第2章 CRIME

COMMENTARY

The four stories in this section provide a prismatic view of Hammett's experiments over a decade with the treatment of crime. These stories show Hammett trying different forms-from a standard Black Mask–type story, to parody, to Golden Age models, to the type of hard modernism associated with Hemingway-and varying types of narration. Three of the stories are narrated in the third person, though each in a different variety, and the other is told in the first-person voice of a wily and affected dilettante with a keen interest in fine jewels, suggesting a more famous Hammett villain.

"The Hunter" is a detective story in the mold of the Black Mask Continental Op stories, but with an important difference. Here the detective, named Vitt, is as hard-boiled as a detective gets. He has a job to do, and he does it with neither distraction nor emotional involvement, and then he turns ironically to his own mundane domestic concerns at the end. Judging from the return address on Eddy Street, where Hammett lived from 1921 to 1926, it was likely written about 1924 or 1925, when Hammett wrote six stories published in magazines other than Black Mask and introduced two new protagonists in stories told in the third person, as "The Hunter" is-Steve Threefall in "Nightmare Town" (Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 27, 1924) and Guy Tharp in "Ruffian's Wife" (Sunset, October 1925).

"The Sign of the Potent Pills" is a farce that builds on the depiction of the detective as something less than a heroic crime fighter. The return address is 891 Post Street, where Hammett lived from 1927 to 1929. In January 1926, Hammett published "The Nails in Mr. Cayterer," a satirical story about a writer-detective named Robin Thin similar in tone to "The Sign of Potent Pills." (Another Robin Thin story, "A Man Named Thin," was published shortly after Hammett's death in 1961.) In this typescript someone crossed out the first two paragraphs of the story. They have been restored here, because they provide the only mention of the billboard that gives the story its name and identify Pentner, who calls the police at the end. Lillian Hellman edited the story, and the first paragraphs seem to have been cut by her. Hellman's edits have been accepted only when they corrected clear typographical errors or undeniable infelicities.

"The Diamond Wager," a clear imitation of the Golden Age mystery stories popular at the time, was, by our guess, written in 1926 and rejected by the pulp Blue Book, though not published until 1929 in another pulp, Detective Fiction Weekly. There is no known typescript. The story is told in the first person by a master criminal and was published while The Maltese Falcon was being serialized in Black Mask.

"Action and the Quiz Kid" is possibly the last story Hammett completed. It is set in New York and refers to Joe DiMaggio's home run–hitting prowess. DiMaggio was a star for the minor-league San Francisco Seals in 1932 and 1933. He was bought by the New York Yankees in 1934, but sat out a season with a knee injury. When he played his first season for the Yankees in 1936, he hit twenty-nine home runs; in 1937, he had forty-six homers, the most in his career. A reasonable guess is that this story was written early in 1936, after Hammett was released from the hospital in January and then spent the rest of the year recuperating in and around New York City. A so-called slice-of-life story, "Action and the Quiz Kid" is typical of Hammett's late interest in character as opposed to plot.

THE HUNTER

There are people who, coming for the first time in contact with one they know for a detective, look at his feet. These glances, at times mockingly frank, but more often furtive and somewhat scientific in purpose, are doubtless annoying to the detective whose feet are in the broad-toed tradition: Fred Vitt enjoyed them. His feet were small and he kept them neatly shod in the shiniest of blacks.

He was a pale plump man with friendly light eyes and a red mouth. The fortunes of job-hunting not guided by definite vocational training had taken him into the employ of a private detective agency some ten years ago. He had stayed there, becoming a rather skillful operative, although by disposition not especially fitted for the work, much of which was distasteful to him. But he liked its irregular variety, the assurances of his own cleverness that come frequently to any but the most uniformly successless of detectives, and the occasional full-tilt chase after a fleeing someone who was, until a court had decided otherwise, a scoundrel of one sort or another. Too, a detective has a certain prestige in some social divisions, a matter in no way equalized by his lack of any standing at all in others, since he usually may either avoid these latter divisions or conceal his profession from them.

Today Vitt was hunting a forger. The name of H. W. Twitchell-the Twitchell-Bocker Box Company-had been signed to a check for two hundred dollars, which had been endorsed Henry F. Weber and cashed at the bank. Vitt was in Twitchell's office now, talking to Twitchell, who had failed to remember anyone named Weber.

"I'd like to see your cancelled checks for the last couple of months," the detective said.

The manufacturer of boxes squirmed. He was a large man whose face ballooned redly out of a too-tight collar.

"What for?" he asked doubtfully.

"This is too good a forgery not to have been copied from one of 'em. The one of yours that's most like this should lead me to the forger. It usually works out that way."

Vitt looked first for the checks that had made Twitchell squirm. There were three of them, drawn to the order of "Cash," endorsed by Clara Kroll, but, disappointingly, they were free from noteworthy peculiarities in common with the forgery. The detective put them aside and examined the others until he found one that satisfied him: a check for two hundred and fifty dollars to the order of Carl Rosewater.

"Who is this Rosewater?" he asked.

"My tailor."

"I want to borrow this check."

"You don't think Rosewater-?"

"Not necessarily, but this looks like the check that was used as a model. See: the Ca in Carl are closer together than you usually put your letters, and so is the Ca in Cash on this phoney check. When you write two naughts together you connect them, but they're not connected on the forgery, because whoever did it was going by this two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar check, where there is only one. Your signature on the Rosewater check takes up more space than usual, and slants more-written in a hurry, or standing up-and the forged one does the same. Then the forgery is dated two days after this check. This is the baby, I bet you!"

Only two men in the Rosewater establishment had handled Twitchell's check: the proprietor and his bookkeeper. Rosewater was heavy with good eating. The bookkeeper was manifestly undernourished: Vitt settled on him. The detective questioned the bookkeeper casually, not accusing him, but alert for the earliest opportunity: he was so distinctly the sort of idiot who would commit a low-priced crime that could be traced straight to him, and, if further reason for suspecting him were needed, he was the most convenient suspect at hand.

This bookkeeper was tall and concave, with dry hair that lay on his scalp instead of growing out of it. Thick spectacles magnified the muddle in his eyes without enlarging anything else the eyes may have held or been. His clothing tapered off everywhere in fine frayed edges, so that you could not say definitely just where any garment ended: a gentle merging of cloth and air that made him not easily distinguished from his background. His name was James Close. He remembered the Twitchell check, he denied knowledge of the forgery, and his handwriting bore no determinable resemblance to the endorsed Henry F. Weber.

Rosewater said Close was scrupulously honest, had been in his employ for six years, and lived on Ellis Street.

"Married?"

"James?" Rosewater was surprised. "No!"

Posing, with the assistance of cards from the varied stock in his pockets, as the agent of a banking house that was about to offer the bookkeeper a glittering if vague position, Vitt interviewed Close's landlady and several of his neighbors. The bookkeeper unquestionably was a man of most exemplary habits, but, peculiarly, he was married and the father of two children, one recently born. He had lived here-the third floor of a dull building-seven or eight months, coming from an address on Larkin Street, whither the detective presently went. Still a man thoroughly lacking in vices, Close had been unmarried on Larkin Street.

Vitt returned briskly to the Ellis Street building, intent on questioning Close's wife, but, when he rang the bell, the bookkeeper, home for luncheon, opened the door. The detective had not expected this, but he accepted the situation.

"Got some more questions," he said, and followed Close into the living-and dining-room (now that the bed was folded up into the wall) through whose opposite door he could see a woman putting, with thick pink arms, dishes on a kitchen table. A child stopped building something with blocks in the doorway and gaped at the visitor. Out of sight a baby cried without purpose. Close put the builder and his materials into the kitchen, closed the door, and the two men sat down.

"Close," the detective said softly, "you forged that check."

A woodenness came up and settled on the bookkeeper's face. First his chin lengthened, pushing his mouth into a sullen lump, then his nose thinned and tiny wrinkles appeared beside it, paralleling its upper part and curving up to the inner corners of his eyes. His eyes became smaller, clouded behind their glasses. Thin white arcs showed under the irides, which turned the least bit outward. His brows lifted slightly, and the lines in his forehead became shallower. He said nothing, and did not gesture.

"Of course," the detective went on, "it's your funeral, and you can take any attitude you like. But if you want the advice of one who's seen a lot of 'em, you'll be sensible, and come clean about it. I don't know, and I can't promise anything, but two hundred dollars is not a lot of money, and maybe it can be patched up somehow."

Though this was said with practiced smoothness-it being an established line of attack-Vitt meant it honestly enough: so far as his feelings were affected, he felt some pity for the man in front of him.

"I didn't do it," Close said miserably.

Vitt erased the denial with a four-inch motion of one plump white hand.

"Now listen: it won't get you anything to put us to a lot of trouble digging up things on you-not that it'll need much digging. For instance, when and where were you married?"

The bookkeeper blushed. The rosiness that so surely did not belong in his face gave him the appearance of a colored cartoon.

"What's that got to-?"

"Let it go, then," Vitt said generously. He had him there. His guess had been right: Close was not married. "Let it go. But what I'm trying to show you is that you'd better be wise and come through!"

"I didn't do it."

The repetition irritated Vitt. The woodenness of the bookkeeper's face, unlivened by the color that had for a moment washed it, irritated him. He stood up, close to the bookkeeper, and spoke louder.

"You forged that check, Close! You copied it from Twitchell's!"

"I didn't do it."

The kitchen door opened and the woman came into the room, the child who had been playing with the blocks holding a fold of her skirt. She was a pink-fleshed woman of perhaps thirty years, attrac--

tive in a slovenly way: sloppy was the word that occurred to the detective.

"What is it, James?" Her voice was husky. "What is it?"

"I didn't do it," Close said. "He says I forged a check, but I didn't do it."

Vitt was warm under his clothes, and his hands perspired. The woman and child made him uncomfortable. He tried to ignore them, speaking to Close again, very slowly.

"You forged that check, Close, and I'm giving you your last chance to come through."

"I didn't do it."

