The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 32

"You see, I had sense enough to get cold feet, overnight. But when I talked it over with her next day, and I saw her calling up a few of her Wall Street friends, I kind of forgot my scruples. She got me thinking crooked again. And that's all. That's where the story ends."

His docility, as I sat thinking of that odious and flamboyant type of she-harpy, began to irritate me.

"But why should it end here?" I demanded.

"Because I put twenty thousand dollars of other people's money into a phony game, and lost it."

"Well, what of it?"

"Do you suppose I could go home with that hanging over me?"

"Supposing you can't. Is that any reason why you should lie down at this stage of the game?"

"But I've lost," he averred. "Everything's gone!"

"'All is not lost,'" I quoted, feeling very much like Francis the First after the Battle of Pavia, "'till honor's self is gone!'"

"But even _that's_ gone," was his listless retort. He looked up, almost angrily, at my movement of impatience. "Well, what would _you_ do about it?" he challenged.

"I'd get that money back or I'd get that gang behind the bars," was the answer I flung out at him. "I'd fight them to a finish."

"But there's nothing to fight. There's n.o.body to get hold of. That Western Union man was only a capper, a come-on. Their poolroom's one of those dirigible kind that move on when the police appear. Then they'd claim I was as bad as they were, trying to trick an honest bookmaker out of his money. And besides, there's nothing left to show I ever handed them over anything."

"Then I'd keep at it until I found something," I declared. "How about the woman?'

"She'd be too clever to get caught. And I don't suppose she'd know me from a piece of cheese."

"Do you suppose you could in any way get me in touch with her?" I asked.

"But she's got police protection. I tried to have her arrested myself.

The officer told me to be on my way, or he'd run me in."

"Then you know where she lives?" I quickly inquired.

He hesitated for a moment, as though my question had caught him unawares. Then he mentioned one of the smaller apartment-hotels of upper Broadway.

"And what's her name?"

Again he hesitated before answering.

"Oh, she's got a dozen, I suppose. The only one I know is Brunelle, Vinnie Brunelle. That's the name she answered to up there. But look here--you're not going to try to see her, are you?"

"That I can't tell until to-morrow."

"I don't think there'll be any to-morrow, for me," he rejoined, as his earlier listless look returned to his face. He even peered up a little startled, as I rose to my feet.

"That's nonsense," was my answer. "We're going to meet here to-morrow night to talk things over."

"But why?" he protested.

"Because it strikes me you've got a duty to perform, a very serious duty. And if I can be of any service to you it will be a very great pleasure to me. And in the meantime, I might add that I am paying for this little supper."

There is no activity more explosive than that of the chronic idler.

Once out on Broadway, accordingly, I did not let the gra.s.s grow under my feet. Two minutes at the telephone and ten more in a taxicab brought me in touch with my old friend Doyle who was "working" a mulatto shooting case in lower Seventh Avenue as quietly as a gardener working his cabbage-patch.

"What do you know about a woman named Vinnie Brunelle?" I demanded.

He studied the pavement. Then he shook his head. The name clearly meant nothing to him.

"Give me something more to work on!"

"She's a young woman who lives by her wits. She keeps up a very good front, and now and then does a variety of the wire-tapping game."

"I wonder if that wouldn't be the Ca.s.sal woman Andrus used as a come-on for his Mexican mine game? But _she_ claimed Andrus had fooled her."

"And what else?" I inquired.

Doyle stood silent, wrapt in thought for a moment or two.

"Oh, that's about all. I've heard she's an uncommonly clever woman, about the cleverest woman in the world. But what are you after?"

"I want her record--all of it."

"That sort of woman never has a record. That's what cleverness is, my boy, maintaining your reputation at the expense of your character."

"You've given birth to an epigram," I complained, "but you haven't helped me out of my dilemma." Whereupon he asked me for a card.

"I'm going to give you a line to Sherman--Camera-Eye Sherman we used to call him down at Headquarters. He's with the Bankers' a.s.sociation now, but he was with our Identification Bureau so long he knows 'em all like his own family."

And on the bottom of my card I saw Doyle write: "Please tell him what you can of Vinnie Brunelle."

"Of course I couldn't see him to-night?"

Doyle looked at his watch.

"Yes, you can. You'll get him up at his apartment on Riverside. And I'll give you odds you'll find the old night-owl playing bezique with his sister-in-law!"

That, in fact, was precisely what I found the man with the camera-eye doing. He sat there dealing out the cards, at one o'clock in the morning, with a face as mild and bland as a Venetian cardinal feeding his pigeons.

My host looked at the card in his fingers, looked at me, and then looked at the card again.

"She got you in trouble?" was his laconic query.

"I have never met the lady. But a friend of mine has, I'm sorry to say. And I want to do what I can to help him out."

"How much did he lose?"

"About thirty thousand dollars, he claims."