Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

“I’m putting it all down to experience,” nodded Jack. “I don’t think they’ll ever get me again.”

“You don’t mean you are going to pull away — go back to punching a time clock?”

“I’ll say not. What I mean is, Slim—”

There came a knock on the door.

When Slim opened it his butler conveyed with a slight nod of the head that he desired to speak with his master privately. Slim stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

“There’s a good-looking young woman in the hall,” said the butler, “says she must see Lawrence. I tried to say he wasn’t here. But she said she knew better. She said she knew him and had seen him enter the apartment house and had learned that he had gone to Mr. Allen’s rooms.

“Says she must see him. She’ll wait, she says, in the hallway till he comes out if she isn’t permitted to see him right away. She’ll wait, she says, if she has to wait all night. She talks like she means it. Talks like she would make trouble if put to it, Mr. Gegan.”

“Give a name?”

“Elsie Lane — that’s the young woman, ain’t it, that—”

“Shut up.”

Slim was troubled, as he had every reason to be. If Elsie saw Jack, she was bound to demand why he had never answered any of her letters. Jack might start an inquiry at the post office — serious predicaments might arise.

If Jack loved the girl he would be furious. She would hold the trump cards for winning him over. And, in his rage, he might turn on him, Slim, and — the girl must not be allowed to see Lawrence, must not. He must take swift and drastic measures.

“Go back and tell her that she’ll see Lawrence in a few minutes. Slip her into the little reception room. But don’t let her get out of it until I signal with the buzzer. Then bring her in here — into my room.”

“Yes, sir.”

Slim stepped back, closed the door and said:

“Pretty important matter come up. Fellow I’ve got to see right away. Madge, you take Jack into the music room and I’ll have Markey take you in some champagne. I guess you and Jack are ripe for a few more hours of talk, eh? I don’t expect this interview is going to take very long. I’ll join you soon as I can, Johnny-up, and we’ll talk over the future.”

“Yes, Slim. I’m anxious to do that with you. As I said, I’ve—”

“Well, hold it a little while, Johnny-up. Take him along, Madge.”

There were three doors in the room. The one at the front led into the main hallway. The door in the rear led to a private back stairway that dropped three flights before it admitted one into the main hallway of the apartment house below, where, if one desired, one might continue down four more rear flights to a rear door that opened on an alley along the side of the apartment house and running from the rear into the street.

The third door of Slim’s room opened into an interior hallway from which entrance was to be had to several bedrooms, a large music room and a still larger salon.

It was through this center door that Slim motioned Jack and Madge, and he watched them as they traversed its length and disappeared into the music room. He reentered his library, locked the center door, went to his big mahogany table, and touched a button beneath its top.

Very shortly thereafter Markey ushered Elsie Lane before him, and discreetly closed the door.

Miss Lane gazed coolly at the little, gray, ferret-faced master crook.

“I asked to see Mr. John Lawrence,” she said.

“What if Mr. Lawrence doesn’t care to see you, miss?”

“When he tells me so himself I’ll believe it.”

“Only that way, hey?”

“Only that way. May I ask who you are?”

“They told you my name downstairs, didn’t they, when you asked where Mr. Lawrence had gone?”

“They called you Mr. Allen.”

“That’s who I am.”

“Here, perhaps; Slim Gegan elsewhere, I fancy.”

“Oh, you do?”

“I’m certain of it. But I didn’t come here to see you, but to see Jack Lawrence.”

“And I’ve kind of hinted that perhaps he doesn’t want to see you.”

“I’ve said I would only believe that when he told me so himself.”

Slim relighted the cigar, which had gone out.

“No,” he said. “Lawrence wouldn’t have to tell you, if you knew what I knew.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Elsie.

“You’re in love with him, ain’t you?”

She blushed furiously and made him no answer.

“And you think he’s still in love with you? Because he told you he was the day before he was sent away.”

“He proved that he was by what he did to clear me,” said Elsie hotly.

“But three years in prison make big changes in a man. Besides you’ve grown famous. And you went too far away. There’s been another girl seeing him all this time — visiting him up in prison — as his sister. He saw her, talked to her, touched her hand, while he saw nothing of you, got only letters from you that read like Sunday school tracts.”

“What do you know of my letters?” asked Elsie.

“Oh, I saw him now and then. He told me.”

“Still I demand an opportunity here and now to see Jack Lawrence.”

Slim arose.