The Green Jacket/Chapter 4
IV
He looked up a little cynically.
"I hope you haven't hurried!" he said with stern politeness.
She smiled at the gesture that accompanied the words.
"I was detained." She took off her hat and put it in the closet and seated herself by the desk, looking at him tranquilly.
"Now we can talk!" said Corbin with satisfaction.
"Yes— Do you mind if I knit?"
"Not at all. Go ahead!" The response was light, but his eye had a cautious, waiting look, as she reached to the drawer beside her and gazed into it
Her hand stayed itself and passed thoughtfully across the edge of the drawer before it lifted the amber needle from the top of the knitting and drew them both from the drawer.
She held up the maze of green wool and looked at it with amused eyes, and at the row of stitches that gaped helplessly along the top.
Corbin fidgeted a little.
"Funny thing—knitting!" he said.
She assented and inserted the needle carefully through the gaping row of stitches. Her whole attention was absorbed in them.
"Anything wrong?" demanded Corbin irritably.
"No-o," she replied. "It is better to hold on to both needles when you take it up." A little smile finished the row and she held it up with the needle in place.
"That's the way it was," she announced.
"Oh—bother!" said Corbin. "I was just looking round," he explained after a minute.
"Yes, I know. . . ." Her fingers were flying nimbly through the wool, and her gaze rested on him placidly. "Did you find anything that interested you? " she asked kindly.
"Not much. I should have to work on your cipher first."
"Yes?" She beamed on him. "It's very simple."
"Everything about you is simple, Milly." He was tilting a little in his chair. "Even the Sargent case was simple, I suppose—" His tone was thoughtful and his eye rested on the file-case across the room. . . . "That meant a whole lot of money for somebody," he said softly.
"Not for me," returned Milly quickly.
He looked at her and whistled meditatively between his teeth.
"Why not?" he said.
She rested her knitting on her lap. "That's what I'm going to tell you, Tom. It's my method," she added, "if you choose to call it a method."
She sat for a moment in silence, looking at him.
"Go ahead!" suggested Tom.
She sighed a little and took up the knitting. "I know you won't like it," she said hesitatingly.
"I can't tell till I hear, can I?" A little impatience flicked the words and she smiled.
"No—of course not! I'm only trying to think of some way of saying it that won't sound so absurd to you. It's like this—" She drew out a needle and turned the row of green wool and looked at it and smoothed it a little. . . . "You see, Tom, you and I don't want the same things—" She raised her eyes.
He regarded her mildly.
"That is why I left you— I want a chance to say what shall be done with the criminals I catch."
He stared a minute. "Maybe you'd like to be justice of the supreme bench," he offered.
She shook her head. "I'd rather be judge of the criminal court," she responded, smiling.
"Oh—well. Have it your own way!"
The irony was magnificent. "I mean to. . . . I couldn't have my own way—and stay with you."
He hedged a little. "Well"
She smiled and shook her head. "You couldn't stand for it. . . . No, I want something quite different, Tom. . . . It isn't common sense to go on catching folks and locking them up forever, or for a little while—and then letting them run loose. . . . And the punishments we think up don't really punish them. We put a man in prison. Of course, he doesn't like it"
"Well, hardly," said Tom dryly.
"But, after all, the worst punishment for most of us is—living right along in the world and knowing everybody has found you out and despises you and thinks of it every time they see you. That's what his wife and daughters have to live through every day, and his mother. They have to face the dis grace everywhere they go. I'd like to fix things so it wouldn't come quite so hard on them. . . . I want to say what shall be done with the criminal I catch!" she concluded.
"Send 'em flowers, the way the 'ladies' do!" sneered Tom. "Sentimental bosh! We've got to protect society. That's our work."
"Yes—it's part of it."
He got up irritably and moved across the room.
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
"No."
He filled his pipe, crowding down the tobacco with stern touch. He lighted it and drew a whiff or two, and came back to his place and sat down and looked at her.