Vitt seized the irritation that the idiocy of this reiteration aroused in him, built it up, made a small anger of it, and his discomfort under the gazes of the woman and child grew less.

"Listen: you can take your choice," he said. "Be bull-headed, or be reasonable. It's nothing to me. This is all in my day's work. But I don't like to see a man hurt himself, especially when he's not a crook by nature. I'd like to see you get off easy, but if you think you know what you're doing-hop to it!"

"I didn't do it."

A suspicion that all this was ridiculous came to the detective, but he put it out of his mind. After he got a confession out of his man he could remember things and laugh. Meanwhile, what had to be done to get that confession needed an altogether different mood. If he could achieve some sort of rage…

He turned sharply to the woman.

"When and where were you folks married?" he demanded.

"None of your business!"

That was better. Against antagonism he could make progress. He felt the blood in his temples, and, his autogenetic excitement lessening the field of his vision, everything except the woman's moist pink face became blurred.

"Exactly!" he said. "But, just so you'll know where you stand, I'll tell you that you never were married-not to each other anyway!"

"What of it?" She stood between her man and the detective, hands on broad hips. "What of it?"

Vitt snorted derisively. He had reared by now a really considerable rage in himself, both weapon and anesthetic.

"In this state," he said, nodding vigorously, "there's a law to protect children's morals. You can be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minor children! Ever think of that?"

"Contributing to-Why, that's foolish! I raise my children as decent as anybody. I-"

"I know! But in California if you're living with a man not your husband, then you're guilty of it-setting them a bad example, or something like that."

The bookkeeper appeared from behind the woman.

"You stop that!" he ordered. "You hear me, you stop that! Amy hasn't done anything!"

The child began to cry. The woman seized one of Vitt's arms.

"Let me tell you!" Defiance was gone out of her. "My husband left me when he found I was going to have another baby. He went out on a Sunday night in the rain and didn't ever come back. Not ever! I didn't have anybody to help me but James. He took me in, and he's been as good a man as there ever was! The children are better off with him than they ever were with Tom. He's better to them. I-"

The detective pulled his arm away from her. A detective is a man employed to do certain defined things: he is not a judge, a god. Every thief has his justification, to hear him tell it. This hullabaloo just made his work that much harder, without doing anybody any real good.

"That's tough!" He put into word and feature all the callousness for which he was fumbling inside. "But the way it stands is that if you're going to fight me on this check business, I'm going to make the going as tough as I can for the pair of you."

"You mean," Close cried, "that if I don't say I forged that check you'll have Amy and me arrested for this-this delinquency thing?"

"I mean that if you'll be reasonable I'll not make any more trouble than I have to. But if you want to be hard-boiled, then I'll go the limit."

"And Amy'll be arrested?"

"Yes."

"You-you-" The bookkeeper clawed at Vitt with hands fashioned for grappling with pens and ledger-pages. Vitt could have handled him without especial difficulty, for, beneath his plumpness, the detective was strong enough. But the passion for which he had groped with affectation of face and voice had at last become actual.

He made a ball of one fist and drove it into the bookkeeper's hollow belly. The bookkeeper folded over it and writhed on the floor. Screaming, the woman knelt beside him. The child who had come into the room with the woman and the baby Vitt had not seen yelled together. The doorbell began to ring. From the kitchen came the stench of scorched food.

Presently Close sat up, leaning against the kneeling woman, his spectacles dangling from one ear.

"I forged it," he said into the clamor. "I didn't have any money to pay the bills after the baby came. I told Amy I borrowed the money from Rosewater." He laughed two sharp notes. "She didn't know him, so she believed me. Anyway, the bills are paid."

Vitt hurried his prisoner down to the city prison, had him booked and locked in, and then hastened up to the shopping district. The department stores closed at half past five, and his wife had asked him to bring home three spools of No. 60 black thread.

THE SIGN OF THE POTENT PILLS

The house was large and austerely symmetrical in the later Bourbon fashion. Its pilastered fa?ade, factually of a light gray stone, was dully whitish in the morning sun. Level grassplots cut by sharp-edged paths spread around the house, holding it apart from its neighbors and from the street. The grassplots in turn were guarded from the outer world by a fence of iron pickets, unfriendly as so many tall black pikes. Just inside the fence's eastern line the billboard stood. Its wide back was to the house. Its edge was to the street. It faced, with an outrageous red and green face advertising a forgotten cure-all-Pentner's Potent Pills-a porticoed house of red brick behind tidy hedges some twenty yards away.

Hugh Trate, walking up from the car-line with that briskness which young twenty-two need not temper to moderate hills, stared at the billboard's ugly discordance until he was nearly abreast it and its edge had become too meager to hold his attention. Then his attention passed on to the stone house, his destination.

In front of the house a high grilled gate interrupted the black fence. It was a gate designed for shutting out rather than admitting, a gate wrought in lines as uninviting as the upright sharp pickets, but it was not locked. The young man closed it behind him and went up the walk to the house.

The young man shut the gate behind him and went up the walk to the house. The door was opened in response to the bell by a stolid red-faced man of genial cast whose footman's clothes did not fit him very well.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I should like to see Miss Newbrith."

"She ain't home. Sorry."

"Wait a moment," the young man insisted as the door began to close. "I've an appointment. She phoned me. My name is Trate."

"That's different," the stolid man said cheerfully, opening the door again and stepping to one side. "Why didn't you say so? Come on in." He closed the door behind the young man and started up a broad flight of stairs. "Up this way."

On the second floor landing the stolid man halted to face Trate again.

"You don't happen to be carrying a gun, now do you?" he asked pleasantly.

"Why no."

"You see, we can't take no chances," the man explained, and, stepping close, ran swift hands over Trate's hips, chest, and belly. "We got to be mighty careful in a spot like this." He stepped back and moved toward a broad closed door on the right, throwing a friendly "Come along" over his shoulder.

Eyes wide in surprise, Trate followed obediently to the door, which the man opened with a flourish.

"A young fellow to see Miss Newbrith," he shouted merrily, bowing low with an absurd outflinging of his arms. When he straightened up he added, "Ha-ha-ha!"

Hesitantly Trate advanced into the room wherein was nothing to set him immediately at ease. It was a drawing-room in gold and white, quite long, elaborate with the carved, inlaid, and stuccoed richness of the fourteenth Louis' day. Opaque blinds and heavy curtains hid the windows. A glittering chandelier lighted the room. From the farther end a dozen faces looked at Trate with indefinite expectancy.

The owners of these faces had divided themselves into two groups. The larger numbered eight. They, no matter how comfortably established on chairs in this gold and white room, were unmistakably servants. Across the floor from them the smaller group occupied more space. The eldest of these four sat upright in the middle of a sofa. He was small, slight, old, and well preserved except that his mustache, white as his hair, was ragged at one end with recent gnawing. To his right a full-bodied woman of forty-something in a magenta frock leaned forward on her gilded chair and held a champlevé vial near her thin nose. Beside her a middle-aged man sat in a similar chair. He resembled-in younger, plumper mould-the man on the sofa, but was paler, more tired than the elder.

The fourth member of the group stood up when Hugh came in. She derived from both the sitting men: a girl of less than twenty, small with a daintiness of bone-structure and fleshing which, however delicate, had nothing to do with fragility. Her face was saved from the flat prettiness of mathematically proportioned features by her mouth: it was red, too narrow, full and curiously creased. She took four steps toward Trate, stopped, looked past him at the door through which he had come, and at him again. "Oh, Mr. Trate, it was nice of you to come so quickly!" she said.

The young man, still a dozen paces away, approached smiling somewhat stiffly, a little pink, looking at her with brown eyes that seemed uneasily aware of the concerted stare of the eleven other persons watching him with ambiguous hopefulness. He made a guttural gargling sound, in no way intelligible, but manifestly polite in intention. The girl took his hand, then his hat and overcoat, and turned with him to face the others.

"Grandad," she said to the old man on the sofa, "this is Mr. Trate. He-" She stopped, indicated something behind her by a swift sidewise jerk of her eyes, and nodded significantly.

"Say no more." The old man's glance darted for a fleeting instant past Trate. A dry whisper crept from behind his white mustache. "We are in your hands."

Trate said something like, "Uh," and shifted his feet uncertainly.

The girl told him that the tired man and the woman in magenta were her parents, and now the woman spoke, her voice nasally querulous. "The stout man is by far the most odious and I do wish you would secure him first." She gestured with the champlevé vial toward the door.

Two men stood in that end of the room. One was the stolid man who had opened the door. He nodded and grinned amiably at Trate. His companion scowled. The companion was a short man in shabby brown, with arms too long hanging from shoulders too broad. Red-brown eyes peered malignantly from beneath the pulled-down visor of his cap. His face was dark, with a broad nose flat on his long and prominent upper lip above an outthrust chin.

Trate looked from one Newbrith to another. "I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"It's nothing," the old man assured him. "Your own way."

Trate frowned questioning puzzlement at the girl.

She laughed, the creases in her red mouth multiplying its curves. "We must explain it to Mr. Trate. We can't expect him to guess the situation."

Old Newbrith's ragged mustache blew out from his mouth in a great blast of air.

"Explain! Didn't you-?"

"There was no time," said the girl. "It took me nearly five minutes to get Mr. Trate on the wire, and by then they were hunting for me."

The old man leaned forward with bulging eyes. "And you've no assistance? No men outside?"

"No, sir," Trate said.

The elder Newbrith looked at the girl's father and the girl's father looked at him, each looking as if he found the sight of the other amazing. But the amazement with which they regarded one another was nothing to that with which they looked at the girl. The old man's small fingers crushed invisible things on the sofa beside his legs.

"Precisely what did you tell Mr. Trate, Brenda?" he asked.

"Why, I simply told him who I was, reminded him I had met him at the Shermans', and asked him if he could run up here immediately. That was all. There wasn't time for anything else, Grandad. They were already hunting for me."

