The Black Eagle Mystery Part 18

"It just came to me a few moments ago-as I was pa.s.sing by here-that the prettiest and smartest h.e.l.lo girl in New York mightn't have gone home yet," he said.

Now if you're experienced about men-and take it from me h.e.l.lo girls _are_-you never believe a word a chap like Tony Ford hands out. But hearing those words and looking at his broad, conceited face, it came to me that these were true. He'd been pa.s.sing, suddenly thought of me, and dropped in to see if I was there.

"Well," I answered, "here I am. What of it?"

"First of it," he said, "is how long are you going to be there?"

"Till I get this satchel closed," I said and pressing hard on the catch it snapped shut.

"And second of it," he went on, "is where are you going afterward?"

My first thought was I was going to get away from _him_ as fast as the Interborough System could take me-and then I had a second thought. Why had Tony Ford dropped in so opportune at my closing hour? To ask me to dinner. And why couldn't I, hired to do work for Whitney & Whitney, do a little extra for good measure? I knew they wanted to hear Ford's own account of what he did the evening of January fifteenth, but that they couldn't get it. What was the matter with me, Molly Babbitts, getting it for them?

It flashed into my head like lightning and it didn't flash out again.

Frightened? Not a bit! Keyed up though-like your blood begins to run quick. I'd taken some risky dares in my time but it was a new one on me to dine with a murderer. But honest, besides the pleasure of doing something for the old man, there was a creepy sort of thrill about it that strung up my nerves and made me feel like I was going to shoot Niagara in a barrel.

"Going home, eh?" said he. "It's a long, cold ride home."

"That's the first truth you've said," I answered. "And for showing me you can do it I'll offer you my grateful thanks."

I began to put on my gloves, he standing in the doorway watching.

"To break the journey with a little bit of dinner might be a good idea."

"It might," I said, "if anybody had it."

"I have it. I've had it all day."

"What's the good of having it if you haven't got the price." I picked up my satchel and looked cool and pitying at him. "Unless you're calculating to take me to the bread line."

"There you wrong me," he answered. "Nothing but the best for you," and putting his hand into his vest pocket he drew out a roll of bills, folding them back one by one and giving each a name, "Canvas back, terrapin, champagne, oyster crabs, alligator pears, anything the lady calls for."

Those greenbacks, flirted over so carelessly by his strong, brown fingers, gave me the horrors. Blood money! I drew back. If he hadn't been blocking up the entrance, I think I'd have quit it and made a break for the open. He glanced up and saw my face, and I guess it looked queer.

"What are you staring so for? They're not counterfeit."

The feeling pa.s.sed, and anyway I couldn't get out without squeezing by him and I didn't want to touch him any more than I would a spider.

"I was calculating how much of it I could eat," I said. "My folks don't like me to dine out so when I do I try to catch up with all the times I've refused."

"Come along then," he said, stepping back from the doorway. "I know a bully little joint not far from here. You can catch up there if you've been refusing dinners since the first telephone was installed."

So off we trotted into the night, I and the murderer!

Can you see into my mind-it was boiling with thoughts like a Hammam bath with steam? What would Soapy say? He'd be raging, but after all he couldn't do anything more than rage. You can't divorce a woman for dining with a murderer, especially if she only does it once. Mr.

Whitney'd be all right. If I got what I intended to get he'd pa.s.s me compliments that would take O'Mally's pride down several pegs. As for myself-Tony Ford wouldn't want to murder me. There was nothing in it, and judging by the pleasant things he said as we walked to the restaurant, you'd think to keep me alive and well was the dearest wish of his heart.

The restaurant was one of those quiet foreign ones, in an old dwelling house, sandwiched in among shops and offices. It was a decent place-I'd been there for lunch with Iola-in the daytime full of business people, and at night having the sort of crowd that gathers where boarding houses and downtown apartments and hotels for foreigners give up their dead.

We found a table in a corner of the front room, with the wall to one side of us and the long curtains of the window behind me. There were a lot of people and a few waiters, one of whom Mr. Ford summoned with a haughty jerk of his head. Then he sprawled grandly in his chair with menus and wine lists, telling the waiter how to serve things that were hot and ice things that were cold till you'd suppose he'd been a chef along with all his other jobs. He put on a great deal of side, like he was a cattle king from Chicago trying to impress a Pilgrim Father from Boston. The only way it impressed me was to make me think a gunman with blood on his soul wasn't so different from an innocent clerk with nothing to trouble him but the bill at the end.

As he was doing this I took off my veil and gloves, careful to pull off my wedding ring-I wasn't going to have that sidetracking him-and thinking how I'd begin.

We were through the soup and on the fish when I decided the time was ripe to ring the bell and start. I did it quietly:

"I guess you've got a new place?"

"No, I'm still one of the unemployed. Don't I act like it?" He smiled, a patronizing smirk, pleased he'd got the h.e.l.lo girl guessing.

"You act to me like the young millionaire cutting his teeth on Broadway."

He lifted his gla.s.s of white wine and sipped it:

"I inherited some money this winter from an uncle up-state. You're not drinking your wine. Don't you like it?"

In his tone, and a s.h.i.+fting of his eyes to the next table, I caught a suggestion of something not easy, put on. Maybe if you hadn't known what I did you wouldn't have noticed what was plain to me-he didn't like the subject.

"No, I never touch wine," I answered. "I don't want to speak unfeelingly but it was mighty convenient your uncle died just as your business failed. Wasn't it too bad about Miss Whitehall?"

"Very unfortunate, poor girl. Bad for me but worse for her."

"She had no idea it was coming, I suppose?"

He looked up sudden and sharp:

"_What_ was coming?"

His small gray eyes sent a glance piercing into mine, full of a quick, arrested attention.

"Why-why-the ruin of Mr. Harland."

"Oh, _that_," he was easy again, "I thought you meant the suicide. I don't know whether she knew or not. Waiter"-he turned and made one of those grandstand plays to the waiter-"take this away and bring on the next."

"She'd have known that night as soon as she heard he was dead but I guess she was so paralyzed she didn't think of herself."

"I don't know what she thought of. She wasn't in the office."

I dropped my eyes to my plate. Eliza crossing on the ice didn't have anything over me in the way she picked her steps.

"Oh, she'd gone before it happened?"

"Yes. I left early myself that night-before she did. I was halfway home when I remembered some papers I'd said I'd go over and had to hike back for them. She was gone when I got there. And just think how gruesome it was, when I was going down in the elevator Harland jumped, struck the street a few minutes before I reached the bottom."

Could you beat it! Knowing what had been done in that closed office, knowing what was going to be done while he was sliding down from story to story and then getting it off that way, as smooth as cream. A sick feeling rose up inside me. I wanted to get away from him and see an honest face and feel the cold, fresh air. Dining with a gunman wasn't as easy as I'd thought.

Tony Ford, leaning across his plate, tapped on the cloth with his knife handle to emphasize his words:

"He must have been up that side corridor waiting. When he heard the gate shut and the car go down, he came out, walked to the hall window and jumped. Ugh!" he gave a wriggling movement with his broad shoulders.

"_That_ takes nerve!"