet of fifty, if you know what I mean. However, I did kid Thurston once about his affair of the heart, as they say in Guatemala, and his reaction surprised me. Instead of laughing it off, he told me very seriously that Abigail was delightful and dwelt on her charms to such an extent that I soon stopped smiling and became very, very thoughtful. When I saw them having tea together on the roof garden later, with Abigail gazing into Thurston's eyes as if they were a couple of suppressed novels, I began to speculate in earnest on just what the big boy's racket was.
The mysterious private detective's attentions to the simpering foolish virgin didn't seem to slow up his ambitions in my direction a particle, though whenever dear old Abby was in the immediate vicinity Thurston throttled down and became merely polite to me. This amused me so highly that simply because I didn't like his work I made matters harder for Oliver Thurston by flirting outrageously with him the minute Abby came near the switchboard and refusing even to talk to him when she was nowhere to be seen.
Then one bright morning Abigail hurls the fashionable St. Moe into a turmoil by excitedly dashing into the manager's office and loudly squawking that her $100,000 pearl necklace has been abducted from her boudoir. Honestly, she made more noise than a dress rehearsal of a lynching about losing this gewgaw, and in spite of the frantic efforts of the hotel management to keep the thing quiet, why, the thrilling news seeped out and the panic was on. Anyone who can keep a matter like that a dark secret in a large New York hotel can also make a stone bleed to death!
Well, for the next few days you couldn't turn around in our well known inn without bumping into a plain-clothes man, a reporter or a photographer. This got Mr. Williams, the manager, red-headed, but it tickled Abigail silly. Honestly, she was having the time of her life, giving out interviews and posing for newspaper pictures all day long. When public interest in the robbery seemed to be dying down, Abby hauled off and offered a reward of $10,000 for the return of her necklace and that started something!
For one thing, it threw a pair of people right into the spotlight and put it up to them to make good or turn in their shields as detectives and forever hold their peace. The two were Jerry Murphy, our noble house gum shoe, and Oliver Thurston, the private pussyfooter. Jeremiah promptly swelled all up like a sprained ankle and told the world fair that the ten thousand was the same as in the bank to his account, as he had every intention of restoring the pearls and jailing the thief over the week-end. Nobody gave poor Jerry a tumble, beyond telling him he was a comic opera detective and to keep his nose out of the case as he'd only make a bad matter worse. It was Mr. Oliver Thurston who got the undivided attention of one and all. Here was the big chance for him to prove that he meant something, and the habitués of the St. Moe, positive he was bonded goods, sat back expectantly to watch him do his stuff.
But to everybody's astonishment, Thurston seemed only mildly concerned about Abigail's robbery and made little or no comment on it, intimating that million dollar thefts and unusual murder mysteries were more in his line. So lordly was his manner that this explanation evidently satisfied and impressed the rest of em, but it was the turkey's fountain pen to me! The first chance I got I asked this so called clue collector how come he wasn't functioning in the great $100,000 pearl necklace mystery. Thurston smiled carelessly and flicked the ash off his cigarette with a carefully manicured nail.
"In the first place, my dear girl," he says, pushing back a yawn, "nyther Miss Monkton nor the hotel management has retained me in the matter, and in the second place"—another flick of his cigarette ash—"eh—in the second place, I am not particularly interested in petty larceny!"
"Tomato sauce!" I says sarcastically. "I suppose you could ponder all night and yet not find use for that ten thousand dollars' reward, eyether?"
"The reward doesn't attract me," says Thurston coolly. "You do—which is why I am here instead of idiotically dashing around hunting the thief like that fool Murphy. Another thing, my dear girl, I never take a case because of a reward. That is for amateurs. If the hotel or Miss Monkton wishes my services in recovering her necklace, they may be obtained at any time on my usual terms."
"Fair enough," I says. "But personally, I wouldn't have your services in anything on any terms. I think you're the bunk, I do for a fact!"
Thurston smiled, but with his lips only. His eyes looked stilettos at me, really!