"Yes, they would be," said the old man, softer of voice, his face angrier. "So instead of giving the alarm to the first voice you heard, you wasted five minutes getting this-ah-young gentleman on the wire, and then hadn't time to do more than-ah-casually invite him to join us?"

"Oh, but really," his granddaughter protested, "Mr. Trate is very clever. And I thought this would be such a wonderful chance for him to make a reputation at the very beginning of his career."

"Ah!" the old man cooed while wild lights twinkled in his eyes, "so our young friend is at the very beginning of his career, is he?"

"Yes. I met him at the Shermans' reception. He was guarding the presents, and he told me that was his first case. He had only been a detective for three days then. Wasn't that it, Mr. Trate?"

Mr. Trate said, "Uh-yes," without taking his eyes from the old man's face.

"So then our Mr. Trate has had by this time"-Newbrith was lisping with sweetness now-"no less than ten days experience?"

"Eleven," Trate said, blushing a little.

Old Newbrith said, "Ah, eleven, to be sure!" and stood up. He smiled and his face was swollen and purple. He plucked two buttons from his coat and threw them away. He found a yellow scarf to tear into strips and a handful of cigars to crunch into brown flakes. He took the champlevé vial from his daughter-in-law's hand and ground it under his heel. While thus engaged he screamed that his granddaughter was an idiot, a fool, a loon , a moron, a dolt, an ass, a lunatic, a goose, a simpleton, a booby, a numbskull, an imbecile, and a halfwit. Then he relapsed on the sofa, eyes closed, legs out, while daughter-in-law and granddaughter strove with loosening, fanning, chaffing hands to stop the bubbling in his upturned open mouth.

"What's the old boy up to now?" a very thin squeaky voice asked. Its owner stood with the two men by the door. He was ridiculous. Well over six feet in height, he was a hill of flesh, a live sphere in loose gray clothes. His features were babyish-little round blue eyes, little lumpy nose, little soft mouth-all babyishly disposed, huddled together in the center of a great round face, between cheeks like melons, with smooth pink surfaces that seemed never have needed shaving. Out of this childish mountain more piping words came: "You oughtn't to let him carry on like that, Tom. First thing you know he'll be busting something and dying on us before we're through with him."

"The young fellow did it," replied the cheerful man in the footman's ill-fitting dress. "Seems like he's a detective."

"A detective!" The fat man's features gathered closer together in a juvenile pout, blue eyes staring glassily at Trate. "Well, what does he come here for? We mustn't have detectives!"

The long-armed brutish man in brown took a shuffling step forward. "I'll bust him one," he suggested.

"No, no, Bill!" the fat man squeaked impatiently, still staring at Trate. "That wouldn't help. He'd still be a detective."

"Oh, he ain't so much a one that we got to worry about him," the cheerful man said. "Seems like he ain't been at it only for eleven days, and he comes in not knowing no what's what than the man in the moon."

But fat pink fingers continued to pluck at the puckered baby's mouth, and the porcelain eyes neither blinked nor wavered from the young man's face. "That's all right," the fat man squeaked, "but what's he doing here? That's what I want to know."

"Seems like the kid got to the phone that time she slipped away from us in the mixup before we brought 'em down here, and she gives this young fellow a rumble, but she's too rattlebrained to smart him up. He don't know nothing until he gets in."

The mountainous man's distress lessened to a degree permitting the removal of his stare from Trate, and he turned to the door. "Well, maybe it's all right," his treble came over one of the thick pillows that were his shoulders, "but you tell him that he's got to behave himself."

He lumbered out, leaving the cheerful man and the malevolent man standing side by side looking at Trate cheerfully and malevolently. The young man put his back to those parallel but unlike gazes and found himself facing old Newbrith, who was sitting up on his sofa again, his eyes open, waving away his ministering womenfolk.

Looking at Trate, the old man repeated the burden of his recently screamed complaint, but now in the milder tone of incomplete resignation: "If she had to pick out one detective and bring him here blindfolded, why must she pick an amateur?"

No one had a direct reply to that. Trate mumbled an obvious something about everybody's having been a novice at one time. The old man readily, if somewhat nastily, conceded the truth of that, but God knew he had troubles enough without being made Lesson II in a How To Be A Detective course.

"Now, Grandad, don't be unreasonable," Brenda Newbrith remonstrated. "You've no idea how clever Mr. Trate really is! He-" She smiled up at the young man. "What was that awfully clever thing you said at the Shermans' about democracy being government with the deuces wild?"

The young man cleared his throat and smiled uncomfortably, and beyond that said nothing.

The girl's father opened his tired eyes and became barely audible. "Good Lord!" he murmured. "A detective who amuses the guests with epigrams to keep them from making off with the wedding presents!"

"You just wait!" the girl said. "You'll see! Won't they, Mr. Trate?"

Mr. Trate said, "Yes. That is-Well-"

Mrs. Newbrith, raising her eyes from the ruins of her vial on the floor, said, "I don't understand what all this pother is about. If the young man is really a detective, he will arrest these criminals at once. If he isn't, he isn't, and that's the end of it, though I grant that Brenda might have exercised greater judgment when she-"

"Go ahead, young fellow," Tom called encouragingly from the other end of the room, "detect something for the lady!"

The man with the brutish muzzle also spoke. "I wish Joe would leave me take a poke at him," he grumbled.

"You can save us, can't you, Mr. Trate?" the girl asked pointblank, looking up at him with blue eyes in which doubt was becoming faintly discernible.

Trate flushed, cleared his throat. "I'm not a policeman, Miss Newbrith, and I have no reason to believe that Mr. Newbrith wishes to engage my services."

"None at all," the old man agreed.

The girl was not easily put aside.

"I engage you," she told him.

"I'm sorry," Trate said, "but it would have to be Mr. Newbrith."

"That's silly! And besides, if you succeeded in doing something, you know Grandad would reward you."

Trate shook his head again.

"Ethical detectives do not operate on contingent fees," said he as if reciting a recently studied lesson.

"Do you mean to do nothing? Are you trying to make me ridiculous? After I thought it would be such a wonderful opportunity for you, and gave you a chance any other man would jump at!"

Before Trate could reply to this, the fat man's treble was quivering in the room again. "Didn't I tell you you'd have to make him behave himself?" he asked his henchmen.

"He's just arguing," the stolid Tom defended Hugh. "There ain't no harm in the boy."

"Well, make him sit down and keep quiet."

The brutish Bill shuffled forward. "He'll sit down or I'll slap him down," he promised.

Hugh found a vacant gilt chair in a corner half behind the elder Newbrith's sofa. Bill said, "Ar-r-r!" hesitated, looked back at the fat man and returned to his post by the door.

The mountain of flesh turned its child's eyes on old Newbrith, raised a hand like an obese pink star, and beckoned with a finger that curved rather than crooked, so cased in flesh were its joints.

Old Newbrith caught the unchewed end of his mustache in his mouth, but he did not get up from his sofa.

"You've got everything," he protested. "I haven't another thing that-"

"You oughtn't to lie to me like that," the fat man reproved him. "How about that piece of property on Temple Street?"

"But you can't sell that kind of real estate by phone like stocks and bonds," Newbrith objected. "Not for immediate cash!"

"You can," the fat man insisted, "especially if you're willing to let it go for half of what it's worth, like you are. Maybe nobody else could, but you can. Everybody knows you're crazy, and anything you do won't surprise them."

Newbrith held his seat, stubbornly looking at the floor.

The fat man piped, "Bill!"

The brutish man shuffled toward the sofa.

Newbrith cursed into his mustache, got up, and followed the waddling mountain into the hall.

There was silence in the drawing-room. Bill and Tom held the door. The servants sat along their wall, variously regarding one another, the men at the door, and the four on the other side of the room. Mrs. Newbrith fidgeted in her chair, looking regretfully at the fragments of her vial, and picked at her magenta frock with round-tipped fingers that were pinkly striped with the marks of rings not long removed. Her husband rested wearily beside her, a cigar smoldering in his pale mouth. Their daughter sat a little away from them, looking stony defiance from face to face. Hugh Trate, back in his corner, had lighted a cigarette, and sat staring through smoke at his outstretched crossed legs. His face, every line of his pose, affected an introspective preoccupation with his own affairs that was flawed by an unmistakable air of sulkiness.

Twenty minutes later the elder Newbrith rejoined his family. His face was purple again. His hair was rumpled. The right corner of his mustache had vanished completely. The fat man, stopping beside his associates at the door, was forcing a thick black pistol into a tight pocket.

"You!" the old man barked at Trate before sitting on his sofa again. "You're hired!"

"Very well, sir," the young man said with so little enthusiasm that the words seemed almost an acceptance of defeat.

The fat man departed. The red-faced man grinned at Hugh and called to him with large friendliness, "I hope you ain't going to be too hard on us, young fellow."

The brutish man glowered and snarled, "I'm gonna smack that punk yet!"

After that there was silence again in the gold and white room, though the occasional sound of a closing door, of striding, waddling, dragging foot-falls, came from other parts of the house, and once a telephone bell rang thinly. Hugh Trate lit another cigarette, and did not restore the box of safety matches to his pocket.

Presently Mrs. Newbrith coughed. Old Newbrith cleared his throat. A vague stuffiness came into the room.

Trate leaned forward until his mouth was not far from the white head of the old man on the sofa. "Sit still, sir," the young detective whispered through immobile lips. "I've just set fire to the sofa."

Old Newbrith left the burning sofa with a promptness that caught his legs unprepared, scrambled out into the middle of the floor on hands and knees. His torn mustache quivered and fluttered and tossed in gusts of bellowed turmoil. "Help! Fire! Damn your idiocy! Michael! Battey! Water! Fire! You young idiot! Michael! Battey! It's arson, that's what it is!" were some of the things he could be understood to shout, and the things that were understood were but a fraction of the things he shouted.

