“Now, old top, I don’t know what your game is; but I warned you right off the reel that I wasn’t buying anything.”
Carter laughed. “Angel Grace, your name suits you – heaven must have sent you here,” he said, and then added, a little self-consciously, “My name is Brigham-Carter Webright Brigham.”
He paused, half expectantly, and not in vain.
“Not the writer?”
Her instantaneous recognition caused him to beam on her – he had not reached the stage of success when he might expect everyone to be familiar with his name.
“You’ve read some of my stuff?” he asked.
“Oh, yes! Poison for One and The Settlement in Warner’s Magazine, Nemesis, Incorporated in the National, and all your stories in Cody’s!”
Her voice, even without the added testimony of the admiration that had replaced the calculation in her eyes, left no doubt in his mind that she had indeed liked his stories.
“Well, that’s the answer,” he told her. “That money I gave Cassidy was an investment in a gold mine. The things you can tell me will fairly write themselves and the magazines will eat ‘em up!”
Oddly enough, the information that his interest had been purely professional did not seem to bring her pleasure; on the contrary, little shadows appeared in the clear green field of her eyes.
Seeing them, Carter, out of some intuitive apprehension, hastened to add: “But I suppose I’d have done the same even if you hadn’t promised stories – I couldn’t very well let him carry you off to jail.”
She gave him a sceptical smile at that, but her eyes cleared.
“That’s all very fine,” she observed, “as far as it goes. But you mustn’t forget that Cassidy isn’t the only sleuth in the city that’s hunting for me. And don’t forget that you’re likely to get yourself in a fine hole by helping me.”
Carter came back to earth.
“That’s right! We’ll have to figure out what is the best thing to do.”
Then the girl spoke: “It’s a cinch I’ll have to get out of town! Too many of them are looking for me, and I’m too well-known. Another thing: you can trust Cassidy as long as he hasn’t spent that money, but that won’t be long. Most likely he’s letting it go over a card table right now. As soon as he’s flat he’ll be back to see you again. You’ll be safe enough so far as he’s concerned – he can’t prove anything on you without giving himself away – but if I’m where he can find me he’ll pinch me unless you put up more coin; and he’ll try to find me through you. There’s nothing to it but for me to blow town.”
“That’s just what we’ll do,” Carter cried. “We’ll pick out some safe place not far away, where you can go today. Then I’ll meet you there tomorrow and we can make some permanent arrangements.”
It was late in the morning before their plans were completed.
Carter went to his bank as soon as it was open and withdrew all but sufficient money to cover the checks he had out, including the one he had given the detective-sergeant. The girl would need money for food and fare, and even clothing, for her room, she was confident, was still watched by the police.
She left Carter’s apartment in a taxicab, and was to buy clothes of a different colour and style from those she was wearing and whose description the police had. Then she was to dismiss the taxicab and engage another to drive her to a railroad station some distance from the city – they were afraid that the detectives on duty at the railroad stations in the city, and at the ferries, would recognise her in spite of the new clothes. At the distant station she would board a train for the upstate town they had selected for their rendezvous.
Carter was to join her there the following day.
He did not go down to the street door with her when she left, but said goodbye in his rooms. At the leave- taking she shed her coating of worldly Cynicism and tried to express her gratitude.
But he cut her short with an embarrassed mockery of her own earlier admonition: “Aw, stop it!”
Carter Brigham did not work that day. The story on which he had been engaged now seemed stiff and lifeless and altogether without relation to actuality. The day and the night dragged along, but no matter how slowly, they did pass in the end, and he was stepping down from a dirty local train in the town where she was to wait for him.
Registering at the hotel they had selected, he scanned the page of the book given over to the previous day’s business. “Mrs. H. H. Moore,” the name she was to have used, did not appear thereon. Discreet inquiries revealed that she had not arrived.
Sending his baggage up to his room, Carter went out and called at the two other hotels in the town. She was at neither. At a newsstand he bought an armful of New York papers. Nothing about her arrest was in them. She had not been picked up before leaving the city, or the newspapers would have made much news of her.
For three days he clung obstinately to the belief that she had not run away from him. He spent the three days in his New York rooms, his ears alert for the ringing of the telephone bell, examining his mail frantically, constantly expecting the messenger, who didn’t come. Occasionally he sent telegrams to the hotel in the upstate town – futile telegrams.
Then he accepted the inescapable truth: she had decided – perhaps had so intended all along – not to run the risk incidental to a meeting with him, but had picked out a hiding place of her own; she did not mean to fulfil her obligations to him, but had taken his assistance and gone.
Another day passed in idleness while he accustomed himself to the bitterness of this knowledge. Then he set to work to salvage what he could. Fortunately, it seemed to be much. The bare story that the girl had told him over the remains of her meal could with little effort be woven into a novelette that should be easily marketed. Crook stories were always in demand, especially one with an authentic girl-burglar drawn from life.
As he bent over his typewriter, concentrating on his craft, his disappointment began to fade. The girl was gone. She had treated him shabbily, but perhaps it was better that way. The money she had cost him would come back with interest from the sale of the serial rights of this story. As for the personal equation: she had been beautiful, fascinating enough – and friendly – but still she was a crook…
For days he hardly left his desk except to eat and sleep, neither of which did he do excessively.
Finally the manuscript was completed and sent out in the mail. For the next two days he rested as fully as he had toiled, lying abed to all hours, idling through his waking hours, replacing the nervous energy his work always cost him.
On the third day a note came from the editor of the magazine to which he had sent the story, asking if it would be convenient for him to call at two-thirty the next afternoon.
Four men were with the editor when Carter was ushered into his office. Two of them he knew: Gerald Gulton and Harry Mack, writers like himself. He was introduced to the others: John Deitch and Walton Dohlman. He was familiar with their work, though he had not met them before; they contributed to some of the same magazines that bought his stories.
When the group had been comfortably seated and cigars and cigarettes were burning, the editor smiled into the frankly curious faces turned toward him.
“Now we’ll get down to business,” he said. “You’ll think it a queer business at first, but I’ll try to mystify you no longer than necessary.”
He turned to Carter. “You wouldn’t mind telling us, Mr. Brigham, just how you got hold of the idea for your story ‘The Second-Story Angel,’ would you?”
“Of course not,” Carter said. “It was rather peculiar. I was roused one night by the sound of a burglar in my rooms and got up to investigate. I tackled him and we fought in the dark for a while. Then I turned on the lights and -“
“And it was a woman – a girl!” Gerald Fulton prompted hoarsely.
Carter jumped.
“How did you know?” he demanded.
Then he saw that Fulton, Mack, Deitch, and Dohlman were all sitting stiffly in their chairs and that their dissimilar faces held for the time identical expressions of bewilderment.
“And after a while a detective came in?”
It was Mack’s voice, but husky and muffled.
“His name was Cassidy!”
“And for a price things could be fixed,” Deitch took up the thread.
