“I take it your sister is bringing you from the interior to the South?”
“Yes. We came from South Dakota. We were robbed of our tickets on our first night here. She has been trying to get something to do to save enough money to get as far as Los Angeles. It came on me suddenly, alcohol helping. Sis stuck when they turned me out. On general principles, I don’t blame father. I gambled a mortgage on to the old ranch and twenty years on to his head. Anyhow, here we are, Sis and me. That’s what you fellows on the papers call a human-interest story, isn’t it?”
There was something about the measured and sinister tone that told of the bitterness of a baffled strong man, in the face of a situation that he was powerless to avoid. Lanagan wondered what that man would have done—or tried to do—to him if he were in full possession of his strength. He judged from those level grey eyes that the session would not be uninteresting.
“Yes, it might be a human-interest story,” said Lanagan, “and then again—it might be better than a human-interest story.”
He was looking at the tip of his cigar, flicking the ashes from it as he said it; but he caught the swift, suddenly veiled flash that the keen eyes shot to his face. To all appearances, though, Lanagan did not see that glance. He had not liked the ready talk about upper office men; and he would take oath that in the wasted features, round the ears and the neck, were the tell-tale traces of that prison pallor that requires many a long day to wear away.
“For instance,” Lanagan continued, still flicking at his cigar tip, “if you were being kept under cover here?”
It was only a swift, partial intake of breath, but Lanagan caught it, and then the man spoke so easily and smoothly that the newspaper man believed himself deceived.
“Well, I am. That’s a bet. But just until Sis can get me away; that’s also a bet.”
Then there followed details, the man on the pillows supplying with facility a pedigree that went back to the Mayflower. Lanagan had been fishing; yet as he left the room he was uneasy and far from being satisfied. As the story stood it was a neat little “human-interest” story—as Harry Turner had said—and worth a column and a half. He had comforted Turner to the extent of informing him that the shysters had his sister’s case and would probably have her out before night. He drifted moodily back to police headquarters. There Lathrop met him.
“Nothing stirring,” he said, disgustedly. “They’ve turned her loose. Grocer wouldn’t prosecute. She’s got a sick brother. Don’t think she was a live one, anyway.”