Gentleman Called Read Online Free PDF

why did she allow him a key? And twice, when they were in the place, the officer he took with him had to call him on touching things around the place—as though he was deliberately trying to leave his prints on something which would in turn, account for any other prints the police might turn up of his.”
    “Take plenty of cream,” Mrs. Norris said. “You’re getting leaner all the time.”
    “It runs in the family,” Tully said.
    “What kind of a man is this Johanson?”
    “He’s a shrewd lad, Johanson is—forty, I’d say—good-looking in a rough, working-man way. He has a toothpick of a wife and no kids.”
    “I’m always suspicious of a married man who hasn’t a family,” Mrs. Norris said.
    “Aye, if I didn’t know more of human nature, I’d be myself. But one of the biggest rogues I know has a parcel of kids and a wife that adores him. She’s waiting for him at the neck of the jug every time he gets out of it. Then there’s another kid. And the kids themselves are little angels, one prettier than the other. Ah, I had a friend once, Jimmie Phelan, God rest him, and he used to say when he’d get a few drinks in him: ‘Sure, Jasper, there’s many a horse thief sired a saint all unbeknownst to himself.’”
    “True,” Mrs. Norris said, wetting the tea. “Do you think this Johanson is trying to throw suspicion on someone he knows?”
    “Or on somebody he doesn’t know. Somebody he’s just seen once and remembered,” Tully said. “Mind you, I may change my mind about this in the morning. But let me ask you, if you wanted to give a good description of a man—by which you wanted to convince us there was such a man—wouldn’t you pick out one you’d seen somewhere that stuck in your mind?”
    “I would and I could,” Mrs. Norris said, and looked at Tully with deep admiration. “I saw him on the subway years ago, with dimples in his cheeks and his eyes blue and laughing. He was a Yorkshire man—on his way to Kansas City.”
    “On the subway is where to observe them,” Tully said.
    Mrs. Norris was lost in the recollection then. “And he called me ‘lass.’ I hadn’t heard the word said like that in years.”
    “I’m not very keen on your speaking to strangers,” he said.
    “’Twas before I knew you. But don’t you see, Mr. Tully, it proves exactly what you were saying: if I had to, this minute, conjure a face and a figure, there’s the man, the perfect red herring!”
    At that moment Jimmie knocked and put his head through the doorway of the butler’s pantry.
    “Come in, sir,” said Mrs. Norris. “Mr. Tully has a brand new murder.”
    “Congratulations,” said Jimmie. He came to the table and shook hands with the detective. “A crime of passion, I hope. And just before you make the arrest, I’d appreciate your recommending me to the suspect. My God, can’t you give the man anything better to eat at this hour than a bowl of porridge?”
    “It’s what he wanted,” Mrs. Norris said.
    And while that was not the truth, the truth was that he no longer wanted anything else, so Tully agreed with her.
    “Is your visitor gone, Mr. James?” his housekeeper inquired.
    “For the time being, at least. What did you think of him, Mrs. Norris? What kind of trouble would you say he was in?” Jimmie winked at Tully, and while he was waiting her answer helped himself to the cake the detective had passed up.
    “He’s not the kind of man who wears his troubles on his sleeve,” Mrs. Norris said after a moment’s contemplation. “And I dare say he’s easily taken advantage of, especially by women. I’d say he was the companion to an old witch of a mother who’s outlived her usefulness in this world by fifty years.” Seeing Jimmie grin, his housekeeper warmed to the subject. “She probably didn’t pay a fig’s worth of attention to him till she was widowed, and since then latched onto him like a snail. She’d not let an eligible woman near him for fear he’d marry. So I’d