“You mean you talked to Miss Purdy, our reception clerk?” asked the detective with an enigmatic scowl.
“Yeah, I guess that’s who it was. She was in that first room out there with the big soft rug an’ she was pretty all right, but she was cranky an’ wouldn’t lissen. I tried to tell her I wanted a job right away an’ be a detective an’....”
Carlton Conne lifted his feet from the floor and set them back again on the desk. He shifted the cigar about in his mouth three or four times, then interposed: “So you got in here under false pretenses, eh?” Before Skippy could answer, he added, “What put the sling idea into your head?”
“While I was talkin’ to the—to Miss Purdy, a feller come out an’ said about the stolen car an’ all an’ how you wanted the kids that was run down so’s you could talk to ’em. So right away I thought about the sling an’ I sneaked into the hall an’ hid on the stairway till she goes out for lunch. Then I fixed the sling from the taila my shirt.... I’ll be good at disguises, Mr. Conne—that’s why I know I’d be a good detective.”
“Oh, you do, eh?” A mirthful gleam lighted the detective’s eyes, but his face was wrinkled into a scowl. “I suppose your other disguise today consists of working papers, eh? You can’t be more than fourteen.”
“Gee, how’d you guess!”
Carlton Conne looked at the boy sharply. “S’pose you’ve been blowing in all your spending money on cheap detective magazines and going to these rotten mystery thrillers, eh?”
“Nope, I don’t like them magazines, Mr. Conne. An’ I don’t like mystery thrillers ’cause I ain’t so dumb that I don’t know those things couldn’t happen in real life. Gee, I can only go to the movies once in a while an’ when I go I like to see somepin’ that makes me laugh. Since my father died I don’t get no spendin’ money ’cause my aunt’s terrible poor an’ she says I gotta be glad she can even lemme sleep an’ eat.”
“And she had to put you out to work?” Carlton Conne tilted his cigar thoughtfully. “And you decided you wanted to be a detective. Why?”
“I always wanted to be a detective,” Skippy answered unabashed, “ever since they railroaded my father. When they let him out I wanted to be one more’n ever an’ when he died an’ I come back to lookin’ for my aunt I almost was sent to Reform ’cause I got hungry an’ went into a restaurant an’ ate a whole lot more’n I had the money to pay for. So anyway they found my aunt an’ she took me from the station house an’ promised to take care of me. But all the time since, I been thinkin’ how if I was a detective I’d know the difference between a kid that was bad and a kid that was hungry. Gee, I know crooks like anything, Mr. Conne, so that’s another reason I’d make a good detective. A bunch of ’em lived ’round me when I was on the barge waitin’ for my father to get outa jail. River pirates an’ all! They’re my special—my specialty!” he bragged.