Tumult-after a moment of paralysis at the spectacle of the master of the house of Newbrith yammering on all fours-took the drawing-room. Mrs. Newbrith screamed. The line between servants and served disappeared as the larger group came to the smaller's assistance. Flames leaped into view, red tongues licking the arm of the sofa, quick red fingers catching at drapes, yellow smoke like blonde ghosts' hair growing out of brocaded upholstery.

A thin youth in a chauffeur's livery started for the door, crying, "Water! We've got to have water!"

Stolid Tom waved him back with a pair of automatic pistols produced expertly from the bosom of his ill-fitting garments. "Go back to your bonfire, my lad," he ordered with friendly firmness, while the brute called Bill slid a limber dark blackjack from a hip pocket and moved toward the chauffeur. The chauffeur hurriedly retreated into the group fighting the fire.

The younger Newbrith and a servant had twisted a thick rug over the sofa's arm and back, and were patting it sharply with their hands. Two servants had torn down the burning drape, trampling it into shredded black harmlessness under their feet. The elder Newbrith beat a smoldering cushion against the top of a table, sparks riding away on escaping feathers. While the old man beat he talked, but nothing could be made of his words. Mrs. Newbrith was laughing with noisy hysteria beside him. Around these principals the others were grouped: servants unable to find a place to serve, Brenda Newbrith looking at Hugh Trate as if undecided how she should look at him, and the young man himself frowning at the charred corpse of his fire with undisguised resentment.

"What in the world's the matter now?" the fat man asked from the door.

"The young fellow's been cutting up," Tom explained. "He touched off a box of matches and stuck 'em under a pillow in a corner of the sofa. Seemed like a harmless kind of joke, so I left him alone."

The brutish man raised a transformed face, almost without brutality in its eager hopefulness. "Now you'll leave me sock him, Joe," he pleaded.

But the fat man shook his head.

Mrs. Newbrith stopped laughing to cough. The elder Newbrith was coughing, his eyes red, tears on his wrinkled cheeks. A cushion case was limp and empty in his fingers: it had burst under his violent handling and its contents had puffed out to scatter in the air, thickening in an atmosphere already heavy with the smoke and stench of burnt hair and fabric.

"Can't we open a window for a second?" the younger Newbrith called through this cloud. "Just enough to clear the air?"

"Now you oughtn't to ask me a thing like that," fat Joe complained petulantly. "You ought to have sense enough to know we can't do a thing like that."

Old Newbrith spread his empty cushion cover out with both hands and began to wave it in the air, fanning a relatively clear space in front of him. Servants seized rugs and followed his example. Smoke swirled away, thinning toward the ceiling. White curls of fleece eddied about, were wafted to distant parts of the room. The three men at the door watched without comment.

"I'm afraid this young man is going to make a nuisance of himself," the fat man squeaked after a little while. "You'll have to do something with him, Tom."

"Aw, leave the young fellow alone," said Tom. "He's all-"

A white feather, fluttering lazily down, came to hang for a moment against the tip of Tom's red nose. He dabbed at it with the back of one of the hands that held his pistols. The feather floated up in the air-current generated by the hand's motion, but immediately returned to the nose-tip again. Tom's hand dabbed at it once more and his face puffed out redly. The feather eluded his hand, nestling between nose and upper lip. His face became grotesquely inflated. He sneezed furiously. The gun in the dabbing hand roared. Old Newbrith's empty cushion case was whisked out of his hands. A hole like a smooth dime appeared in the blind down across a window behind him.

"Tch! Tch!" exclaimed the fat man. "You ought to be carefuller, Tom. You might hurt somebody that way."

Tom sneezed again, but with precautions now, holding his pistols down, holding his forefingers stiffly away from the triggers. He sneezed a third time, rubbed his nose with the back of a hand, put his weapons out of sight under his coat, and brought out a handkerchief.

"I might of for a fact," he admitted good naturedly, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. "Remember that time Snohomish Whitey gunned that bank messenger without meaning to, all on account of being ticklish and having a button bust off his undershirt and slide down on the inside?"

"Yes," fat Joe remembered, "but Snohomish was always kind of flighty."

"You can say what you want about Snohomish," the brutish man said, rubbing his chin reflectively with the blackjack, "but he packs a good wallop in his left, and don't think he don't. That time me and him went round and round in the jungle at Sac he made me like it, even if I did take him, and don't think he didn't."

"That's right enough," the fat man admitted, "but still and all, I never take much stock in a man that can't take a draw on your cigarette without getting it all wet. Well, don't let these folks do any more cutting up on you," and he waddled away.

Hugh Trate, surrounded by disapproval, sat and stared at the floor for fifteen minutes. Then his face began to redden slowly. When it was quite red he lifted it and looked into the elder Newbrith's bitter eyes.

"Do you think I started it because I was chilly?" he asked angrily. "Wouldn't it have smoked these crooks out? Wouldn't it have brought firemen, police?"

The old man glared at him. "Don't you think it's bad enough to be robbed without being cremated? Do you think the insurance company would have paid me a nickel for the house? Do you-?"

A downstairs crash rattled windows, shook the room, put weapons in the hands of men at the door. Feet thumped on distant steps, scurried overhead, stamped in the hall. The door opened far enough to admit a pale hatchet-face.

"Ben," it addressed the cheerful man, "Big Fat wants you. We been ranked!"

Two shots close together sounded below. Ben, recently Tom, hurried out after the hatchet-face, leaving the brutish Bill alone to guard the prisoners. He glowered threateningly at them with his little red-brown eyes, crouching beside the door, blackjack in one hand, battered revolver in the other.

Another shot thundered. Something broke with a splintering sound in the rear of the house. A distant man yelled throatily, "Put the slug to him!" In another part of the building a man laughed. Heavy feet were on the stairs, in the hall.

Bill spun to the door as the door came in. Gunpowder burned diagonally upward in a dull flash. Metal buttons glistened against blue cloth around, under, over Bill. His blackjack arched through the air, twisted end over end, and thudded on the floor.

A sallow plump man in blue civilian clothes came into the room, stepping over the policemen struggling with Bill on the floor. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he nodded to Newbrith senior without removing his hat.

"Detective-sergeant McClurg," he introduced himself. "We nabbed six or seven of 'em, all of 'em, I guess. What's it all about?"

"Robbery, that's what it's all about!" Newbrith stormed. "They seized the house at daybreak. All day they've held us here, prisoners in our own home! I've been forced to withdraw my bank balances, to sell stocks and bonds and everything that could be sold quickly. I've been forced to make myself ridiculous by demanding currency for everything, by sending God knows what kind of messengers for it. I've been forced to borrow money from men I despise! I might just as well live in a wilderness as in a city that keeps me poor with its taxes for all the protection I've got. I haven't-"

"We can't guess what's happening," the detective-sergeant said. "We came as soon as Pentner gave us the rap."

"Pentner?" It was a despairing scream. The old man's eyes rolled frenziedly at the bright round hole in the curtained window that concealed his neighbor's residence. "That damned scoundrel! I hope he waits for me to thank him for his impudence in meddling in my business! I'd rather lose everything I've got in the world than be beholden to that-"

The detective-sergeant's plumpness shook with an inner mirth. "You don't have to let that bother you," he interrupted the old man's tirade. "He won't like it so much either! He phoned in saying you had taken a shot at him while he was standing in his room brushing his hair. He said he always expected something like that would happen, because he knew you were crazy as a pet cuckoo and ought to have been locked up long ago. He said that, since you had missed him, he was glad you had cut loose at him, because now the city would have to put you away where you belonged."

"So you see," came the triumph of Brenda Newbrith's voice, "Mr. Trate is clever, and he did show you!"

"Eh?" was the most her grandfather could achieve.

"You know very well," she declared, "that if he hadn't set fire to the sofa you wouldn't have burst the cushion, and the feathers wouldn't have tickled that man's nose, and he wouldn't have sneezed, and his gun wouldn't have gone off, and the bullet wouldn't have frightened Mr. Pentner into thinking you were trying to kill him, and he wouldn't have phoned the police, and they wouldn't have come here to rescue us. That stands to reason. Well, then, how can you say that Mr. Trate's cleverness didn't do it?"

Detective-sergeant McClurg's plumpness shook again. Old Newbrith snorted and fumbled for words that wouldn't come. The younger Newbrith murmured something about the house that Jack built.

The young man who had been clever turned a bit red and had a moment of trouble with his breathing, but the bland smile his face wore was the smile of one who wears honestly won laurels easily, neither over-valuing nor under-valuing them.

"I think it's wonderful," the girl assured him, "to be able to make plans that go through successfully no matter how much everybody tries to spoil them from the very beginning."

Nobody could find a reply to that-if one were possible.

THE DIAMOND WAGER

I always knew West was eccentric.

Ever since the days of our youth, in various universities-for we seemed destined to follow each other about the globe-I had known Alexander West to be a person of the most bizarre, though not unattractive, personality: At Heidelberg, where he renounced water as a beverage; at Pisa, where he affected a one-piece garment for months; at the Sorbonne, where he consorted with the most notorious characters, boasting an acquaintance with Le Grand Raoul, an unspeakable ruffian of La Villette.

And in later life, when we met in Constantinople, where West was American minister, I found that his idiosyncrasies were common topics in the diplomatic corps. In the then Turkish capital I naturally dined with West at the Legation, and except for his pointed beard and Prussian mustache being somewhat more gray, I found him the same tall, courtly figure, with a keen brown eye and the hands of generations, an aristocrat.

But his eccentricities were then of more refined fantasy. No more baths in snow, no more beer orgies, no more Libyan negroes opening the door, no more strange diets. At the Legation, West specialized in rugs and gems. He had a museum in carpets. He had even abandoned his old practice of having the valet call him every morning at eight o'clock with a gramophone record.

I left the Legation thinking West had reformed. "Rugs and precious stones," I reflected; "that's such a banal combination for West." Although I did recall that he had told me he was doing something strange with a boat on the Bosporus; but I neglected to inquire about the details. It was something in connection with work, as he had said, "Everybody has a pleasure boat; I have a work boat, where I can be alone." But that is all I retained concerning this freak of his mind.