Well, Jerry Murphy's attempts to make a name for himself as a thief-catcher will be remembered at the St. Moe for many a year. For a week Jerry was busier than an epileptic bill-poster on a windy day, and at the end of that time he hadn't found Abigail's necklace, but he had lost his job! He sent Abby right up in flames with personal questions as to how she lost the necklace, suspected everybody in the hotel as the robber, gave the indignant guests the third degree, till in forty-eight hours sixty cash customers had checked out of our hostelry foaming at the mouth, busted into the rooms at all hours of the day and night hunting clues, fingerprinted the entire staff and all the guests who would stand for it, and at one time or another tried to pinch the entire ship's company at the St. Moe.
Thurston seemed to get more unholy fun out of Jerry's clowning than anyone in the hotel, and the way this big goof baited Jeremiah was positively brutal. He'd wink at me and call our light-brained house detective aside, filling him full of crazy suggestions for catching Abigail's burglar, and where anybody else would have run Thurston bow-legged, the awed Jerry eagerly followed these tips with the result that he was in hot water as often as steam is.
About this time Miss Abigail Monkton, the elderly charmer of a thousand surprises, sprung a fresh sensation. Three or four weeks after her necklace disappeared, she stopped at the switchboard one day all excited.
"Have they found your necklace yet?" I asked her for the 'steenth time.
"No!" says Abigail, with a grimace that threatened her facial enamel. "My dear, I'm positively disgusted with the police and that impossible Murphy creature. Positively dis-gus-ted! Beyond subjecting me to imbecilic and insulting cross-examinations, they have done nothing. Ab-so-lute-ly nothing! But s-s-sh! May I trust you not to repeat something?"
"I keep a mean secret!" I says.
"Well," says Abigail smilingly, "I have engaged Mr. Thurston to catch the thief and solve the mystery of my missing necklace. What do you think of that?"
"I don't think you could have engaged anyone who knows more about it!" I says, with deliberate significance.
Abby checks a smile, frowns and looks at me queerly. "Just what do you mean by that remark?"
"Why—er—I mean—er—I think Mr. Thurston is just the man to cope with a mystery of this kind," I told her, covering up. "But he's quite expensive, isn't he?"
This time Abigail's face was just the background for a large, happy grin.
"Mr. Thurston's services are not costing me a penny!" she simpers. "Not one penny. You see—I—we—oh, congratulate me, girlie, we're engaged!"
Good night!
"Do you actually mean to tell me that big—er—that Mr. Thurston has proposed marriage to you?" I asked, in a faint voice.
Abigail saw that I was a bit upset over the news, but she misguessed the reason.
"There, there—don't be downcast, dearie," she says soothingly. "I know all you girls must have had fond hopes in Oliver's direction, he's so thrillingly handsome and clever, isn't he? But cheer up, maybe some other Oliver will come along and—who knows?"
I felt like telling her you could get Oliver Thurstons for a dime a dozen and that I'd think that price exorbitant. I wanted to warn her that this patent-leather haired, sleek young vulture was a type as familiar to me as the subway and that I gave his superiors the air every day. But what would be the use? Already filled with the maniacal idea that every girl in the hotel was jealous of her charms, putting in the rap for Thurston would only make her more in love with him than ever and less in love with me. So as I frequently use my head for more than a hat rest, I kept my little mouth shut and let nature take its course!
But as for this Thurston Don Juan—well, honestly, I was simply furious at him! The very idea of his trying to take me out, when all the time he was scheming to marry this silly old maid for her doubloons! The more I thought matters over the more I was determined to punish this fellow, and that brought me around to thinking of Abigail's robbery. All of a sudden I made up my mind to solve the mystery of the missing necklace myself! That ten thousand dollars' reward would make at least one of my daytime dreams come true, and at the same time I could help Jerry Murphy come back.
Having been rubbed off the payroll by the disgusted hotel management, poor Jerry was forlornly hanging around outside the St. Moe like a lost sheep. Well, I decided that I'd help him regain his job and former glory by giving him a chance to steal the private detective's thunder. Having that all settled in my mind, I smoothed back my hair and went to work!
The first thing was to find out what, if anything Thurston had discovered in the way of clues pointing to who stole the necklace, so I began alternately flirting with him and riding him hard on his failure to show some results. But Abigail's boy friend was so madly infatuated with himself that he accepted my attention as no more than his due, and when I switched to sarcasm it rolled off his egotism like water off an oilskin. Finally, however, he began to respond to treatment, and one day he point blankly declared he had solved the mystery. He made that interesting statement with so little of his usual bluster that somehow I instantly believed him.
