“So I tell you I’ve had enough of everything. Since you’ve hired a private detective to watch me—you better put him to finding out the truth about her.” He pointed a trembling finger at Lydia Staunton.
“Oh, Tolly!” Eve moaned. “How can you? Glen Neal is here and all these people—the papers!”
We’re in them now, aren’t we?” he went on fiercely. “This was to be a showdown. Isn’t that why we came? Because the nice Mr. Rice would be here—and Tolly could tell him all the truth about everything. Well I’m going to tell him everything—and there’s no use trying to stop me—”
“I think perhaps you better,” Lydia broke in, ominously. Two bright round red spots showed feverishly on her smooth cheeks.
“I forbid you to go on.” Bruce Farraday’s voice was dull, but Stan caught the menace and power behind it.
Tolliver stood up. “But I am going on.” His tone had grown unconsciously louder, penetrating into every corner. Again the room was deathly still. “You forbid everything that interferes with Lydia Staunton. What do you think she cares about except your money. You can buy her kind a dime a dozen—”
“Shut up!” Bruce Farraday’s strong face was twitching nervously. “Shut up and get out of here!”
Mrs. Staunton reached up and touched his hand on the back of her chair. “I’d prefer you let him go on, Bruce.”
“She was here the night I lost that money to Fowler. Ask the Commander if you don’t believe me. She helped me lose it—to get me into trouble with you—” Tolly was almost screaming. “I found the dice in her bag on the way home—fixed dice, I tell you—loaded. The dice that Fowler used. And I’ll tell you something else—your sweet Lydia was a show girl on Broadway. She never told you that, did she? But I’ll bet she told you I lost nine hundred dollars to Mr. Bessinger. That’s the kind she is—just plain—”
Bruce Farraday moved so quickly that Stan heard only the sharp crack of his open hand across Tolliver’s face. The boy stood without speaking, touching his cheek with one finger. Then he sat down slowly by his sister and covered his face with his hands. Eve looked at him uncomprehendingly, her face set and strained.
“Does my son owe you money?” Bruce Farraday demanded crisply of Durlyn Bessinger.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Farraday, nothing at all,” Bessinger assured him expansively.
“Nine hundred dollars, is it?”
Bessinger nodded, warned by the millionaire’s manner.
Farraday took his wallet from his pocket and counted out nine one hundred dollar bills. With a small gold fountain pen he scribbled a receipt in a notebook, and tendered it to Bessinger with the money. The beefy recipient flushed.
“It’s a receipt in full for all claims against my son. Sign it, please,” Farraday said sternly. “I have no faith in the integrity of gamblers who take money from children!” He turned to Stan. “You have my permission, Mr. Rice, to announce that I will pay ten thousand dollars to the man, or men, who bring the murderer of Edward Fowler to justice. I leave the details of the matter to you and Captain Vincent LeRoy. If you will excuse us, Commander, I’m sure it’s time the Farraday family went home.”
There was an awkward pause as the butler went for hats. Lydia Staunton sat straight in her chair, tapping one restless foot on the floor. Tolliver had not moved from his huddled position beside his motionless sister. Then the telephone shrilled from the Commander’s bedroom.
Stan heard the Negro boy answer, and saw him come to the door and beckon to Dawson. The Commander went inside, and returned in a moment, his sea-tanned face a picture of ludicrous astonishment, not unmixed with fear.
“Someone said to tell Miles Standish Rice, if he wants to collect Bruce Farraday’s ten grand reward, he should be at the dog track tonight and bring no policemen with him.”
“Oh!” Stan looked curiously at the millionaire. “I hadn’t heard that you’d offered this reward before.”
“Neither had I,” said Farraday coldly. “I never mentioned it before in my life!”
Chapter XV
Miles Standish Rice was never addicted to pistols, in fact, he nurtured a strong distaste for weapons of violence of any description. On the rare occasions when his unfailing good humor was insufficient to keep him out of a fight, his surprised opponents found that his extreme slenderness was most deceptive. Bill Munn, who was champion boxer of the Miami Police Department, said of Stan: “He’s so thin when he turns sideways you can’t hit him and I get to feeling sorry for him until he socks me in the eye with a fist hard as a cobble stone!” That was after Stan had gone ten fast rounds with Bill, and emerged little the worse for wear.
Yet twice a month, at the earnest behest of Captain LeRoy, Stan drove out to the police pistol range, on Little River Canal. He carried his own gun, a present from an official of the New York Police Department—a deadly beautiful blue .38 set in a .45 frame. The fact that Stan could outscore every crack shot in the department only added to the Captain’s chagrin, at what he termed: “Stan’s damn fool carelessness!”
“A water-pistol in your pocket is better than a machine gun at home,” LeRoy told him more than once.
“It’s too hot in Florida to carry a gun,” was Stan’s invariable reply.
It may have been a tribute to the ruthlessness of Fowler’s killer, or just sheer reaction from the narrowness of his escapes, which finally prompted Stan to take LeRoy’s long ignored advice. Whatever the underlying cause, when he parked the Buick near the entrance to the Kennel Club Dog Track, Stan’s .38 was tucked in an armpit holster under his white coat.
A long stretch of advertised Miami weather had brought out a big crowd. Although it was still early, lines had formed at
