The Green Jacket/Chapter 2
II
He went over and threw up the window and stood looking out. Presently he lighted his pipe and drew a whiff or two, and let it out—free, grateful puffs.
His hands were thrust into his pockets. By and by he strolled over to the desk and stood looking down at it. One hand came out of his pocket and tried the drawer at the right. It was locked. He returned his hand to his pocket. The action had been almost automatic—at the most, curious rather than intentional. Presently he reached out and tried the drawer below. It slid back into his hand, and he was gazing down at the maze of green wool. He lifted it gingerly. An amber needle slid from its place and fell to the floor. Tom picked it up hastily. He glanced at the green knitted stuff a little dubiously. It struck him there was something wrong about one end of it. . . . How was a man to tell! He replaced it—with a little look of irritation, and laid the amber needle on top of it and shut the drawer.
He looked about him and crossed to a file-case by the door. He knelt before it, fussing at the lock, and reached into his pocket for a key-ring, from which he selected a curious bit of stout wire with curious curves in it and a little hook at the end. He inserted it in the keyhole, manipulating it with a light touch, his other hand pulling slightly on the upright bar that secured the drawers. The bar gave a little in his hand and a look of satisfaction crossed his face; there was no guilt in the face as he pulled open the drawer and looked in. He was only playing a good game on Milly, paying her out a bit for leaving him alone.
The drawer contained long iron rods strung with indexed cards, and his fingers pushed them apart. His puzzled gaze studied first one and then another—and another. He shut the drawer with a motion of impatience and opened the one above with the same result. He stood and glared at the innocent file-case, and reached to the upright bar and drew it together. The lock snapped in place. Tom Corbin sauntered to the window and stood again with hands in pockets looking down on the teeming city.
He was supposed to be thinking out the Hudson case. But his mind was filled to overflowing with Milly. . . . He found himself a little excited. He could not rid the office of her presence. That green stuff there in the drawer behind him was full of her, and those flowers on the desk— He wheeled about, and looked at them meditatively. He had forgotten how Milly made you feel. He knew he had missed her from the business—but he had not remembered she was just—like this!
He moved restlessly, and brought a chair to the window and sat down. The smoke from his pipe drifted up against the blue of the sky. . . . He was recalling Milly as she appeared in his office, that first day, ten years ago. He had been puzzling over the Babcock case, he remembered— Everybody called it suicide. He had had his suspicion that it was not suicide, but murder, and somehow his suspicion must have leaked out. There had been a mysterious hint in the morning's paper. He was vexed with the whole business, and not in a pleasant mood. Then the door had opened and a young woman, hardly more than a girl, it seemed to him, had come hurriedly in. She had looked about her with a half-frightened air. She had something to tell him—about the Babcock case, she said. They were neighbors—not friends—he did not know them, but she had often seen John Babcock coming and going. She did not believe he had committed suicide. . . . She had paused, breathless, and Tom had nodded, a little cynically, toward the morning's paper. She flushed quickly— "Yes, that is why I came. . . . I don't believe Wendell Payson is guilty." Tom could recall now the look in her face that had made him motion for her to sit down and tell him what she knew. But when she had told it, there was nothing you could put your finger on, nothing that would seem to be of the slightest use. . . . She had come to him because of a conviction she had that John Babcock had been murdered, and by a woman to whom he was once engaged. . . . She had no reason for this belief—nothing to support it—except that she saw the woman once in a street car. . . . She knew, herself, that her coming to him must seem foolish. But when she had read in the morning's paper that Wendell Payson was suspected, she had put on her hat and come straight to the Corbin Agency.
Tom Corbin, sitting by the open window of Milly's office, removed his pipe and blew a trailing, meditative cloud of smoke. . . . It had been a long road from that morning and the girl's half-frightened belief in what she told him to the gray-haired woman who had faced him so quietly this morning, and who was now on her way to a busy office that handled quite half the business of the city. Yes—quite half! Tom nodded a little grimly and smoked on.
He had followed the clew she gave him in the Babcock case at first unbelievingly, and then, as events developed, with keen scent. The woman had confessed to it eventually. She was serving her term in State's prison to-day. The case had brought glory to the Corbin Agency. It had been a baffling case and well-advertised. Tom knew he had handled it well. But he also knew to whom the real credit was due.
After the Babcock case he had employed Milly at times—first informally, for shoplifting cases or salesgirl thefts, or as seamstress or chambermaid in some place where a man could not go without suspicion. Later, she had become a regular member of the force, and he had found himself depending on her more and more—not so much for facts and the combining of facts, as for a theory that would fit them. . . . And then, just as he was congratulating himself that he had a tool to his hand as fine and keen-tempered as Milly—and trusty—and that she would not be always making extortionate demands for salary or promotion—like a man—he seemed to love the work for itself—just as he was settling down comfortably to all this Milly had announced her intention of setting up an office of her own. . . . Tom went back over it—the things he had offered her—better pay, promotion, half-time. And she had shaken her head at him. No, she didn't want them.
What was it she had wanted, he wondered. . . . She had got it, sure—whatever it was! He glanced about the compact little room Whew, he should suffocate in a day of it! And yet there was something He looked around him again— It was Milly herself. There was nobody quite like Milly! He had found that out in those early days when she first left him. It was as if he had lost an eye or an ear—both eyes, both ears—he thought savagely. It seemed to him he had begun all over again, getting at facts in the old, bungling way. . . . And meantime Milly's office had spread from a room to four, and from four to twelve.
And this morning he had suddenly come to his decision to join forces with her. He would offer her a partnership. It was the one thing he had balked at. It had not been mentioned; but he had a conviction that if he had said to Milly the morning she left, "See here, Milly—we'll go shares. I'll make you my partner," he had a feeling that if he had said this—Milly would have done it. . . . Well, he had offered it now. The word partner had not been mentioned—but they both knew that was what it would come to. Tom blew a placid cloud of smoke. It floated from the window.
He had been long enough about it. He could not understand now why he had waited so long. This morning as soon as the idea had come to him, he had not waited a second. He had clapped on his hat and gone straight to Milly's office—the down-town one. . . . They were surely doing the business there! His mind dwelt happily on the down-town office, and the smoke from his pipe drifted from the window and built castles in the air.