"Who's the thief?" I asked excitedly.
Thurston smiled mysteriously.
"Ah!" he says, "that will indeed surprise you, my dear girl. So will the solution of this unusual case. I expect to make an arrest within twenty-four hours, and when I do—well, to say you will be astonished would be making a most conservative statement!"
"Yes, yes—go on!" I begged. "If you don't tell me who stole that costly bauble from Abigail's alabaster neck, I'll perish of excitement!"
And really I was no more than half kidding, at that!
"I wouldn't have you perish for worlds," says Thurston, leaning over the board. "But it's much too long and too interesting a tale to relate here and now. Dine with me tonight and I promise you a story as fascinating as yourself!"
I know that curiosity killed the cat, but I am no cat and here was the chance I had played for. I promptly said I'd go and the sudden glitter in Thurston's eyes actually made me shiver!
When I went off duty at five that afternoon, the disconsolate Jerry was parked outside with the doorman as usual. I called a taxi and told Jerry to get in it with me, and although our ex-house detective looked plenty puzzled, he leaped inside with astonishing speed. Jeremiah started right in making love to me but I quickly stopped that part of it and told him where I was going, why I was going and what I wanted him to do. With the dumb, unquestioning obedience of those born to obey orders, Jerry placed himself at my commands. He had the pawn ticket for the tuxedo he'd been compelled to wear when on night duty at the St. Moe, and when we reached my flat I staked him to twenty-five dollars and sent him home to climb into the tux after letting a barber have his way with his face and hair. Then I bribed Hazel Killian to dress and accompany Jerry to the Palais, where Thurston was taking me to eat, drink and be merry. Thurston had never met Hazel and I figured if there was a girl with Jerry when Thurston saw him at another table, he wouldn't be unduly suspicious.
I put on my war paint, had my blonde tresses dressed, arrayed myself in my most daring—and only—evening gown and sat down to wait for Mr. Oliver Thurston with about the same delightful anticipation that a spider watches the approach of a nice fat fly! Promptly at seven o'clock he appeared, and the soft whistle that accompanied the gleam in his eyes showed me that the time I had devoted to readying myself had not been wasted.
Although I liked him and measles the same way, I had to admit that Thurston in evening dress was no eye-irritant. It seemed to me that his cheeks were somewhat flushed and he was more talkative than usual, burning me up by acting as if I belonged to him from the time he arrived to the time we sat down in the Palais.
On the way to our table we passed Jerry and Hazel, but, as instructed, they didn't give us a tumble. Thurston saw them, however, and sneered.
"Where does that gil rate a snapper like that?" he says, nodding to the beautiful Hazel at Jerry's table. "He's as out of place here as a celluloid suit would be in Hades?"
Honestly, I was so surprised by his language that for a moment I didn't do anything but stare at him! Around the hotel his English had been painfully correct; now, with a half silly grin on his flushed face and an unusual brightness in his eyes, he was as coarse and slangy as a bellhop.
After we ordered and Thurston drives me wild with embarrassment by loudly browbeating the waiter, I asked him who stole Abigail's necklace.
"All in good time, sweetie!" he says, leering at me. "All in good time. First we'll have a little snifter!"
With that he yanks a silver flask out of his hip pocket and pours me a generous drink, in spite of my protests. I didn't argue with him about it, as I didn't want to attract too much attention, but I did want Thurston to talk so I didn't object to him tossing off the swallow he had poured for me and another one, too. These two stiff jolts on top of what he'd already inhaled loosened him up considerably. His suave, polished, affected manner just melted away like fried ice and his real self came to the surface.
He scarcely touched his food, but lolled back in his chair looking me up and down and telling me over and over again what a knockout I was. I wanted to murder him, but I let him rave on in the hope of hearing about Abigail's necklace, though his language and manner got rougher and rougher. He spoke of Jerry as a "dick," mentioned "harness bulls," referred to lawyers as "mouthpieces" and Sing Sing as "the big house." A strange premonition was slowly creeping over me and I listened to him with palpitating heart and bated breath. Then out of a clear sky came the fireworks!
Pawing across the table, Thurston managed to get hold of my hand.