It was some years later, however, when West had retired from diplomacy, that he turned up in my Paris apartment, a little grayer, straight and keen as usual, but with his beard a trifle less pointed-and, let's say, a trifle less distinguished-looking. He looked more the successful business man than the traditional diplomat. It was a cold, blustery night, so I bade West sit down by my fire and tell me of his adventures; for I knew he had not been idle since leaving Constantinople.

"No, I am not doing anything," he answered, after a pause, in reply to my question as to his present activities. "Just resting and laughing to myself over a little prank I played on a friend."

"Oho!" I declared; "so you're going in for pranks now."

He laughed heartily. I could hardly see West as a practical joker. That was one thing out of his line. As he held his long, thin hands together, I noticed an exceptionally fine diamond ring on his left hand. It was of an unusual luster, deep set in gold, flush with the cutting. His quick eye caught me looking at this ornament. As I recall, West had never affected jewelry of any kind.

"Oh, yes, you are wondering about this," he said, gazing into the crystal. "Fine yellow diamond; not so rare, but unusual, set in gold, which they are not wearing any longer. A little present." He repeated blandly, after a pause, "A little present for stealing."

"For stealing?" I inquired, astonished. I could hardly believe West would steal. He would not play practical jokes and he would not steal.

"Yes," he drawled, leaning back away from the fire. "I had to steal about four million francs-that is, four million francs' worth of jewels." He noted the effect on me, and went on in a matter-of-fact way: "Yes, I stole it, stole it all. Got the police all upset; got stories in the newspapers. They referred to me as a super-thief, a master criminal, a malefactor, a crook, and an organized gang. But I proved my case. I lifted four million from a Paris jeweler, walked around town with it, gave my victim an uncomfortable night, and walked in his store the next day between rows of wise gentlemen, gave him back his paltry four million, and collected my bet, which is this ring you see here."

West paused and chuckled softly to himself, still apparently getting the utmost out of this late escapade in burglary. Of course, I remembered only recently seeing in the newspapers how some clever gentleman cracksman had succeeded in a fantastic robbery in the Rue de la Paix, Paris, but I had not read the details.

I was genuinely curious. This was, indeed, West in his true character. But to go in for deliberate and probably dangerous burglary was something which I considered required a little friendly counsel on my part. West anticipated my difficulty in broaching the subject.

"Don't worry, old man. I pinched the stuff from a good friend of ours, really a pal, so if I had been caught it would have been fixed up, except I would have lost my bet."

He looked at the yellow diamond.

"But don't you realize what would have happened if you had been caught?" I asked. "Prank or not, your name would have been aired in the newspapers-a former American minister guilty of grand larceny; an arrest; a day or so in jail; sensation; talk, ruinous gossip!"

He only laughed the more. He held up an arresting hand. "Please don't call me an amateur. I did the most professional job that the Rue de la Paix has seen in years."

I believe he was really proud of this burglary.

West gazed reflectively into the fire. "But I wouldn't do it again-not for a dozen rings." He watched the firelight dance in the pure crystal of the stone on his finger. "Poor old Berthier, he was wild! He came to see me the night I lifted his diamonds, four million francs' worth, mind you, and they were in my pocket at the time. He asked me to accompany him to the store and go over the scene.

"He said perhaps I might prove cleverer than detectives, whom he was satisfied were a lot of idiots. I told him I would come over the next day, because, according to the terms of our wager, I was to keep the jewels for more than twenty-four hours. I returned the next day, and handed them to him in his upstairs office. The poor wretch that I took them from was downstairs busy reconstructing the 'crime' with those astute gentlemen, the detectives, and I've no doubt that they would eventually have caught me, for you don't get away with robbery in France. They catch you in the end. Fortunately I made the terms of my wager to fit the conditions."

West leaned back and blinked satisfyingly at the ceiling, tapping his fingertips together. "Poor old Berthier," he mused. "He was wild."

As soon as West had mentioned that his victim was a mutual friend, I had thought of Berthier. Moreover, Berthier's was one of those establishments in which a four-million-franc purchase or a theft of the same size might not seem so unusual. West interrupted my thoughts concerning Berthier.

"I made Berthier promise that he would not dismiss any employee. That also was in the terms of our wager because I dealt directly with Armand the head salesman and a trusted employee. It was Armand who delivered the stones." West leaned nearer, his brown eyes squinting at me as if in defense of any reprehension I might impute to him. "You see, I did it, not so much as a wager, but to teach Berthier a lesson. Berthier is responsible for his store, he is the principal shareholder, the administration is his own, it was he and it was his negligence in not rigidly enforcing more elementary principles of safety that made the theft possible." He turned the yellow diamond around on his finger. "This thing is nothing, compared to the value of the lesson he learned."

West stroked his stubby beard. He chuckled. "It did cost me some of my beard. A hotel suite, an old trunk, a real Russian prince, a fake Egyptian prince, a would-be princess, a first-class reservation to Egypt, a convenient bathroom, running water and soapsuds. Poor old Armand, who brought the gems-he and his armed assistants-they must have almost fainted when, after waiting probably a good half hour, all they found in exchange for a four-million-franc necklace was a cheap bearskin coat, a broad brimmed hat, and some old clothes."

I must admit that I was growing curious. It was about a week ago when I had seen this sensational story in the newspapers. I knew West had come to tell me about it, as he had so often related to me his various escapades, and I was getting restive. Moreover, I knew Berthier well, and I could readily imagine the state of his mind on the day of the missing diamonds.

I had a bottle of 1848 cognac brought up, and we both settled down to the inner warmth of this most friendly of elixirs.

II

"You see," West began, with this habitual phrase of his, "I had always been a good customer of Berthier's. I have bought trinkets from Berthier's both in New York and Paris since I was a boy. And in getting around as I did in various diplomatic posts, I naturally sent Berthier many wealthy clients. I got him the work on two very important crown jewel commissions; I sent him princes and magnates; and of course he always wanted to make me a present, knowing well that the idea of a commission was out of the question.

"One day not long ago I was in Berthier's with a friend who was buying some sapphires and platinum and a lot of that atrocious modern jewelry for his new wife. Berthier offered me this yellow diamond then as a present, for I had always admired it, but never felt quite able to buy it, and knowing at the same time that even if I did buy it he would have marked the price so low as to be embarrassing.

"However, we compromised by dining together that night in Ciro's; and there he pointed out to me the various personalities of that international crowd who wear genuine stones. 'I can't understand,' Berthier said, after a comprehensive observation of the clientele, 'how all these women are not robbed even more regularly than they are. Even we jewelers, with all our protective systems, are not safe from burglary.'

"Berthier then went on to tell me of some miserable wretch who, only the day before, had smashed a show window down the street and filched several big stones. 'A messy job,' he commented, and he informed me that the police soon apprehended this window burglar.

"He continued, with smug assurance: 'It's pretty hard for a street burglar to get away with anything these days. It's the other kind,' he added, 'the plausible kind, the apparently rich customer, the clever, ingenious stranger, with whom we cannot cope.'"

When West mentioned this "clever, ingenious stranger," I had a mental picture of him stepping into just such a role for his robbery of Berthier's; but I made no comment, and let him go on with his story.

"You see, I had always contended the same thing. I had always held that jewelers and bankers show only primitive intelligence in arranging their protective schemes, dealing always with the hypothetical street robbery, the second story man, the gun runner, while they invariably go on for years unprotected against these plausible gentlemen who, in the long run, are the worst offenders. They get millions where the common thief gets thousands.

"I might have been a bit vexed at Berthier's cocksureness," West continued by way of explanation, "but you see, I am a shareholder in a bank that was once beautifully swindled, so I let Berthier have it straight from the shoulder.

"'You fellows deserve to be robbed,' I said to Berthier. 'You fall for such obvious gags.'

"Berthier protested. I asked him about the little job they put over on the Paris house of Kerstners Frères. He shrugged his shoulders. It seems that a nice gentleman who said he was a Swiss," West explained, "wanted to match an emerald pendant that he had, in order to make up a set of earrings. Kerstners had difficulty in matching the emerald which the nice Swiss gentleman had ordered them to purchase at any price.

"After a search Kerstners found the stone and bought it at an exorbitant price. They had simply bought in the same emerald. Of course, the gentleman only made a mere hundred thousand francs, a simple trick that has been worked over and over again in various forms.

"When I related this story, Berthier retorted with some scorn to the effect that no sensible house would fall for such an old dodge as that. I then asked Berthier about that absurd robbery that happened only a year ago at Latour's, which is a very 'sensible' house and incidentally Berthier's chief competitor."

West asked me if I knew about this robbery. I assured him I did, inasmuch as all Paris had laughed, for the joke was certainly on the prefect of police. On the prefect's first day in office some ingenious thief had contrived to have a whole tray of diamond rings sent under guard to the prefect, from which he was to choose one for an engagement present for his recently announced fiancée.

The thief impersonated a clerk right in the prefect's inner waiting room, and, surrounded by police, he took the tray into the prefect's office, excused himself for blundering into the wrong room, slipped the tray under his coat, walked back to the waiting room, and after assuring the jeweler's representatives that they wouldn't have to wait long, he disappeared. Fortunately, the thief was arrested the following day in Lyons.

West laughed heartily as he talked over the unique details of this robbery. I poured out some cognac. "Well, my genteel burglar," I pursued, "that doesn't yet explain how you yourself turned thief and lifted four million."

"Very simple," West replied. "Berthier was almost impertinent in his self-assurance that no one could rob Berthier's. 'Not even the most fashionably dressed gentleman nor the most plausible prince could trick Berthier's,' he asserted with some vigor. Then he assured me, as if it were a great secret, 'Berthier never delivers jewels against a check until the bank reports the funds.'

"'There are always loopholes,' I rejoined, but Berthier argued stupidly that it was impossible. His boastful attitude annoyed me.

"I looked him straight in the eye. 'I'll bet you, if I were a burglar, I could clean your place out.' Berthier laughed in that jerky, nervous way of his. 'I'd pay you to rob me,' he said. 'You needn't; but I'll do it anyway,' I told him.

