Gilmore had quitted the McBride cottage some three hours before, and in the interim had breakfasted well and napped abstemiously. Presently he must repair to the court-house, where, it had already been intimated, the coroner might wish to confer with him.
Marshall Langham he had not seen. He had expected to find him still in his rooms, but the lawyer had left the key under the mat at the door, presumably at an early hour. Gilmore wondered idly if Langham had not made a point of getting away before he himself should arrive; he rather thought so, and he smiled with cheerful malevolence at his own reflection in the mirror.
Here his reveries were broken in on by the awkward shuffling of heavy feet in the hallway, and then some one knocked loudly on his door.
Gilmore glanced hastily about to a.s.sure himself that the tell-tale paraphernalia of his craft were nowhere visible, and that the room was all he liked to fancy it--the parlor of a gentleman with sufficient income and quiet taste.
"Come in," he called at last, without quitting his chair.
The door slowly opened and the crown of a battered cap first appeared, then a long face streaked with coal-dust and grime and further decorated about the chin by a violently red stubble of several days" growth. With so much of himself showing; the new-comer paused on the threshold in apparent doubt as to whether he would be permitted to enter, or ordered to withdraw.
"Come in, Joe, and shut the door!" said Gilmore.
At his bidding the shoulders and trunk, and lastly the legs of a slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty entered the room.
Closing the door Joe Montgomery slipped off one patched and ragged cloth mitten and removed his battered cap.
"Well, what the devil do you want?" demanded Gilmore sharply.
Joe, shuffling and shambling, edged toward the grate.
"Boss, I want to drop a word with you!" he said in a husky voice. His glance did not quite meet Gilmore"s, but the moment Gilmore shifted his gaze, that moment Joe"s small, bright blue eyes sought the gambler"s.
Gilmore and Joe Montgomery were distantly related, and while the latter never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him, for Montgomery"s means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal into the cellars of Mount Hope, and in the winter he shoveled the snow off Mount Hope"s pavements; and at all times and in all seasons, whether these industries flourished or languished, he drank.
He now established himself on Mr. Gilmore"s hearth,--a necessity--for he bent his hulking body and stuck his curly red head well into the grate; then as he withdrew it, he pa.s.sed the back of his hand across his discolored lip.
"Excuse me, boss, I had to!" he apologized.
In Mr. Gilmore"s presence Joe inclined toward a humble decency, for he was vaguely aware that he was an unclean thing, and that only the mysterious bond of blood gave him this rich and powerful patron.
"Well, you old sot!" said Gilmore pleasantly. "You haven"t drunk yourself to death since I saw you in McBride"s last night?"
The handy-man gave him a wide toothless grin, and his bashful blue eyes shifted, shuttle-wise, in their sockets until he was able to survey in full the splendor of the apartment.
"Boss, you got a sure-enough well-dressed room; I never seen anything that could hold a candle to it,--it"s a bird!" He stole a shy abashed glance at the pictures on the wall, but becoming aware that Gilmore was watching him, he dropped his eyes in some confusion. "I reckon" them female pictures cost a fortune!" he said.
"They cost enough!" rejoined Gilmore, and again Montgomery ventured a covert glance in the direction of one of the works of art.
"I reckon it was summer-time!" he hinted modestly.
Gilmore laughed.
"How would you like one of them?" he asked.
Montgomery gave him a swift glance of alarm.
"No, boss, I"m a respectable married man, and if I lugged one of them ladies home with me, my old woman wouldn"t do a thing but raise h.e.l.l!
Boss, they"re raw; yes, sir, that"s it--they"re raw!" Then fearing he had gone too far in an adverse criticism, he added, "Friends of yours, boss?"
"Not all of them!" said Gilmore, with lazy amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Catched unawares?" hinted Montgomery. But Gilmore changed the subject abruptly.
"Well, what did you come here for?" he demanded.
"I got a lot of things on my mind, boss! I been a-worryin" all morning and then I thinks of you. "Mr. Gilmore"s the man to go to," I tells myself, and I quit my job and come here."
He stuck his head into the grate again, but this time without apology.
"I suppose you are in trouble?" said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed to chill suddenly.
"You"re right, boss, I"m in a heap of trouble!"
"Well, then, clear out of here!" said Gilmore.
"Hold on, boss, it ain"t that kind of trouble" interposed the handy-man hastily.
"What do you want?"
"Advice."
Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.
"Go on!" he ordered briefly.
"A handy-man like me doin" all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is sure to see some curious things, ain"t he, boss?"
"Well?"
"I"m here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be G.o.d A"mighty"s truth!"
"It had better be!" rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant emphasis.
"I don"t want no better friend than you been to me," said Montgomery in a sudden burst of grateful candor. "You"ve paid two fines for me, and you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man Murphy said he found me in his hen-house."
Gilmore nodded.
"I was outrageous put upon! The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to defend me! Say, it was a h.e.l.l of a defense he put up, and I had a friend who was willin" to swear he"d seen me in the alley back of Mike Lonigan"s saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn"t touch my case except on its merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin" to swear to anything!" Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders.
"He"s too d.a.m.n perpendicular!"
"He is," agreed Gilmore. "But what"s this got to do with what you saw?"
"Not a thing; but it makes me sweat blood whenever I think of the trick Moxlow served me,--it ain"t as if I had no one but myself! I got a family, see? _I_ can"t afford to go to jail,--it ain"t as if I was single!"
"Get back to your starting-point, Joe!" said Gilmore.
"Who do you think killed old man McBride, boss?"
"How should I know?"