"Listen here, beautiful," he says thickly. "Forget about that job of yours at the St. Moe. You got too much stuff to be answering phone calls at that trap, get me? S'pose you answer my calls for a while. I got important money and I'm going to get plenty more. I'll take you to Europe, and, girlie, we'll go places! I'll cover every inch of you with a jewel, show you some towns that would make New York look like Oshkosh, give you twice whatever you ask for! Will you play?"
I don't know what stopped me from slapping his face—I've done it for much less than that!
"What about Abigail Monkton?" I asked him, turning my face away so he couldn't see my disgust.
Thurston looked puzzled for an instant and then he threw back his head and laughed so uproariously that heads turned in our direction from near-by tables. I caught Jerry Murphy's inquiring eye and signaled him to be ready!
"Abigail Monkton, eh?" says Thurston, wiping his eyes and then pouring himself another drink, "Well, sweetie, that dame is about the softest thing I've ever met up with in a mighty soft world! She's double cuckoo over your little boy friend and I'm all set to glom her rocks and do a vanishing act. I got that dizzy old maid jumping through hoops, no kidding! Why, she thinks I'm going to marry her, can you feature that?" He lowers his voice and leans over the table. "Listen, kid," he whispers. "She's got five hundred grand worth of jewelry that I can put my hands on tonight, and before she'd ever peg me we could be in Monte Carlo! When that dough runs out, we'll breeze over to London and I'll grab another Abigail. The world's full of that kind of dames, kid, just full of 'em, and there's never a chance of a pinch because they can't stand the exposure themselves, get me? I'll give you a square deal, sweetie, P'll—why, say, I'd even marry you if you insisted on it, that's how you got me jazzed up! Don't worry about Abigail making a squawk, either, she won't dare. Why, I took one of these female saps down the line in Nice about two years ago and"
Too full of Scotch to read the expression on my face, Thurston rattled on, boasting of his disgusting adventures with these silly old women while I listened speechless and wide-eyed, absolutely hypnotized with amazement and contempt!
Finally I got up enough nerve to ask him if he was the one who stole Abigail's necklace. This brought more laughs from my charming vis-à-vis.
"No, sweetness," he says, "I haven't nailed that—yet! She never lost it, what d'ye think of that? I told you I'd surprise you, didn't I? Well, get this—the old fool is crazy to see her name in the papers, so she frames up that robbery story. Then I was to solve the 'mystery' and she thought we'd get married, see? That would make a first-class romance from a newspaper angle—'Weds Sleuth Who Recovers Stolen Heirloom!' Can't you see the headlines?"
I had seen and heard enough—plenty! I stood up and called to the waiting Jerry, who came on the run.
"Arrest him, Jerry," I panted. "He's not a detective, he's a thief!"
When Jerry gruffly told this Sir Galahad he was pinched, really, I thought for a moment Thurston was going to knock me down, and I felt very faint and scared, but I held my ground. He seemed suddenly fairly sobered up by the shock as he glared at me ferociously and muttered something about "a woman and booze" having licked him. Jerry hustled him outside se quickly that only those right around us had even a hazy idea of what it was all about.
Once out in the clean open air, the somewhat puzzled Jerry asked me what was next on the program. Thurston had bragged about being an amateur champion boxer once, but a look at the grim-faced, scowling Jerry seemed to quell any ambitions he might have had to do any boxing right then! Calling a taxi, I told the chauffeur to drive to the nearest police station and Thurston laughed wickedly.
"Go ahead," he sneers. "You have nothing on me—not a single solitary thing! All you'll do is make your friend Abigail the laughing stock of New York, because if they hold me I'll spill everything, get me? That story about her pretending she was robbed will look nice in print and make the Hotel St. Moe crazy about her, won't it?"
Well, honestly, this gave me something to think about. After all, poor Abigail was one of my own sex. A silly old woman? Sure! But to me there was tragedy in the thing, too. I didn't fancy the job of letting the whole world know what a fool she had been—maybe there was another way out of the mess. Anyhow, I decided to leave Thurston's fate to her, so I rapped on the window and told the chauffeur to turn around and drive to the Hotel St. Moe.
The gorgeously attired Abigail's face was the playground of many emotions as we all stalked solemnly into her suite, telling her maid to stay outside. I wasted no time in preliminaries, but told my story at once. I left out nothing, hating myself as I saw ten more years add themselves to her drawn features as she listened in stony silence. Jerry stopped Thurston's first interruption by hurling him into a chair, and there our villain sat in sneering quiet till I finished. The moment I stopped talking, however, he sprang to his feet and denied everything, telling Abigail I had made up my entire story out of jealousy because he had thrown me over for her!
