As I talk more with Milbourne I see that he isn't so simple as he likes to make out. He has a way of sandwiching in little questions in his dull talk, that amounts to pretty effective cross-examining in the end. He didn't get anything on me though. My story hasn't any holes in it yet. I have an idea that I've had considerably more experience acting than he has.
Sometimes he lets slip a clever remark that don't fit in with his character of a bonehead at all. For instance, we were talking about the Chatfield case that all the papers are full of now, and Milbourne says:
"Put a police helmet on any man, and right away his brain seems to take the shape of it. Cops think as much alike as insects. Let a crook once get on to their way of thinking, and he can play with them like a ball on a rubber string."
He let this out by accident. Afterwards he looked at me sharp to see if I had taken anything amiss. I never let on.
I have been in this house a week now, and Milbourne and I are supposed to be quite intimate friends. Last night on my way up stairs I saw a light under his door, so I knocked. His door is always locked. He wasn't any too glad to see me, but he couldn't very well keep me out, because he hadn't started to undress yet. He was having a little supper: a bottle of a syrupy kind of wine and biscuits with some blackish stuff he said was caviare. I didn't take any. I marked the labels, and to-day I went into a swell store and inquired the prices. The wine was Imperial Tokay. It is $2.50 the small bottle. The caviare was $1.50 for a little pot. I give this for what it's worth. Seems funny if a man has a taste for such swell eats he should put up at a joint like Mrs. Atwood's.
D. B.
REPORT OF A. N.
Operative S.C. and I were instructed to trail a certain K. Milbourne, supposed to be an actor, and report on his habits and his associates. We were furnished with his description, and sent to watch the building at No. — West 49th street, where he boards. This house is a few doors from Eighth Avenue. We kept watch from outside a corner saloon over the way. We turned up our collars and stood around like the regular corner loafers.
At 10:05 A.M. our man came out and walked up the long block to Broadway. We followed across the street. He turned down Broadway with the crowd. We split up, one on one side of the street, one on the other. He often stopped in front of store windows, but didn't seem to mind the windows so much as to look sideways to see who was passing. He turned in at 1402 Broadway, a big office building. I slicked up and went after him. Went up in the same elevator. He gave everybody in the car a sharp look. Got out at the eighth floor, and went into an office marked: "Mrs. Mendoza: Theatrical Agency."
I went back down-stairs to wait. This building has an entrance on Broadway and one on Thirty-ninth street. S. C. took the Broadway door, and I watched the side street.