He went back into the cages. The clerk who had brought the new bills from the women’s department found the old ones where they had been tossed aside by the teller. Burgess carried them to Hill without looking at them. He did not believe what he knew the detective suspected, that the girl was bold enough to try to palm off counterfeit money on a bank—on the president of a bank. He was surprised to find that he was really deeply annoyed by the detective’s manner of speaking of Nellie Murdock. He threw the bills down on his desk a little spitefully.
“There you are! That girl took those identical bills out of her satchel and gave them to me to change for new ones. She had plenty of time to slip in a bad bill if she wanted to.”
Hill turned round to the light, went over the bills quickly and handed them back to the banker with a grin.
“Good as wheat! I apologize. And I want you to know that I never said she wasn’t a pretty girl. And the prettiest ones are often the smartest. It does happen that way sometimes.”
“You make me tired, Hill. Everybody you see is crooked. With a man like you there’s no such thing as presumption of innocence. ’Way down inside of you you probably think I’m a bit off color too.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say just that!” said the detective, laughing and taking the cigar Burgess offered him from a box he produced from his desk. “I must be running along. You don’t seem quite as cheerful as usual this morning. I’ll come back tomorrow and see if I can’t bring in a new story.”
Burgess disposed of several people who were waiting to see him, and then took from his drawer the letter he had been reading when the detective interrupted him. It was from Ralph Gordon, a Chicago lawyer, who was widely known as an authority on penology. Burgess had several times contributed to the funds of a society of which Gordon was president, whose function it was to meet criminals on their discharge from prison and give them a helping hand upward.
The banker had been somewhat irritated today by Hill’s manner of speaking of the criminals against whom he was pitted; and doubtless Hill’s attitude toward the young woman he had pointed out as the daughter of a crook added to the sympathetic fading with which Burgess took up his friend’s letter for another reading. The letter ran:
Dear Old Man: You said last fall that you wished I’d put you in the way of knowing one of the poor fellows I constantly meet in the work of our society. I’m just now a good deal interested in a young fellow—Robert Drake by name—whose plight appeals to me particularly. He is the black sheep of a fine family I know slightly in New England. Drink was his undoing, and after an ugly scrape in college he went down fast—facilis descensus; the familiar story. The doors at home were closed to him, and after a year or two he fell in with one of the worst gangs of yeggs in the country. He was sent up for cracking a safe in a Southern Illinois post office. The agent of our society at Leavenworth has had an eye on him; when he was discharged he came straight to me and I took him into my house until we could plan something for him. I appealed to his family and they’ve sent me money for his use. He wants to go to the Argentine Republic—thinks he can make a clean start down there. But there are difficulties. Unfortunately there’s just now an epidemic of yegging in the Middle West and all suspects are being gathered in. Of course Drake isn’t safe, having just done time for a similar offense. I’ve arranged with Saxby—Big Billy, the football half-back—you remember him—to ship Drake south on one of the Southern Cross steamers. Saxby is, as you know, manager of the company at New Orleans. I wanted to send Drake down direct—but here’s the rub: there’s a girl in Indianapolis he wants to marry and take along with him. He got acquainted with her in the underworld, and her people, he confesses, are a shady lot. He insists that she is straight, and it’s for her he wants to take a fresh grip and begin over again. So tomorrow—that’s January twenty-third—he will be at her house in your city, 787 Vevay Street; and he means to marry her. It’s better for him not to look you up; and will you, as the good fellow you are, go to see him and give him cash for the draft for five hundred dollars I’m inclosing? Another five hundred—all this from his father—I’m sending to Saxby to give him in gold aboard the steamer. Drake believes that in a new country, with the girl to help him, he can make good.
Hoping this isn’t taking advantage of an old and valued friendship, I am always, dear old man—