Chapter VI

The sight of the reporters put him on his guard. Stuart was part of the opposition. They were trying one of their political tricks on him, that was all. Well, they could all go to hell; they’d get nothing out of him.

Stuart was talking, an eye on the reporters.

“Some time ago,” Stuart said, “you rented an apartment at the Burleigh, in your own name, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Was that apartment for your own use?”

He hesitated. Better keep the Chief’s name out as long as possible.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“And in it you installed a girl from the Lyric Theatre, Lily Elliot.”

Patrick Thomas’s face turned an ashy grey.

“That’s a lie,” he shouted. “I never—”

He checked himself. Stuart was grinning at the reporters.

“What about it?” he demanded, furiously. “Don’t beat about the bush. And quit grinning, damn you!”

“You admit you knew the Elliot girl?”

“I’d met her.”

“You bet you had,” Stuart said grimly. “Now the question’s this, Finnerty. Did you rent that apartment for yourself or for somebody else? Don’t stall, and don’t try to protect anybody. I want the truth.”

“What’s it all about, anyhow?” he asked fretfully. “If you’re trying to plant anything on—anybody, you’ll get nothing out of me.”

“Was it for yourself, or for some one else?”

“I’ve told you that.”

“And you kept it up, out of your salary, I suppose!”

Some of the newspaper men laughed, but Stuart made a motion for silence.

“I’d—been speculating,” said Thomas Patrick. “In B. T. & P.”

“Ah, look here, Stuart,” a reporter said, “let the kid alone. You know darned well—”

“Keep out or get out,” Stuart replied grimly. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed Thomas Patrick.

“Where were you to-night between ten and eleven o’clock?”

“Taking a walk.”

“Oh, you were, eh!”

He reached forward, opened a drawer of his desk and laid a revolver on it.

“You never saw that before, either, I suppose?”

Thomas Patrick gazed at the revolver. Then he leaned forward and picking it up, examined it. Suddenly it clattered to the floor, and Thomas Patrick leaped to his feet.

“Something’s happened to the Chief!” he shouted. “Let me out of here. You damned fools, keeping me here, when he’s in trouble! I—!”

“Sit down, Finnerty,” Stuart said mildly. “He’s all right. But I see you recognise his revolver.”

Thomas Patrick sat down, trembling. But the last trace of haze had gone, exploded with that outburst.

“Who said it was his revolver?”

“Isn’t it?”

“I bought it. It’s mine, if you want to know. It’s registered in my name.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Stuart said sharply. “Between ten and eleven o’clock to-night the Elliot woman was shot and killed in that apartment of _yours_ at the Burleigh. With that revolver. Now go on and hang yourself if you want to.”

The revolver lay on the floor, and Thomas Patrick sat staring at it—now it seemed black and shiny, and again it was blood-red. It made these shifts of colour with extreme rapidity, so that he was obliged to blink.

“Well?” said Stuart.

“It changes,” said Thomas Finnerty, in an absent voice. “Makes me dizzy looking at it. Kinda sick, too. I—”

He seemed to be stooping to pick up the revolver, but instead he fell forward on his face and lay there in a very peaceful faint. It was the first peace he had had for a good many hours.

When he came around he was very quiet. One of the reporters opened the drawer of a desk and got out a bottle of whisky, pouring some in a glass and mixing it with water at the cooler. But he waved it away.

They asked him innumerable questions, but to most of them he simply said: “I don’t know,” or “I’m not talking any.” On one or two things, however, he was very firm. He had rented the apartment for himself, and the revolver was his. He “didn’t remember” where he had gone on that walk of his. Mostly his replies were rather absent, as if he had to rouse himself to answer them. He would forget them—the men there—altogether between questions, or while Stuart drew circles and squares on the blotter in front of him, and be back at home with Mary, trying to explain to her.

“But don’t you see?” he would say. “You take a big man like that, and once you let his name get mixed up in a thing like this, he’s gone. _Gone._”

“But suppose he did it?”

“Don’t you believe it. How d’you know she didn’t do it herself? Or maybe that crowd of drunks that hung around him, maybe one of them got funny. Or there was a fight, or something.”

What with talking with Mary, and having every now and then to listen to Stuart, he got very tired. His head would droop, and then Stuart would spring at him some question designed to trap him.

“When did your Chief meet Lily Elliot?” he would say, for instance. And Thomas Patrick’s tired eyes would unclose and he would say:

“I don’t know he ever met her.”

Finally Stuart gave it up and sent him off to be locked up. But he talked a little first.

“You’re doing your best,” he said, “according to your lights. But he’s not worth it, Finnerty. No man is. Murphy says you’ve got a wife at home. You’ve got her to consider. Get some sleep and think it over.”

“I’m not worried about my wife,” said Thomas Patrick. “She understands me and I understand her.”

He looked about the room, and his eyes fell on the reporters.

“I’d be kinda glad,” he said, “if one of you fellows’d go around there in the morning and see her. Just tell her it’s all right, y’understand? Everything’s all right.”

* * * * *

Down in the dingy press room, with its typewriters, its telephone booths, and its scribbled walls, the group of reporters held small and informal conclave that night. There was the whale of a story, or there wasn’t any story at all.

He was a pretty square kid, they finally decided. And he had lied like a gentleman. Also, he had put a pretty definite crimp in Stuart. “Never got a thing out of him,” they said with unholy joy.

In the end they decided there would be no story.

They brought out the bottle from the Detective Board room, and had a drink all round.

“Here’s to loyalty,” said Herrald, of the _Gazette_, “which the highly intelligent believe in, and only fools practise.”