"Berthier thought a bit. 'I'll bet you that yellow diamond that you couldn't steal so much as a baby's bracelet from Berthier's.'

"'I'll bet you I can steal a million,' I said.

"'It's a go,' said Berthier, shaking my hand. 'The yellow diamond is yours if you steal anything and get away with it.'

"'Perhaps three or four million,' I said.

"'It's a bet. Steal anything you want,' Berthier agreed.

"'I'll teach you smart Rue de la Paix jewelers a lesson,' I informed him.

"Accordingly, over our coffee, we arranged the terms of our wager, and I suppose Berthier promptly forgot about it."

West sipped his cognac thoughtfully before restoring the glass to the mantel, and then went on:

"The robbery was so easy to plan, yet I must admit that it had many complications. I had always said that the plausible gentleman was the loophole, so I looked up my old friend Prince Meyeroff, who is always buying and selling and exchanging jewels. It's a mania with him. I had exchanged a few odd gems with him in Constantinople, as he considered me a fellow connoisseur.

"I found him in Paris, and soon talked him into the mood to buy a necklace. In fact, he had disposed of some old family pieces, and was actually meditating an expensive gift for his favorite niece.

"I explained to the prince that I had a little deal on, and asked him to let me act as his buyer. I had special reasons. Moreover, he was one of my closest friends back in St. Petersburg. Meyeroff said he would allow me a credit up to eight hundred thousand francs for something very suitable for this young woman who was marrying into the old French nobility.

"I told the prince to go to Berthier's and choose a necklace, approximating his price, but to underbid on it. I would then go in and buy it at the price contemplated.

"I figured this would give them just the amount of confidence in me that would be required to carry off a bigger affair that I was thinking of.

"Meanwhile I bethought myself of a disguise. I let my beard grow somewhat to the sides and cut off the point. I affected a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, and a half-length bearskin coat. I then braced up my trousers almost to my ankles. Some days later-in fact, it was just over a week ago-I went to Berthier's, after I ascertained that Berthier himself was in London. I informed them I wanted to buy a gift or two in diamonds, and it was not many minutes before I had shown the clerks that money was no object with me.

"They brought me out a most bewitching array of necklaces, tiaras, collars, bracelets, rings. A king's ransom lay before my eyes. Of course, I fell in love with a beautiful flat stone necklace of Indian diamonds with an enormous square pendant. I fondled it, held it up, almost wept over it, but decided, alas, that I could not buy it. Four million francs, the salesman, Armand, had said. I shook my head sadly. Too expensive for me. But how I loved it!

"I finally decided that a smaller one would be very nice. It was the one with a gorgeous emerald pendant, en cabochon, which Prince Meyeroff had seen and described to me. I asked the price.

"Armand demurred. 'You have chosen the same one that a great connoisseur has admired. Prince Meyeroff wanted it, but it was a question of price.'

"'How much?' I asked.

"'Eight hundred thousand francs.'

"Of course, I was buying for the prince, so with a great flourish of opulence I arranged to buy the smaller necklace, though I continued flirting with that handsome Indian string. I assumed the name of Hazim, gave my home town as Cairo, and my present address a prominent hotel in the Rue de Rivoli.

"I ordered a different clasp put on the necklace, and departed for my bank, declaring I was expecting a draft from Egypt. I then went to my apartment, sent to the hotel an old trunk full of cast-off clothes, from which I carefully removed the labels. My beard was proving most disciplined, rounding my face out nicely. Picture yourself the flat hat, the bulgy fur coat, my trousers pulled up toward the ankles!"

III

"I returned to Berthier's next day and bought the necklace for Meyeroff. I paid them out of a bag, eight hundred thousand francs, and received a receipt made out to Mr. Hazim of Cairo and the Rue de Rivoli. I again looked longingly at the Indian necklace. I casually mentioned what a delight it would be for my daughter who was engaged to an Egyptian prince.

"'I must get her something,' I told Berthier's man. He tried all his arts on me. Four million was not too much for an Egyptian princess, and in Egypt, where they wear stones. He emphasized the last phrase. I hesitated, but went out with my little necklace, saying I'd see later.

"I had a hired automobile of enormous proportions waiting outside which must at least have impressed the doorman at Berthier's, whom I had passed many times in the past, but who failed to recognize me in this changed get-up. You see, Egyptians don't understand this northern climate, and are inclined to dress oddly.

"I then went to my hotel and made plans for stealing that four-million-franc necklace. In the hotel I was regarded as a bit of an eccentric, so no one bothered me. I had two rooms and a bath. Flush against the wall of my salon, toward the bath, I placed a small square table. I own a beautiful inlaid Louis XVI glove box which, curiously, opens both at the top and at the ends. The ends hinge onto the bottom and are secured by little gadgets at the side, stuck in the plush lining. It makes an admirable jewel case, especially for necklaces; and moreover, it was just the thing needed for my robbery. I placed this box on the little table with the end flush against the wall.

"It looked simple. With a hole in the wall fitting the end of the glove box, I could easily contrive to pull down the shutterlike end and draw the contents through the wall into the bathroom.

"Being a building of modern construction, it would not require much work to punch a hole through the plaster and terra cotta with a drill-bit. I decided on that plan, for the robbery was to take place precisely at three o'clock the following afternoon and in my own rooms.

"That afternoon I decided to buy the Indian necklace. I passed by Berthier's and allowed myself to be tempted by the salesman Arnold. 'I can't really pay so much for a wedding gift,' I said, 'but the prince is very rich.' I told Armand that naturally I felt a certain pride about the gift I should give my daughter under such special circumstances.

"Armand held up the gorgeous necklace, letting the lights play on the great square pendant. 'Anyway, sir, the princess will always have the guarantee of the value of the stones. That is true of any diamond purchased at Berthier's.'

"And with that thought I yielded. I asked for the telephone, saying I must call my bank and arrange for the transfer of funds. That also was simple. I had previously arranged with Judd, my valet, to be in a hotel off the Grands Boulevards, and pretend he was a banker if I should telephone him and ask him to transfer money from my various holdings."

West interrupted his narrative, gulping down the remainder of the cognac. The wrinkles about his eyes narrowed in a burst of merriment.

"It was really cute," he continued. "I telephoned from Berthier's own office, asking for this hotel number on the élysée exchange. Naturally no one remembers all the bank telephone numbers in Paris, and when Judd answered the telephone his deferential tones might have been those of an accredited banker.

"'Four million tomorrow,' I said, 'and I'll leave the transfer to your judgment. I want the money in thousands in a sack. I'll come with Judd, so you won't need to worry about holding a messenger to accompany me. I am only going as far as Berthier's. It's a wedding gift for my daughter.'

"Judd must have thought me crazy, although it would take a lot to surprise him.

"Armand listened to the conversation. Two other clerks heard it, and later I was bowed out to the street, where my enormous hired car awaited. My next job was to get a tentative reservation on the Latunia, which was leaving Genoa for Alexandria the following day. Prince Hazim, I called myself at the steamship office. This was for Berthier's benefit, in case they should check up my sailing. Then I went to work.

"I went to the hotel and drew out a square on the wall, tracing it thinly around the end of the box. I slept that night in the hotel. In the morning I arose at nine o'clock, paid my bill, and told the hotel clerk I was leaving that evening for Genoa.

"I called at Berthier's still wearing the same bearskin coat and flat hat, and assured myself that the necklace was in order. Armand showed it to me in a handsome blue morocco case, which made me a bit apprehensive. He was profoundly courteous.

"I objected to the blue box, but added that it would do for a container later on, as I had an antique case to transport both the necklaces I was taking with me. I told him of my hasty change of plans. Urgent business, I said, in Egypt.

"Armand was sympathetic. I promised to return at three o'clock with the money. I went to the hotel and ordered lunch and locked the doors. I had sent Judd away after he had brought me some tools. It was but the work of fifteen minutes to cut my square hole through the plaster. I wore out about a dozen drills, however, getting through that brittle terra cotta tile.

"At one o'clock, when the lunch came up, I had the hole neatly through to the bathroom. I covered it with a towel on that side, and in the salon I backed a chair against it over which I threw an old dressing gown.

"I quickly disposed of the waiter, locked the door, and replaced the table at the wall. Taking out the necklace I had bought for Prince Meyeroff, I laid it doubled in the glove box. It was a caged rainbow, lying on the rose-colored plush lining. The box I stuck flush with the square aperture.

"I had provided myself with a stiff piece of wire something like an elongated buttonhook. A warped piece of mother-of-pearl inlay provided a perfect catch with which to pull down the end of the box.

"I tried the invention from the bathroom. I had overlooked one thing. I forgot that when the hole was stopped up by the box it would be dark. Thanks to my cigarette lighter, I could see to pull down the hinged end and draw out the jewels. I tried it. The hook brought down the end without a sound. I could see the stones glowing in the flickering light of the briquette. I began fishing with the hook, and the necklace with its rounded emerald slid out as if by magic.

"I fancied they might make a grating sound in the other room, so I padded the hole with a napkin. I'll cough out loud, or sing, or whistle, I said to myself. Then I thought of the bath water. I turned on the tap full force; the water ran furiously. I walked into the salon swinging the prince's necklace in my hand; the water was making a terrific uproar. Satisfied as to this strategy, I turned off the water.

"But what to do to disguise the box at the close-fitting square hole still bothered me. My time was getting short. I must do some important telephoning to Berthier's. I must try the outer door from the bedroom into the hall. I must have my travel cap ready and my long traveling coat across the foot of the bed. I must let down my trousers to the customary length. I must get ready my shaving brush.

"It was five minutes to three. They were expecting me at Berthier's with four million francs. Armand was probably at this moment rubbing his hands, observing with satisfaction that suave face of his in the mirrors.

