The Suspect
“How much do you want?” the pawnbroker asked.
“Oh,” I said, with an air of assumed indifference, “a hundred will do.”
The pawnbroker gave me a queer, sharp look, one which he instantly diverted to the gold cigarette case, a rather elaborate affair, that I had offered him, and which had on it in jewels the initials K. M.
He looked up at me again.
“At auction it wouldn’t bring half that. Twenty is the best I can do.”
It was idle to argue; besides, I never can haggle. But I needed more. I told him so. In the telling, I produced a watch, also gold, also initialed, one that had in it the miniature of a girl’s fair face.
He looked it over, and, darting another queer glance at me, snapped: “Fifteen!”
At once, as I nodded, he got out some bills, which he fumbled meditatively, much as though he had never seen them before.
Behind him was a telephone; also a row of shelves on which were hideous things. In between was a counter, topped with glass, through which I could see brooches, bracelets, rings—the lamentable tokens of disastrous days. Beyond, at the rear of the shop, a man bent heavily over an enormous ledger. Without was the roar of the Bowery; within an odor of camphor. At my elbow was the telephone book, and before me the pawnbroker, a sinister and sinewy brute.
“I haven’t quite got it,” he suddenly exclaimed.
He turned, put the watch and case on a shelf, took the receiver from the hook, and, after a moment, called: “Three thousand one hundred, Spring.”
“Three thousand one hundred, Spring?” he presently resumed. “This is Alfred Cohen. Yes. Send Jakey with change for a hundred. What? Sure! Shake a foot.”
With that, he replaced the receiver, turned again, and threw out: “Fine day!”
“Very,” I threw back.
Then indifferently, as though for the mere distraction of it, I took up the telephone book, and opened it, haphazard, in the middle. I had hit the mark, though. There it was: “Police Headqts, 3100 Spring.” I turned the page, flipped at another, closed the book, put it down, and dropped into the obvious:
“What would we do without telephones?”
Mr. Cohen gurgled appreciatively:
“There you are!”
“Or,” I continued, “without cigars? While we are waiting for Jakey, I’ll go and get one.” Ingratiatingly I added: “I’ll get two.”
As I spoke, I turned. Before me, through the grating and glass of the door, came the glitter of the street, the shriek of trains, the grunt of cars, the shapes of passers—instantly effaced.
Between me and the door was Mr. Cohen. He had vaulted the counter, and at the moment was calling overloudly, I thought, to the man with the ledger.
“You be quiet,” he oddly admonished me. “Here,” he interrupted himself to bawl over my head, “this feller’s wanted.”
I turned again. From the rear of the shop there had sprung a creature who more nearly resembled a gorilla than any human being I had ever seen.
Unconcernedly I nodded.
“How do do?” Then, rising to his level, I added: “Our friend here seems to have got them again.”
“I’ve got you!” I heard Cohen retort.
But at once, so far as I was concerned, he and the gorilla ceased to exist. I was concerned only that now at last I was in for it, and the consciousness brought that sense of curious relief which I suppose is known only to those who, like me, have been “wanted,” and who, in consequence, have been obliged to turn and twist, to walk in silence and in secret ways, to feel always that they are hunted.
That is the way I had felt, and so acutely that now, the end of my tether reached, I forgot that Cohen and the other brute existed. But to such an indignity, they must have refused to submit. I heard them talking—calling, rather—at each other in German; but their greasy gutturals were as unheeded by me as was the slam bang of the elevated.
That which finally aroused me was the entrance of Jakey—two men; one slim, in plain clothes; the other fat, and in uniform. The latter, a billy pendant but probably prompt in his hand, marched up and put his other hand on my shoulder. As he did so, I noticed the ledger fiend slinking, with an air of abasement, away, and it occurred to me that his conscience was not, perhaps, all that it might be.
“When no man pursueth!” I flung at his retreating back; but he squirmed, dodged, vanished.
At this the plainclothes man, who had been talking with Cohen in an open, unaffected, and very uncomplimentary manner about me, sidled suddenly up, ran his hands over me, found that I was unarmed, and said—and nicely enough: “You’ll go quietly?”
I smiled at him.
“Dear me! I hate a fuss as much as you do; perhaps even more. But would it be indiscreet of me to ask where I am going?”
He smiled back at me. “It would not be indiscreet; it would be excessive. You know.”
Well, as for that, he was right; and during the immediate and brief promenade to headquarters I said nothing further, except to ask for a cigarette from that case which,
