free-lanced in New York, Atlantic City, Palm Beach, Miami and every banana port south of the Canal. I’m as honest as my profession allows and I’ve donated myself a sheepskin for never having been caught on the wrong side of the law.”
“That’s enough for the moment, South. Your independence does you credit.” Raleigh settled back against the pillows. “Now. Just what did Mr. Van Pelt tell you?”
Joe didn’t like that. He hadn’t come here to give information but to get it. He would have to play along for the moment, however. He said, “He tells me you are a bachelor with a niece and a nephew. Your nephew, Richard, has recently been playing cops and robbers with a couple of mugs—identity unknown—who are apt to rub his nose in the mud. Your niece, Naomi, it seems, got wind of his pranks and came through, bold like, with a message to Garcia. Right?”
Raleigh nodded. His eyes were cold. He said through stiff lips, “Right.” The sick man wasn’t liking this at all.
“When he got that far,” Joe continued, “naturally I wanted to know what a wealthy young Fauntleroy was doing messing around with that kind of society. Van Pelt explained what appeared to be your niece’s idea. Namely, that he’d got himself mixed up in some kind of racket with them. It seems she suspected something was wrong when he began to spend more money than his allowance provided. Much more money.”
Joe struck a match and lit a cigarette from a crumpled package. He passed the package to Raleigh. The older man waved it aside impatiently. “Is that all?” he asked.
“All,” Joe told him, “except that my job would last until Richard’s twenty-sixth birthday. In other words, until January 30—two months from today.”
He was watching Raleigh through a cloud of smoke. Suddenly Joe was convinced that something was being held back. It made him uneasy. He said, “Of course, Mr. Raleigh, I naturally assumed that a man in your position would have investigated the situation a little further before taking a hysterical girl’s word.” He paused to let that sink in, and added evenly, “What did you find?”
Raleigh’s face didn’t change. He said, “That’s my business, South. You’re hired for one thing—to keep my nephew out of trouble. My family’s affairs don’t, concern you. . . .”
Joe didn’t wait for more. He almost knocked the chair over as he bounced to his feet. His face was flushed; his eyes steely. He stood over the arrogant figure on the bed. He said in a voice that rasped, “You’re darned well right they don’t i concern me. What do you think I am? A whining busybody to pick your private skeletons clean and throw the morsels over back fences? Take your darned job and your whimpering brat and to hell with both of them! The sooner they got there the better!”
He turned without waiting for an answer and stormed toward the door. Raleigh’s voice stopped him as his hand touched the knob.
“That attitude won’t get you anywhere, South. Come back and cool off.”
Joe looked at Raleigh suspiciously. A half-smile lifted the corners of the sick man’s mouth. That did it. Joe relaxed, but his anger was still bubbling. He stood over the bed and said between tight lips, “Okay, it’s your move.”
Raleigh’s smile was all the way now. “Quite a temper you have there.”
“Not temper,” Joe corrected. “Pride. You’re no different from all the other guys that shuffle gold and clip coupons. You have no control over your families and when one of them gets in trouble your only concern is how to keep your gilt-edge names, out of the headlines. I repeat. Don’t hand me any of that stuff about prying. I don’t give a hang about your private affairs except that the more facts I have the better I can do my job.”
“Be that as it may. South,” Raleigh snapped, “I can usually take care of my own.”
Joe had planted himself gingerly in the white chair again. He grunted, “It don’t look much like it in this case.”
Raleigh was still smiling. He said, “Right. I can guess now why your license was suspended. You ought to try to control that temper.”
Joe said, “So you know that, do you? Van Pelt didn’t miss a trick when you talked to him. Skip it, and let’s get this over with.”
“My idea exactly, South,” he frowned. “You can understand all this is extremely distasteful to me.”
It was a concession to apology. Joe said, “Van Pelt mentioned your nephew’s allowance as part of the root of the trouble. Why is it so small against the amount of the inheritance?”
Raleigh leaned forward. “All right, South. You can have it for what it’s worth. My brother, the children’s father, left a fortune in trust for them. They were young—motherless—and he made me their guardian as well as one of the trustees.” He paused and looked at Joe as if uncertain how much he should tell the detective. After a moment he went on. “The will is a complicated one, the kind a man of my brother’s temperament would be likely to make. Richard’s income is only two thousand a year until his twenty-sixth birthday—two months from today. If he marries before that he inherits immediately.”
“Yeah. Van Pelt told me all that. What was the idea tying the girl’s dough in knots?”
Raleigh stiffened. “That has nothing to do with your job, South. We’ll stick to the pertinent facts.”
“Okay. Only it’s still screwy. She gets the same allowance until she marries. Then her only reward is a substantial increase, and she still has to wait five years for her share of the estate. If she doesn’t marry she has to wait till she’s thirty for the ‘substantial’ increase.” He shrugged. “But I haven’t ever been a wealthy parent—thank God—so I don’t need any pointers. Skip it.”
Raleigh’s smile was sardonic. “I haven’t either, South, so we’ll both skip it. It isn’t as bad as you think,” he added. “After all, Naomi is nearly twenty-five, and the will protects her in case anything happens to me or to Richard.”
“I see,” Joe mused. “Van Pelt tells me that Richard has been up to these tricks for over a year now. It isn’t hard to guess that he got impatient and decided to grab himself some dough the easy way.” Something about the set look in Raleigh’s eyes prompted him to add, “He hasn’t had advances against his inheritance, has he?”
Raleigh glared, “Look here, South. Need you be so darned inquisitive?”
Joe flushed and started to rise. Raleigh waved him back. “All right, all right,” he said testily. “We’ll never get anywhere if you don’t control that temper.”
“And we’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try to remember that I need information if I’m to work intelligently,” Joe retorted.
Raleigh said with evident distaste, “Naomi thinks he’s had well over fifty thousand dollars from Van Pelt during the last two years. I learned this only recently. I pay his debts, within reason, of course, but I’ve refused to allow him more than the amount provided by the trust.” He closed his lips with a snap.
Joe said, “That’s better. It brings us to the question as to whether he’s messing around with gangsters for profit or just for excitement. In other words, if he had his legacy now, would he drop them?”
“What do you mean?”
“If
