LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

A taxi-cab was waiting at the curb, and he crossed the sidewalk to it, with Barney at his heels. While he was speaking in a low tone to the driver, Barney opened the cab door and held it open for him to get in; and he got in, without remark. Barney put the satchel at his feet; but the feet, too, were blind; they did not move. Barney shut the door, reluctantly; and the indifferent auto slowly started up Broadway, intent upon the internal uproar of its own convulsions.

      Barney did not understand that if you are ​a detective, confronted by an incident which you do not understand, you pretend that you do not see it, so that you may observe it without putting it on its guard. He stood looking after his wasted opportunity, for a regretful moment. Then he turned and ran towards City Hall Park, to get an express train in the subway station at the Bridge.

      He knew that the Antwerp—if it was the Hotel Antwerp that was meant—was around the corner from the subway station at 42nd Street.

      Barney wanted that “job.” Babbing had it, so to speak, in his pocket. And with the shrewd simplicity of youth, Barney proposed to follow and put himself in the way until he was asked, impatiently: “Well, boy, what do you want?” Then he would say what he wanted—and probably get it.

      Although the subway is not so expensive as a taxi-cab, it is speedier, in the long run; and Barney was standing near the door of the Antwerp—somewhat blown but cheerfully ​composed—when Babbing’s car whirred around the corner and drew up to the sidewalk. Barney opened the cab door and took the satchel briskly, with a smile of recognition which the detective ignored. When the driver had been paid, Babbing turned into the hotel, apparently oblivious of his escort; and Barney followed undiscouraged, with the bag.

      “Get away, kid,” he said to the bell-boy who offered to carry it. “Er I ’ll bite your ankle.”

      Standing back at a respectful distance, he watched the detective get a letter and his room-key at the desk. When he went to the elevator, there was nothing for Barney to do but to go after him. In the elevator, Babbing said “Eighth,” and busied himself with his letter, which he read and pondered on. He put it in his pocket and looked Barney over, for the first time, with an abstracted eye. Barney smiled at him, ingratiatingly. The smile met with no response.

      And still Barney was not discouraged. He ​was not apprehensive. He was not even nervous. There was nothing forbidding in the mild reserve of the detective’s face. He looked like a man of a kindly personality. He seemed easy-going and meditative. And Barney, of course, was not the first to get that impression of him. It was one of the things that explained Babbing’s success.

      He led the way down the padded carpet of the corridor to his room, and unlocked the door, and threw it open for Barney to enter one of the usual hotel bedrooms of the Antwerp’s class, with the usual curly-maple furniture and elaborate curtains and thick carpeting. Barney put the satchel on the table, and waited in the center of stereotyped luxury. “When did Mr. Archibald take you on?” Babbing asked, aside, as he hung up his hat and overcoat.

      “He has n’t taken me on—yet,” Barney admitted.

      Babbing put on a pair of unexpected spectacles and got out a ring of keys to unlock his ​bag. Occupied with that, he asked: “How did you know that I was coming here?”

      Barney explained that he had overheard the instructions to the telephone girl.

      The detective had begun to take, from his satchel, letters, telegrams, typewritten reports, and packages of papers strapped in rubber bands, which he proceeded to sort into little piles on the table, as they came. He appeared to be giving this business his whole attention, but while his hands moved deliberately and his eyes read the notations on the papers, he pursued Barney through an examination that ran: “How did you know who I was?”

      “I delivered telegrams to your office an’—”

      “For what company?”

      “The Western Union.”

      “Why did you leave them?”

      “I wanted to work fer you.”

      “How did you know we wanted a boy?”

      “I saw the ad.”

      “How did you know it was ours?”

      “I—I delivered it to the newspaper.”

      ​“Are you in the habit of opening letters that are given you to deliver?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Don’t smile so much. You overdo it,” Babbing said, without looking up. And his merely professional tone of matter-of-fact advice sobered Barney as suddenly as if he had said: “I understand, of course, that you have found your smile very effective, but it does n’t deceive me. You ’re not so bland a child as you pretend, and I shall not treat you as if you were.”

      Barney shifted uncomfortably on his feet. The absent-minded ease with which Babbing had plied him with questions and caught up his answers made him fearful for the approach of the moment when the detective should give him a concentrated attention and begin forcibly to ransack him and turn him inside out.

      Babbing asked unexpectedly: “How tall are you?”

      “About five feet,” Barney answered at a guess.

      ​“How much do you weigh?”

      “About a hundred—an’ twenty-five.”

      Babbing glanced at him appraisingly, went on with his papers again, and said: “When you don’t know a thing, say so. It saves time. What ’s your name?”

      “Barney. Barney Cook.”

      “Where do you live?”

      Barney gave the number of his home in Hudson Street.

      “The Greenwich village quarter?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Irish-Catholic?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “What does your father do?”

      “He ’s dead. He was a policeman. He was killed.”

      “What was his name?”

      “Robert E. Cook.”

      “Robert Emmet?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “When was he killed? How long ago?”

      “About eight years.”

      ​Babbing was still at his papers. “Is your mother living?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “What does she do?”

      “Looks after me an’ my sister.”

      “What does she do for a living?”

      “She rents furnished rooms. Her an’ Annie. That ’s my sister.”

      “What does she do with your father’s pension?”

      “She puts it all in the bank.”

      “What bank?”

      “I—I dunno.”

      “She does n’t own the house?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Who owns it?”

      “I—I forget.”

      “You went to the parochial school?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Babbing had found a typewritten report for which he had evidently been looking. As he crossed the room to the telephone, he asked: “Do you smoke cigarettes?”

      ​“No, sir.”

      Babbing

Скачать книгу