The Blue Lights: A Detective Story

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

"Boys?"

"One is a boy—a man be now, I should say. He's in the city—workin'. His name is Barney."

"What does he do?"

Lanahan looked up with a quick frown. "The last I heard tell, he was tendin' bar, Mr. Johnson—over at Callahan's saloon, on the Bowery. He's wild—wild—like me uncle Mike, I should say."

"And the other?"

The old man's face took on a contented look. "The other is me daughter Mary, bless her. She's nurse in the family of old man Stapleton, the millionaire."

Duvall closed his book. "I see," he remarked, pleasantly. "She's not married, I suppose?"

"Mary? Divil a bit! For a time, she was sweet on a French chuffer that worked for Mr. Stapleton; but the fellow's gone, now, and she's clane forgot him. That was near a year ago."

"Ah, yes. Do you happen to remember his name?"

"Alphonse, it was—Alphonse Valentin, or some such joke of a name. A comic valentine he was, too, with his dinky little mustache and his cigarettes." He laughed loudly. "Imagine my Mary, married to a gink like that!"