“Nine dollars and sixty-two cents.” Dennis replied with the promptitude of certainty but he eyed the questioner askance.
“I’ll get fifty for you before night. Thanks be, that sporting butler of Mrs. Bellamy’s has never laid eyes on either of us, and you’ve the luck of Old Nick with the cards! Come evening, you’ll be—”
“Come six o’clock this night I’ll be on duty for twenty-four solid hours, if you’ll remember!” Dennis interrupted, regretfully but firmly. “If you were fixing for me to sit in a little game with Snape after scraping acquaintance with him, to find out maybe what the inspector overlooked I’d like nothing better, and I misdoubt but that if you take it on instead you’ll be losing the clothes off your back! Could you not let it go till to-morrow night?”
The note of solicitude in his tone was lost upon McCarty in whose bosom the aspersion cast upon his poker ability rankled.
“If I’m losing the last stitch on me ’twill not be through playing close to my chest, like some!” he asserted darkly. “I was going back through the gate to have another talk with the Sloanes, if so be I’d find them in this time of day, but they’ll keep, and I’ve a check-book and some letters in my pocket that may give us as good a line on Hughes as Snape himself could; besides, the inspector’ll be dropping in for the good word. Come on till we hop a bus up to the cross-town.”
Arriving before the entrance which led to McCarty’s rooms they were astonished to see the door of the antique shop beside it open and the inspector himself emerge.
“Where have you two been?” he asked sharply. “I haven’t time to go upstairs but unlock the door, Mac, and we’ll step inside. Your friend Ballard of the ‘Bulletin’ has been hanging around; how in hell did he know you were in on this Hughes case?”
McCarty considerately forebore to glance at Dennis’ chagrined countenance as he swung the door wide, but it was obvious to his own mind that the ubiquitous reporter must have been in touch with Mike or Terry at the station-house since his loyal but bungling assistant’s visit of the morning.
“I don’t know, sir,” he replied innocently. “I’ve not laid eyes on Jimmie this long while.—But what’s up? I left you heading for Parsons’ house; did you get any dope from the old man about the hat, maybe?”
“How did you know he was old?” Inspector Druet countered.