Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/33

Rh through them, his lips relaxing into a faint smile as he gathered the import of them. Folding the last one, he placed the packet in his pocket. Then, drawing a fat wallet from his inside pocket, he counted out ten hundred-dollar bills on the desk. Picking up his cane, he started for the door when the voice of the detective halted him again. There was a taunt in the voice now and a sneer on the coarse lips of the man as he spoke.

"Say," he drawled, "you're a pretty wise Willie. Not! You were going to hand me a package wan't you? Going to get them letters cheap and get away with it while I played the sucker and watched you do it? Well, you're just about a thousand out on this deal, Old Top."

"What do you mean?" demanded Van Der Cynck coldly. "Are not these the letters I wanted? Are there any more besides these?"

"Oh! They're the ones you wanted all right, and that's all of 'em; but you, you're a fine come-on you are. Why, you poor nut, I'd a-pulled that game myself if you hadn't butted in, and anyone had tipped me off where I could find that Wyndham doll. I didn't know her name was Clagdon. Kicked me out of the back end of a rig, her uncle did, and I've been laying for a chance to get square. And you! You blow in and run the whole game for me and hand me a thousand bucks. You're a hot sketch! I gotta hand it to you, kid."

Van Der Cynck had flushed angrily while Kimbarton was talking, but waited quietly until he had finished. Then, in the same even, well-modulated tone that had characterized his earlier speech, he said, "Jerry Longley said you were a damned crook, and I believed him. He said you were a fat-head, and I believed him. Figuring you to be these two things, I called you the first to make you mad, and added that you had brains to make you foolish. I succeeded admirably in each case. Me, you characterize as a sucker, a come-on, and several other very worthy things that are, no doubt, a part of your profession. You say I'm a thousand dollars out. Maybe. Mrs. Stairing, however, is probably many thousand in, besides, and an untold amount of happiness and a fortune in nights when she will be able to sleep. On the whole, I think I'm entirely satisfied, and I am sure Mrs. Stairing is."

"What the hell has Mrs. Stairing got to do with this anyway?" snarled Kimbarton. "I don't know anything about Mrs. Stairing. It's this Wyndham kid we are talking about, ain't it?"

"One and the same," assented Van Der Cynck, over his shoulder, as he opened the door and stepped into the hall, "and my name, by the way, is Clagdon, not Van Der Cynck. You see, Ethel Clagdon married Stairing this morning; and as I happen to be her brother, she asked me to clear up this annoying little business detail while they were on their honeymoon, and before you found out who she was. Come-on—eh? Why, my dear Mr. Kimbarton Kenally, I've known who you were for six months. You're number one.on the sucker list. No one but a come-on would fall for that sentimental bunk I sprung on you."

The door closed with a bang.