“Where is that Melting Moses?” he inquired, when he saw how I observed him to be searching the place with his eye.
“And why?” said I.
“I thought I'd look him over, if you didn't mind. I can't move about my precinct of nights but he's behind me, playin' th' shadow. I want to know why he pipes me off, an' who sets him to it.”
“Well then,” said I, a bit impatiently, “I should have thought a full-grown Captain of Police was above fearing a boy.”
Without giving Gothecore further opening, I told him the story of the Reverend Bronson, and that campaign of purity he would be about.
“And as to young Van Flange,” said I. “Does he still lose his money in Barclay Street?”
“They've cleaned him up,” returned Gothecore. “Billy Van Flange is gone, hook, line, and sinker. He's on his uppers, goin' about panhandlin' old chums for a five-dollar bill.”
“They made quick work of him,” was my comment.
“He would have it,” said Gothecore. “When his mother died th' boy got his bridle off. Th' property—about two hundred thousand dollars—was in paper an' th' way he turned it into money didn't bother him a bit. He came into Barclay Street, simply padded with th' long green—one-thousand-dollar bills, an' all that—an' them gams took it off him so fast he caught cold. He's dead broke; th' only difference between him an' a hobo, right now, is a trunk full of clothes.”
“The Reverend Bronson,” said I, “has asked for Inspector McCue. What sort of a man is McCue?” Gothecore wrinkled his face into an expression of profound disgust.