Honestly, this astonishing statement and the cool way Thurston made it dumfounded me for a moment, and Abigail seemed to read my silence and the dazed expression on my face as an admission of guilt. She looked daggers at me and Thurston smiled triumphantly, stepping quickly to her side. But it was the usually slow thinking Jerry Murphy who came to my rescue and ruined Mr. Thurston. Jerry stepped forward, yanked out a brutal looking automatic and grabbed Thurston's arm.
"You and me is goin' down to Headquarters, fellah!" growls Jerry. "It's against the rules in this man's town to impoisonate a dick. Maybe after they fingerprint you and look up your Bertillon down there they'll want you to stick around for a while! Are you comin' quiet, or do you want me to bend this gun over your head? Makes no difference to me!"
Thurston got real pale and stared from Abigail to Jerry's set face. From there his frightened gaze fell upon me and I curled my lip at him, turning away in scorn. Then the phoney detective looked longingly at the windows—but we were twelve stories up! Suddenly he shook Jerry off and faced Abigail.
"All right, I'm licked!" he blurts out. "This woman has told you the truth!" He looks at me and his lips draw away from his flashing teeth. "If I had laid off the booze you'd never got hep to me in a million years, with all your smartness. As for this fellow here"—he nods contemptuously at Jerry—"he's a joke, that's all, a laugh! Well, now you got me, what are you going to do with me? It's a cinch Miss Monkton don't want me pinched. She don't want me to tell my story to the reporters, you can gamble on that part of it! Suppose we call it a stand-off and I'll duck the hotel. Fair enough?"
Really, it seemed a terrible crime to let this fellow walk out scot-free after all he'd done and tried to do to Abigail, yet that appeared to be the only thing to be done if she was to be spared the ridicule of the newspapers. However, the stunned Abigail, who had loved and learned, showed unexpected spirit at this critical point. She took a long, searching look at me—a look that began at the top of my blonde hair, traveled slowly over me to the tips of my slippers and then went back again to my face. There was a kind of wistful admiration in her tired eyes. Then she walked over to the mirror and stared at her own aged and haggard reflection for a lengthy moment. There wasn't a sound in the room!
Abigail let forth a sigh that must have come from her very heels and slowly opened one of the windows. She looked so tragic and resigned I felt sure she was going to jump and I started over to her with Jerry, who had the same idea. But Abby waved us back with a queer smile, as if reading our minds. Bang! Out of the open window goes wig, beauty clay, rouge, powder, chin straps—everything! Off comes rings and bracelets and into a drawer with them. Next she snatches up a towel and vigorously rubs all the paint off her face, finally standing before us a plain, wrinkled gray-haired, disillusioned old woman, but there's a fiery sparkle in her rather nice eyes.
"That's that!" she says, in a firm voice that broke the unnatural silence. "I am finished masquerading—quite finished!" She looked at Thurston, who grinned callously at her, and a bit of natural color flushed her wan cheeks. "As for this contemptible creature who threatens me with ridicule if he is arrested—well, arrest him! I hope he gets a life sentence! Let him tell what he pleases, and I would like to see a metropolitan newspaper print any reflection on me without proof!"
I ran over and threw my arms around her, and, darn it, I was the one to burst into tears!
"This way to the hoosegow!" says Jerry to Thurston. "Make it snappy!"
"You little, double-crossing" hisses Thurston at me.
"Ah!" roars Jerry, smacking his lips. "I been waitin' patiently for you to crack somethin', you yegg!"
Sock! Scrunch! Biff! . . . And Mr. Oliver Thurston instantly became unhandsome, undignified and unconscious!
At police headquarters they welcomed him later with open cells, quickly identifying him as being wanted in Des Moines, Chicago, Philadelphia and Walla Walla for similar swindles on similar foolish women. Abigail made Jerry and me split the ten thousand reward she had offered for the return of the necklace she never lost, saying we had earned it for exposing Thurston and saving the rest of her jewels. Jerry got back his job at the St. Moe, Abby went to Europe and a pleasant time was had by all.
Except Thurston!