"Go on," he said.
She glanced up.
"Tell me the rest," he nodded.
"There isn't any rest," said Milly, laughing. "That's all!"
"I should judge so! What becomes of 'em after that?"
"Well— This is the part you particularly won't like," she said hastily— "I decide whether they are to have another chance—or to go to prison."
"You!"
She nodded. "I told you, you wouldn't like it. I wasn't sure myself how it would work—when I began. I only knew I was tired of catching criminals to turn over to the police, and the police handing them over to the judge, and the judge handing them over to the prison, and the prison— Well, you know, Tom, what they are when they come out of prison! It's a little better now under the new ideas—but not much! . . . Why, you know, and I know, that half the men in prison ought never to have been sent there. It's bad for them—bad for society."
He stirred uneasily. "That isn't our affair," he said. "Our business is to catch 'em. What becomes of 'em after that doesn't concern us!"
"It concerns me!" said Milly. "I got so I couldn't sleep nights, thinking of men in prison that would never have been there if it hadn't been for me! Men that I knew weren't really bad—drunk or mad or something! I made up my mind that if I did the catching, I was going to have something to say about the punishment."
"The law takes care of that!" retorted Tom.
"Not if it doesn't get to the law—" She smiled at him disarmingly. "That's where I come in."
He made a little gesture. But she ignored the scorn in it.
"It isn't so hard as you think—if you just try to see what's right—and forget about the law."
He laughed shortly. "No doubt!"
"We all slip sometimes," she went on. "Everybody slips. You do and I do"
He raised a protesting hand.
She nodded. "And it isn't fair, just because somebody sees you go down—or hunts around and finds out afterward about it—that you should be punished, and another man who isn't found out goes free."
"It's the law," said Tom feebly.
"It's unjust!" said Milly. "And it isn't common sense! I've thought about it a good deal," she added mildly.
"Evidently," murmured Tom. He was smoking slowly and looking at her with half-shut eyes.
"It seems to me," she went on, "that doing wrong is a good deal like the attraction of gravity. Everybody's liable to take a tumble some time. Of course if you sit still like a lump of dough, you're safe enough. But folks that fly around lively are liable to slip, most any time."
Tom chuckled.
"And perhaps just slipping is punishment enough—for some folks," she pursued. "If they come down good and hard, maybe they won't slip again for a good while—perhaps not ever."
"Perhaps not," sneered Tom. "But who is going to tell?"
"If a man tells a straight story, he ought to have another chance," said Milly firmly.
"And who's going to judge whether he's straight?" persisted Tom.
Her color rose a little. "I told you I judge that myself."
He looked at her. "You think you are competent to do it, I suppose?" The irony was very gentle and she brushed it aside.
"Of course I am not competent, Tom! Nobody is! But it's better than shutting them up in prison—at the expense of the State—and all the shame and poverty for his wife and children. . . . Besides," she said slowly, "you do know, pretty well, when a man's telling a straight story. You know, better than you think you do, when a man's sincere. And they want to be straight! Why, I've seen them sometimes, Tom"—she leaned forward eagerly—"I've seen them try—when they got the idea that all they had to do was to tell a straight story—I've seen them try till it was pathetic.
"They are pathetic!" she declared. "And they are sick—some of them—they can't tell the truth, no matter how hard they try.
"A man that can't tell the truth ought to be in prison just as much as if he had a temperature. He's got a germ—he needs a cathartic or something!" She fired it at him, and his eyes twinkled. "He's better off in a hospital— Only they're such pest-houses, the prisons we have now," she added reluctantly. "But they're the best we've got; and you can't leave a man with a smallpox germ going around loose, nor a confirmed criminal—not one that lies," she concluded.
Tom laughed out shortly. "You make out a good case, Milly. You ought to be a lawyer!"
She flushed. "You say that for a compliment—but it isn't!"
"How about your clients?" said Tom abruptly. "Don't they kick?"
