"Um!" I exclaimed shamelessly, "A peach! Who"s your friend?"
I had never said a truer word than in my description of her, though I did not know it at the time. She was indeed known as "Gertie the Peach"
in the select circle to which she belonged.
Gertie was very attractive, though frightfully over-dressed. But, then, no one thinks anything of that now, in New York.
Kennedy had opened the lower door and our fair visitor was coming upstairs. Meanwhile he was deeply in thought before the "teleview." He made up his mind quickly, however.
"Go in there, Walter," he said, seizing me quickly and pushing me into my room. "I want you to wait there and watch her carefully."
I slipped the gun into my pocket and went, just as a knock at the door told me she was outside.
Kennedy opened the door, disclosing a very excited young woman.
"Oh, Professor Kennedy," she cried, all in one breath, with much emotion, "I"m so glad I found you in. I can"t tell you. Oh--my jewels!
They have been stolen--and my husband must not know of it. Help me to recover them--please!"
She had not paused, but had gone on in a wild, voluble explanation.
"Just a moment, my dear young lady," interrupted Craig, finding at last a chance to get a word in edgewise. "Do you see that table--and all those papers? Really, I can"t take your case. I am too busy as it is even to take the cases of many of my own clients."
"But, please, Professor Kennedy--please!" she begged. "Help me. It means--oh, I can"t tell you how much it means to me!"
She had come close to him and had laid her warm, little soft hand on his, in ardent entreaty.
From my hiding place in my room, I could not help seeing that she was using every charm of her s.e.x and personality to lure him on, as she clung confidingly to him. Craig was very much embarra.s.sed, and I could not help a smile at his discomfiture. Seriously, I should have hated to have been in his position.
Gertie had thrown her arms about Kennedy, as if in wildest devotion. I wondered what Elaine would have thought, if she had a picture of that!
"Oh," she begged him, "please--please, help me!"
Still Kennedy seemed utterly unaffected by her pa.s.sionate embrace.
Carefully he loosened her fingers from about his neck and removed the plump, enticing arms.
Gertie sank into a chair, weeping, while Kennedy stood before her a moment in deep abstraction.
Finally he seemed to make up his mind to something. His manner toward her changed. He took a step to her side.
"I WILL help you," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. "If it is possible I will recover your jewels. Where do you live?"
"At Hazlehurst," she replied, gratefully. "Oh, Mr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you?"
She seemed overcome with grat.i.tude and took his hand, pressed it, even kissed it.
"Just a minute," he added, carefully extricating his hand. "I"ll be ready in just a minute."
Kennedy entered the room where I was listening.
"What"s it all about, Craig?" I whispered, mystified.
For a moment he stood thinking, apparently reconsidering what he had just done. Then his second thought seemed to approve it.
"This is a trap of the Clutching Hand, Walter," he whispered, adding tensely, "and we"re going to walk right into it."
I looked at him in amazement.
"But, Craig," I demurred, "that"s foolhardy. Have her trailed--anything--but---"
He shook his head and with a mere motion of his hand brushed aside my objections as he went to a cabinet across the room.
From one shelf he took out a small metal box and from another a test tube, placing the test tube in his waistcoat pocket, and the small box in his coatpocket, with excessive care.
Then he turned and motioned to me to follow him out into the other room. I did so, stuffing my "gatt" into my pocket.
"Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Jameson," said Craig, presenting me to the pretty crook.
The introduction quickly over, we three went out to get Craig"s car which he kept at a nearby garage.
That forenoon, Perry Bennett was reading up a case. In the outer office Milton Schofield, his office boy, was industriously chewing gum and admiring his feet c.o.c.ked up on the desk before him.
The door to the waiting room opened and an attractive woman of perhaps thirty, dressed in extreme mourning, entered with a boy.
Milton cast a glance of scorn at the "little dude." He was in reality about fourteen years old but was dressed to look much younger.
Milton took his feet down in deference to the lady, but snickered openly at the boy. A fight seemed imminent.
"Did you wish to see Mr. Bennett?" asked the precocious Milton politely on one hand while on the other he made a wry grimace.
"Yes--here is my card," replied the woman.
It was deeply bordered in black. Even Milton was startled at reading it: "Mrs. Taylor Dodge."
He looked at the woman in open-mouthed astonishment. Even he knew that Elaine"s mother had been dead for years.
The woman, however, true to her name in the artistic coterie in which she was leader, had sunk into a chair and was sobbing convulsively, as only "Weepy Mary" could.
It was so effective that even Milton was visibly moved. He took the card in, excitedly, to Bennett.
"There"s a woman outside--says she is Mrs. Dodge!" he cried.
If Milton had had an X-ray eye he could have seen her take a cigarette from her handbag and light it nonchalantly the moment he was gone.
As for Bennett, Milton, who was watching him closely, thought he was about to discharge him on the spot for bothering him. He took the card, and his face expressed the most extreme surprise, then anger. He thought a moment.
"Tell that woman to state her business in writing," he thundered curtly at Milton.
As the boy turned to go back to the waiting room, Weepy Mary, hearing him coming, hastily shoved the cigarette into her "son"s" hand.