"Still there was that telltale, ill-fitting edge of the hole about the box. I discovered the prince's necklace was still hanging from my hand. It gave me quite a surprise. I realized this was a ticklish business, this robbing of the most ancient house in the Rue de la Paix. I laid the necklace in the box closing the end. The hole was ugly, although the bits of paint and plaster had been well cleaned up from the floor.

"I had a stroke of genius. My flat black hat! I would lay it on its crown in front of the hole, with a big silk muffler carelessly thrown against it shutting off any view of the trap. I tried that plan, placing the box near the side of the hat. It looked like a casual litter of the objects. My old trunk was on the other side of the table to be sacrificed with its old clothes necessary stage properties.

"I then tried the camouflage, picked up the box, walked to the center of the room. The hat and muffler concealed the hole. I then walked to the table and replaced the box, this time casually alongside the hat, deftly putting the end in the hole. The hat moved only a few inches and the muffler hung over the brim, perfectly hiding and shadowing the trap, though most of the box was clearly visible. It looked perfectly natural. I then placed the box farther out, moved the hat against the hole, and the trap was arranged.

"Now to try my experiment in human credulity. I telephoned Berthier's. Armand came immediately. 'Hazim,' I said. 'I wish to ask you a favor.' Armand recognized my voice, and inquired if I were carrying myself well. 'My dear friend,' I began in English, 'I have found that the Genoa train leaves at five o'clock, and I am in a dreadful rush and am not half packed. I have the money here in my hotel. Could you conceivably bring me the necklace and collect the money here? It would help me tremendously.'

"I also suggested that Armand bring someone with him for safety's sake, as four million in notes, which had to be expedited through two branch banks, was not an affair to treat lightly. Someone might know about it. I knew Berthier's would certainly have Armand guarded, with one or perhaps two assistants.

"Armand was audibly distressed, and asked me to wait. It seemed like an hour before the response came. 'Yes, Mr. Hazim, we shall be pleased to deliver the necklace on receipt of the funds. I shall come with a man from our regular service and will have the statement ready to sign.'

"I urged him to hurry, and said I would be glad to turn over the money, as the presence of such an amount in my rooms made me nervous.

"That was exactly three fifteen. I quickly arranged the chairs so two or three would have to sit well away from the table. I laid my bearskin over the chair nearest the table. I opened the trunk as if I were packing. I telephoned the clerk to be sure to send my visitors to the salon door of my suite.

"My cap and long coat were ready in the bedroom. The door into the hall was almost closed, but not latched, so I would not have to turn the knob. I quickly removed my coat and vest, and laid them on a chair in the bedroom, ready to spring into. I wore a shirt with a soft collar attached. I removed my ready-tied cravat and hung it over a towel rack and turned my collar inside very carelessly as if for shaving purposes.

"In the bowl I prepared some shaving lather, and when that was all ready I was all set for making off with the prince's necklace and that other one-if it came.

"I'll admit I was nervous. I was considering the whole plot as a rather absurd enterprise, and all I could think of was the probably alert eyes and ears of the two or more suspicious employees on the glove box."

IV

"They arrived at twenty-five minutes to four. There were only two of them. I hastily lathered the edges of my spreading beard, and called out sharply for them to enter. The boy showed in Armand and a dapper individual who was evidently a house detective of Berthier's. Armand was all solicitude. I shook hands with him with two dry fingers, holding a towel with the other hand, as I had wished to make it apparent that I was deep in a shaving operation.

"'Just edging off my beard a little.'

"The two men were quite complacent.

"'And the necklace?' I asked eagerly.

"Armand drew the case from inside his coat and opened it before my eyes. We all moved toward the window. I was effusive in my admiration of the gems. I fluttered about much like the old fool that I probably am, and finally urged them to sit down.

"I then brought the glove box and showed the prince's necklace to both of them, and continued raving about both necklaces.

"We compared the two. The Indian was, of course, even more magnificent by contrast. The detective laid the smaller necklace back in the box, while I asked Armand to lay the big one over it in the box into which I was going to pack some cotton. My glove box was smaller and therefore easier and safer to carry, I said. I held the box open while Armand laid the necklace gingerly inside. I was careful to avoid getting the soap on the box, so I replaced it gently on the table near the hat, getting the end squarely against the hole. It seemed I had plenty of time.

"I even lingered over the box and wiped off a wayward fleck of soapsuds. The trap was set. I could not believe that the rest would be so easy, and I had to make an effort to conceal my nervousness.

"The two men sat near each other. I explained that as soon as I could clear the soap off my face I would get the sack of money and transact the business. I took Armand's blue box from Berthier's and threw it in the top tray of the trunk. They appeared to be the most unsuspecting creatures. They took proffered cigarettes and lighted up, whereupon I went directly into the bathroom, still carrying my towel. I dropped that towel. My briquette was there on the washstand. I hummed lightly as I turned on the hot water in the tub. It spouted out in a steaming, gushing stream. Quickly I held the lighted briquette at the hole, caught the gleam of the warped mother-of-pearl, and pulled at it with the wire.

"It brought the end down noiselessly on the folded napkin in the hole. The jewels blazed like fire. My hand shook as I made one savage jab at the pile with the long hook and felt the ineffable resistance of the two necklaces being pulled out together. I was afraid I might have to hook one at a time, but I caught just the right loops, and they came forward almost noiselessly along the napkin to where my left hand waited.

"I touched the first stone. It was the big necklace, the smaller one being underneath. My heart leaped as I saw the big pendant on one side of the heap not far from the cabochon emerald. I laid down the wire and drew them out deftly with my fingers, the gems piling richly in my spread-out left hand, until the glittering pile was free. I thrust them with one movement of my clutching fingers deep into the left pocket of my trousers. The water was churning in my ears like a cascade.

"I shut off the tap and purposely knocked the soap into the tub to make a noise, and walked into the bedroom, grabbing my cravat off the rack as I went. That was a glorious moment. The bedroom was dark. The door was unlatched. The diamonds were in my pocket. The way was clear.

"I pulled up my shirt collar, stuck on the cravat, and fixed it neatly as I reached the chair where my coat and vest lay. I plunged into them, buttoned the vest with one hand, and reached for my long coat and cap with the other. In a second I was slipping noiselessly through the door into the hall, my cap on my head, my coat over my arm.

"I had to restrain myself from running down that hall. I was in flight. It was a great thrill, to be moving away, each second taking me farther away from the enemy in that salon. Even if they are investigating at this moment, I thought, I should escape easily.

"I was gliding down those six flights of steps gleefully, released from the most tense moments I had ever gone through, when suddenly a horrible thought assailed me. What if Berthier's had posted a detective at the hotel door. I could see my plans crashing ignominiously. I stopped and reflected. The hotel has two entrances; therefore the third person, if he is there, must be in the lobby and therefore not far from the elevator and stairway.

"I thought fast, and it was a good thing I did. I was then on the second floor. I called the floor boy, turning around quickly as if mounting instead of descending.

"'Will you go to the lobby and ask if there is a man from Berthier's waiting? If he is there, will you tell him to come up to apartment 615 immediately?'

"I stressed the last word and, slipping a tip into the boy's hand, started up toward the third floor. With the boy gone, I turned toward the second floor, walked quickly down to the far end, where I knew the service stairway of the hotel was located. As I plunged into this door I saw the boy and a stout individual rushing up the steps toward the third floor. I sped down this stairway, braving possible suspicion of the employees. I came out in a kind of pantry, much to the surprise of a young waiter, and I commenced a tirade against the hotel's service that must have burned his ears. I simulated fierce indignation.

"'Where is that good-for-nothing trunkman?' I demanded. 'I'm leaving for Genoa at five, and my trunk is still unmoved.' Meanwhile I glared at him as if making up my mind whether I would kill him or let him live.

"'The trunkmen are through there,' said the waiter, pointing to a door. I rushed through.

"Inside this basement I called out: 'Where in hell is the porter of this hotel?'

"An excited trunkman left his work. I repeated fiercely the instructions about my trunk, and then asked how to get out of this foul place. I spotted an elevator and a small stairway, and without another word was up these steps and out in a side street off the Rue de Rivoli.

"I fancied the whole hotel was swarming with excited people by this time, and I jumped into a cruising taxicab.

"'Trocadero,' I ordered, and in one heavenly jolt I fell back into the seat while the driver sped on, up the Seine embankment to a section of quiet and reposeful streets.

"I breathed the free air. I realized what a fool I was; then I experienced a feeling of triumph, as I felt the lump of gems in my pocket. I got out and walked slowly to my apartment, went to the bath and trimmed my beard to the thinnest point, shaving my cheeks clean. I put on a high crown hat, a long fur-lined coat, took a stick, and sauntered out, myself once more, Mr. West, the retired diplomat, who would never think of getting mixed up in such an unsightly brawl as was now going on between the hotel and the respected and venerable institution known as Berthier's."

West shrugged his shoulders.

"That's all. Berthier was right. It was not so easy to rob a Rue de la Paix jeweler, especially of four million francs' worth of diamonds. I had returned to my apartment, and was hardly through my dinner when the telephone rang.

"'This is Berthier,' came the excited voice. He told me of this awful Hazim person. He asked if he might see me.

"That night Berthier sat in my library and expounded a dozen theories. 'It's a gang, a clever gang, but we'll catch them,' he said. 'One of them duped our man in the hotel lobby by calling him upstairs.'

"'But if you catch the men, will you catch your four millions?' I asked, fingering the pile of stones in my pocket.

"'No,' he moaned. 'A necklace is so easy to dispose of, stone by stone. It's probably already divided up among that bunch of criminals.'

"I really felt flattered, but not so much then as when I read the newspapers the next day. It was amusing. I have them all in my scrapbook now."

"'How did you confess?" I asked West.

"Simple, indeed, but only with the utmost reluctance. I found the police were completely off the trail. At six o'clock the next afternoon I went to Berthier's, rather certain that I would be recognized. I walked past the doorman into the store, where Armand hardly noticed me. He was occupied with some wise men. I heard him saying: 'He was not so tall, as he was heavily built, thick body, large feet, and square head, with a shapeless mass of whiskers. He was from some Balkan extraction, hardly what you'd call a gentleman.'