"They have to sign for it beforehand," said Milly.
He stared. "You mean—they agree—to let you—" He broke off before the absurdity of it.
"They have to," she said tranquilly. She rolled up her work and tossed it into the drawer and opened another drawer, at the right, and took out a paper.
"This is my form of agreement." She handed it to him and he read it through and whistled softly.
"You mean they sign—for that!" He held it up, shaking it a little.
She nodded. A smile broke across her face. "I should ask you to sign it if we go into partnership," she said quietly.
He handed it back to her with a quick, negative gesture.
"Not for me, Milly!" he said decisively.
"I told you you wouldn't stand for it," she replied. She replaced the paper in the drawer and closed it. His eye followed the movement.
"I never dreamed of anything like that!" he retorted sternly.
"Better try dreaming it for a while," she responded. "There's more in it than you think, perhaps!"
He nodded gloomily. "But not for me— It's a pipe-dream!" He removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at its deadness and knocked the ashes into the tray she pushed toward him. He stowed the pipe in his pocket. "That's done!" he said.
She was looking at him with half-amused eyes.
His elbows rested on the chair-arms, and his fingers were crossed protectingly across his person. He shook his head once or twice.
"Simply absurd!" he murmured.
"I knew you would think so," said Milly. "You don't want me for a partner, then?"
He gave her a slow look. "I want you—yes. But not on those terms!" He nodded toward the closed drawer.
"Those are my terms," she said gently.
"Well—" He roused himself and got up and reached for his hat. He turned to her.
"I'll tell you what I will do," he said magnanimously. "I'll sign you for a single case"
"The Hudson case?" asked Milly in surprise.
He shook his head. "Not the Hudson case—but one quite as important—one that nobody will ever solve." He said it with a little cynical smile, and she hesitated a moment. Then she opened the drawer and took out the paper and handed it to him. He reached for a pen and filled in the blank spaces and signed his name with firm hand.
"It's for the Mason emeralds," he said. He pushed the paper toward her. "Find out who took the Mason emeralds, and you shall do what you like with the thief. The reward we split even. It's big money!"
"Very well." She folded the paper in slow fingers. "When will you give me the history?" she asked.
"This afternoon— Any time," he said promptly, "that you'll come down to the office. We're full of stuff on the case. I'll turn it over to you, and be glad to! We gave up the case two years ago after some of the hardest work the office ever put in on anything. I shelved it for good and all, I thought. But this morning I happened to come on a clipping in my mail announcing the death of a woman whom we had suspected." He opened his purse and took it out and handed it to her. "It's only fair to tell you, Milly, that you will never solve the case." His manner was kind as he handed it to her. "There is something uncanny in the way the Mason emeralds dropped out of the world!" And even as he said it, the mystery seemed tagging at him, beckoning him to follow it once more.
He shrugged his shoulders with a little gesture of defeat and glanced about the quiet office, and then at Milly, standing with the clipping in her fingers, regarding him with a smile. He shook his head slowly.
"You are making a mistake, Milly, not to come in with me. We are made to work together. You have a good mind for details, but you need me to handle the case as a whole." He spoke magnanimously and she held out her hand.
"It's good to see you again, Tom. Yes, I'll come this afternoon. I can't tell, of course, whether I will take the case until I know more about it."
He stared at her a minute. Then he chuckled.
"No wonder you have the business!" he said softly, "if you treat them all like that!"
A knock sounded on the door and she turned to it with a motion of excuse.
The man who stood in the hall lifted his hat. "May I see Miss Newberry?" he asked.
"I am Miss Newberry," said Milly quietly. "Will you come in?"
And as the stranger entered and Tom passed out he was wondering about the man. All the way down in the elevator, descending to the street, he was wondering what John Kingman wanted of Milly. Tom knew the man. He was a big serum specialist. He had heard him testify in a murder case last week. Milly certainly had luck, and she had the business!