Gentleman Called Read Online Free PDF Page B

say, he’s probably in trouble now with an ineligible one. There now. Do I get the sixty-four thousand dollars?”
    Jimmie laughed. “Not tonight, but we’ll give you a crack at it next week,” he said. “You’re a marvelously perceptive woman.” He held his fork poised in the air a moment and looked at her. “Do you really think he’s a lady’s man?”
    “I found him attractive,” Mrs. Norris said.
    “Did you now?” said Tully, and to Jimmie. “Who the hell is she talking about?”
    “I will not have that language in my kitchen,” Mrs. Norris said, although the occasion did not displease her.
    “He’s the scion of an old and important family,” Jimmie said, “and the heir to a fortune when his mother lets go.”
    “There!” Mrs. Norris cried in triumph.
    “That’d make any man attractive,” Tully said, “to some women.” Then seeing himself in deep waters, he added: “Present company excepted, of course.”
    “You don’t know me very well to say that, Mr. Tully, or even to think it’s flattery to me to say it. I know the worth of money, having earned my own, and I must say, an honest fortune is a rare thing.”
    Both men laughed. And presently, realizing what she had said, Mrs. Norris joined them. “In fact,” she said, “the honester, the rarer.”

7
    W HAT SEEMED TO BE the first break in the Sperling investigation came the next morning. A Third Avenue pawnbroker reported an attempt to unload a couple of pieces of feminine jewelry by a lad he seized and held for the police. Tully stopped at the precinct headquarters and heard John Thompson’s story himself. By then what was presumed to be the rest of Mrs. Sperling’s treasures had been surrendered by the boy. Since there was no insurance listing on them, they waited inventory by the two nieces.
    Johnny was only fifteen and small for his age at that. As one of the cops said, Arabella would have had to give him a hand to help in her own strangulation. He claimed to have found the chamois bag containing the jewelry in the hallway of Mrs. Sperling’s house. He was a very frightened boy, getting more attention in ten minutes now, Tully thought, than in all the years of his life put together.
    “In the first place, young fella,” Tully said, “what were you doing in the hallway?”
    “Readin’ the comics,” Johnny said. “Honest. Every day when I’d see The News es delivered there, I’d sneak up and read ’em before they was took in. You can ask the super. He kicked me out sometimes.”
    “And what took you so long to try to sell the jewelry? You found it the morning before yesterday, didn’t you?”
    The boy nodded. “I was hopin’ there’d be a reward for findin’ them. I watched the paper, the Lost and Found.”
    “And decided this morning that honesty didn’t pay off quick enough,” Tully finished the story.
    The lad would not change that tale much, Tully knew. His methods were his best witnesses. Mrs. Sperling’s costume pieces were unlikely to have been taken for their own value. A ruse, likely, and a poor one without the sign of housebreaking. A bit of muddying on the murderer’s part.
    Johanson also stayed with his story: that of having never crossed Mrs. Sperling’s doorstep during her lifetime, and this despite the doubt cast on his word by information the Precinct men turned up. Johanson had numerous small investments in shoddy Harlem real estate. Furthermore, he admitted under intensive questioning, having approached Mrs. Sperling to join his investment syndicate.
    Tully allowed himself an editorial comment aloud on people who take exorbitant profit out of over-crowded housing.
    “You do not say this is not honest,” Johanson insisted. “I can name you a dozen operators in New York, respectable men, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and they all have money in Harlem real estate.”
    “Sure, you’re right,” Lieutenant Greer agreed. It was not his place to question the business ethics of either