"I asked to see Berthier, who was still overwrought and irritable.

"'Hello, West,' he said to me. 'You're just the man I want. Please come down and talk with these detectives. You must help me.'

"'Nothing doing,' I said. 'Your man Armand has just been very offensive.'

"Berthier stared at me in amazement.

"'Armand!' he repeated. 'Armand has been offensive!'

"'He called me a Balkan, said I had big feet, and that I had a square head, and that I was hardly what one would call a gentleman.'

"Berthier's eyes popped out like saucers.

"'It's unthinkable,' he said. 'He must have been describing that crook we're after.'

"I could see that Berthier took this robbery seriously.

"'I thought you never fell for those old gags,' I said.

"'Old gags!' he retorted, his voice rising. 'Hardly a gag, that!'

"'Old as the hills!' I assured him. 'The basis of most of the so-called magic one sees on the stage.' I paused. 'And what will you do with these nice people when you catch them?'

"'Ten years in jail, at least,' he growled.

"I looked at my watch. The twenty-four hours were well over. Berthier had talked himself out of adjectives concerning this gang of thieves; he could only sit and clench his fists and bite his lips.

"'Four million,' he muttered. 'It could have been avoided. That man Armand-'

"I took my cue. 'That man Berthier,' I said crisply, accusingly, 'should run his establishment better. Besides, my wager concerned you, and not Armand-'

"Berthier looked up sharply, his brain struggling with some dark clew. I mechanically put my hand in my trousers pocket and very slowly drew out a long iridescent string of crystallized carbon ending in a great square pendant.

"Berthier's jaw dropped. He leaned forward. His hand raised and slowly dropped to his side.

"'You!' he whispered. 'You, West!'

"I thought he would collapse. I laid the necklace on his desk, a hand on his shoulder. He found his voice.

"'Was it you who got those necklaces?'

"'No. It was I who stole that necklace, and I who win the wager. Please hand over the yellow diamond.'

"I think it took Berthier ten minutes to regain his composure. He didn't know whether to curse me or to embrace me. I told him the whole story, beginning with our dinner at Ciro's. The proof of it was that the necklace was there on his desk.

"And I am sure Armand thinks I am insane. He was there when Berthier gave me this ring, this fine yellow diamond."

West settled back in his chair, holding his glass in the same hand that wore the gem.

"Not so bad, eh?" he asked.

I admitted that it was a bit complicated. I was curious about one point, and that was his make-up. He explained: "You see, the broad low-crowned hat reduces one inch from my height; the wide whiskers, instead of the pointed beard, another inch; the bulgy coat, another inch; the trousers, high at the shoes, another inch. That's four inches off my stature with an increase of girth about one-sixth my height-an altogether different figure. A visit to a pharmacy changed my complexion from that of a Nordic to a Semitic."

"And the hotel?" I asked.

"Very simple. I had Berthier go around and pay the damages for plugging that hole. He'll do anything I say now."

I regarded West in the waning firelight.

He was supremely content.

"You must have hated to give up those Indian gems after what you went through to get them?"

West smiled.

"That was the hardest of all. It was like giving away something that was mine, mine by right of conquest. And I'll tell you another thing-if they had not belonged to a friend, I would have kept them."

And knowing West as I do, I am sure he spoke the truth.

ACTION AND THE QUIZ KID

Lots of kids used to hero-worship Action. At eighteen, he could never navigate the sidewalks without a coterie of awestruck ten year olds swarming around him. They worshipped him for his round black derby and the fat cigar that left a wavering trace of smoke over the route to the poolroom. But none of them had the great crush of Vittorio Corregione.

Action had entered the City College Business School. His high school marks had been poor and he had been forced to take an entrance exam to make the college. I drilled and coached him for a solid two-week period and his voracious brain devoured and held everything I fed it. He passed the exam with highest marks.

The successful entrance was only the beginning of his troubles. To pick out a course that would lead to a money-making profession was the real problem. Uncle Myron volunteered the advice. Having stashed away the most loot in the family, Uncle Myron was entitled to offer advice to young college entrees.

"Take a course in accounting," pontificated Uncle Myron, "and when you get out you'll find a wide-open field. I personally will guarantee you placement in an accounting job."

The money man had spoken, so Action followed through. Years later, when Action had staggered past the course without having cracked a single book, he came to Uncle Myron for the promised job. Myron told him to enlist in the army. Our uncle always held patriotism above all.

Action found the business administration course a complete bore. The usual shortage of cash at home forced him to get a job delivering dog medicine to Park Ave. homes but he grew tired of seeing the dogs wearing finer sweaters than he had and he quit. He had refrained from betting for a couple of months after starting school, but the old lure was too strong and after he located a bookmaker and ticker near the college he was back in the old-time groove. He hung around the Board, noting scores and getting in an occasional small bet when he met the kid.

Vittorio Corregione was a skinny little runt of fourteen with snapping black eyes, and a hungry wet red mouth that puckered in a perpetual pout. He was a bright bundle of brain and attended the honor school that was housed in the college building. Action failed to discover why he shunned his home and the kid wouldn't volunteer the information, but the kid never did want to return at night. He adored Action and saw in the little schemes and plots that my brother wove, the manifestations of genius.

Action had noted the kid hanging around the poolroom but had never bothered to say too much to him until one day, when the runt came over with a five-dollar bill and asked Action to wager it for him. He placed the bet as per the request and the money rode safely home. Thereafter, Vittorio would seek out Action for all of his wagers and even allow him to hold the cash winnings.

The following term the kid was moved to the afternoon session and couldn't make the poolroom during the action hours. He'd hand my brother a small roll and give him carte blanche to pick winners for him, phoning later in the afternoon to discover how he had made out. I was spending the afternoon with Action one day when the kid called. Action eyed the incomplete scores on the Board and rattled off some names. Each one was a stiff and the kid was sure to drop some twenty bucks.

"What's the pitch here," I asked, after he had hung up the phone. "You grabbed the boy a bundle of blanks."

Action looked out the window and his ruddy face took on an even darker shade of red.

"I didn't pick any blanks," he muttered, half to himself. "Things haven't been breaking right for me lately and I've been dipping into the kid's dough. As a matter of fact, I didn't make any bets at all today."

"You mean," I gasped, "you're suckering the kid out of his dough?"

"If not me, some other sonova bitch." He turned on his heel and walked away.

Action was not always as brutal as on this day. If he was doing well, he'd give the kid a fair shake. But somehow he didn't make out too often and the kid suffered. A wide swath was cut in the kid's roll but he never complained and he took it regularly on the chin. One day the apparently limitless wad began to thin out and the kid dropped the play.

"Action," he said, "I want your advice on a business venture."

"What kind of business, kid?"

Vittorio blushed. "I know you'll laugh at me but I'll tell you anyway. I want to book small bets like laying ten to one against a guy hitting a homer in a particular game. Herb Roddes has been drawing a fat take with that pitch in my math class."

Action smiled gently, "It's your dough, Vit, and your life. To show you I have no ill will towards you, call me tomorrow and I'll feed you a bet."

The kid almost purred at Action's gesture and floated out of the poolroom on an inflated cloud of if-money. He called Action at three the following afternoon, right after the ticker had announced a homer for J. DiMaggio.

"At ten to one, Vit, I'll put a deuce on J. DiMag to hit a homer today. Thank you kid and good luck."

The kid didn't make out too well on his venture and went bust after the first day. Action took his twenty-dollar payoff and roughed the kid's hair with his fingers.

"You're wasting your time, Vit, when you work with a small roll. You've got to begin fat or you just can't make it."

The kid's big black eyes had grown bigger and more desperate looking. His gestures had become quicker and reflected an overwrought inner tension that threatened to consume him.

"I can get dough, Action," he offered. "At least I can get stuff that's worth dough. If I do, Action," he pleaded, "would you hock it for me, old friend?"

The old friend hocked the kid's books and when the books began to run out, little items that came from the home. But tie clasps and confirmation rings don't bring in much. The kid laid a big turnip of a gold watch on the table one evening. Action hefted it and gasped.

"It's a ton weight, Vit, for sure. It'll bring in at least ten or fifteen for the gold alone."

"Not the gold, Action. Just hock it. I got to get it back later on. Get me fifteen for it and you can keep five."

The pawnbroker offered twenty on a loan and commented happily on the weight of the gold case. Action was upset over what he had to do but he did it. The Frammis-We-Pay-Highest-Prices-for-Old-Gold Company gave him forty bucks for the gold and tossed the unwanted works into a trash basket.

The kid accepted his ten with delight and ran through it in a day. He was feverish when he left that evening and Action solicitously made him bundle up against the autumn winds. He phoned Action that night.

"I just got to get the watch back tomorrow, Action. Something has come up and I just got to return it. Lend me fifteen bucks old pal and I'll return it to you first chance I get."

"I ain't even got the five you gave me," muttered Action.

"You don't understand," half screamed the kid, "I got to get it back. It ain't a maybe situation anymore!"

"Must or maybe, I ain't got the dough."

"I'll get it somehow and give it to you tomorrow so that you can get it back for me."

Action wrestled inside for a bit.

"Did you hear me, old friend, I'll get the dough to you somehow."

"No use, kid, the watch ain't hocked. I sold the gold and the works were scrapped. There's no way of ever getting it back."

The kid gasped. A sick despairing whine came wailing over the wire in a heartrending keen and the phone clicked off.

Action didn't show at the poolroom the next day, but it didn't matter. Neither did the kid. In a few days, Action seemed to have forgotten that Vittorio had ever existed.

I mentioned the kid to him a year or so later and he told the story of the watch. I sat down on the nearest curb and tried to hold down a cantankerous stomach. Action drew his cigar out of his mouth, slowly bubbled bolls of smoke in a gray, upward spiralling arch.

"One thing bothers the hell out of me," he said, "what in hell ever became of the kid?"