“Goddard was after telling me he was a philanthropist and youth don’t turn to charity, as a rule,” observed McCarty. “Moreover he’s got a grown niece, and they’ve small use for any of their neighbors in spite of the millions around them.”
“So I gathered,” remarked the inspector dryly. “Parsons is a fine-looking old man with a face like a saint and a voice like a preacher, but he’s stern and unbending as a ramrod! He could not recognize the hat and he knew no one in the New Queen’s Mall; his sister took no interest in society, his niece had her own friends beyond the gates and he himself was engrossed in affairs which required all his time and attention. I figured the old gentleman would thaw when I said every one knew of the great good he’d done with his model tenements and playgrounds, and free hospital and shelters, but he shut me up as though I’d made a break and told me he was only a steward. He undoubtedly had seen the man, Hughes, if he’d been employed for twenty years or more in a house across the way, but he didn’t recognize him and he’d never heard his name. Death by violence was a very dreadful thing and he only regretted his inability to aid the cause of justice.”
“Was it the bunk, do you think, inspector?” Dennis asked. “Him talking like a book and all?”
The inspector shook his head.
“He’s an old-fashioned gentleman, Riordan, the kind you don’t often see nowadays, and his charities speak for themselves for all that he doesn’t celebrate them with a brass band. But it brought me no nearer to getting a line on Hughes, nor did the talk I had with his servants; they’re not allowed to associate with any others on the block and had never talked to Hughes though they knew him by sight. There was one queer thing about that interview, though; I could swear that I’d seen one or two of them before but I couldn’t place them.”
“So you drew a blank in the Parsons house?” McCarty commented. “So did I at the Goddard’s and as Denny says, ’tis not natural. The neighbors’ help may not have liked Hughes, or be scared now of mixing up in this mess, but they’re bound to have known him in all these years, whether they admit it or not.”
“Then you have no sign of a clue?” The inspector’s face lengthened. “If we don’t clean this case up in record time the papers will let out a roar that we’re lying down on the job because Hughes wasn’t a person of prominence, and with election so near the commissioner’ll be up on his toes to show results. It’s of more importance now for us to find out who killed that valet than if he were a king!”
CHAPTER VII
GERTIE
When the inspector had left them McCarty and Dennis mounted to the apartment above and together looked over the bank-book and check-book appropriated from beneath the rug in Hughes’ room.
The first showed a regular deposit of one hundred and fifty dollars on the first of every month with varying sums between, ranging from twenty to just under a hundred, but balanced it invariably revealed only a comparatively small amount on hand.