The girl patted his shoulder.
“You poor, poor dear, what’s the matter? Tell me all about it— Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Fowler. I wanta introduce my brother, Finney Slade. Finney, this is a boy friend.”
The man regarded Paul Pry with wide eyes, made no acknowledgment of the introduction whatever.
Paul Pry was on his feet, gawking about him awkwardly, uncertainly.
“Can you trust him?” asked Four Flush Finney.
The girl left the man’s side, glided over to Paul Pry and placed a soothing hand on his arm.
“Can I trust him? I’ll say! I ain’t known him but a little time, but him and me are regular pals already — ain’t we, honey?”
Paul Pry gripped the hand that held his arm.
“I’ll say!” he said. “Maybe I’d better go.”
She shook her head.
“No, no. I get so frightened whenever there’s trouble. You stay. Mr. Fowler’s a big business man from some place in Indiana, just outside of Chicago, Finney. Maybe he can help us.”
Finney nodded, sank into a chair, put his head in his hands.
“They’re framin’ me, sis,” he said.
“Who’s framin’ you, Finney?”
“One of the big gangsters, sis. A guy they call ‘Big Front’ Gilvray. He’s head of a big gang here, and he’s been pulling a lot of rough stuff. I’ve been workin’ for him, and never knew it.”
The girl’s eyes were narrow again.
“What d’yuh mean you’ve been workin’ for him, an’ never knew it? I thought you was chauffeur for a big business man here in the city!”
He laughed, and the laugh was bitter.
“That’s what I thought. Know who that big business man was? Well, it was Tommy Drake, and Tommy Drake’s Gilvray’s right-hand man, collector and all that. I thought he was in some sort of legitimate business. He ain’t. He’s a racketeer, booze runner and regular gangster.”
The girl sank down on the floor, one hand on Paul Pry’s knee. “Gee!” she said. “Ain’t that a sock in the eye!”
Her brother nodded, signifying that it was, indeed, a sock in the eye.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he groaned.
“What’s the other half?” asked the girl.
“Gilvray needed a fall guy, and he picked on me.”
“A fall guy? What’s a fall guy, Finney?”
“Somebody to take the rap.”
“What d’yuh mean, take the rap? Talk sense!”
And she flashed a significant glance toward Paul Pry, then frowned at her brother.
He nodded.
“I see,” he said, significantly, then launched into a story of hard luck.
“You see, sis, it was this way. When I got the job of running the big limousine for Tommy Drake, I sure thought it was on the up and up. We just went places all over the city, and Tommy had conferences, and sure made a bunch of jack. He dragged down the long green every time he had one of those conferences. I should have smelled a rat, but I didn’t.
“Then, a couple of nights ago, Tommy told me that he’d loaned the car to some friends, and I’d take them for a little ride around the city. He was going to be tied up on business, see?
“Well, the friends showed up all right, and they looked just like what they claimed to be, some out of town customers, that were in for a lark. Tommy told me to take them out and drive them where they wanted to go.
“Well, they went to a couple of speaks first off the bat, and then one of ’em said he wanted to get some money, and he thought he could get a check cashed at the All Night & Day Bank, and would I drive ’em over.
“I drove ’em over, all right, and they told me to park right in front of the fire plug that’s by the door of the bank. They all went in. I thought at the time they went in sorta businesslike, but I didn’t pay so awful much attention to that then.
“One of ’em said he had a date, and he wanted to be sure and get there on time and he only had a few minutes, so he told me to keep the motor running and be all ready for a snappy getaway when they came out of the bank.
“Well, I never thought nothing. I just sat there with the motor running. They came out of the bank and piled in, and one of ’em said ‘A hundred bucks, buddy, if you get to that date in five minutes.’
“Well it was a good break for me, and I made the car do its stuff. They were counting out a wad of money, and I was so green I asked ’em if they’d had any trouble getting the check cashed. They laughed and said they’d had a little trouble, but after they’d identified themselves with the head cashier there hadn’t been any more trouble.
“I found out afterward it was a stick-up, and that the way they’d identified themselves with the head cashier was by slamming him over the bean with a blackjack.
“Of course I read about it in the papers, and I went to Tommy Drake, and then was when Tommy told me that he was the collection man for Big Front Gilvray and that I was in too deep to back out. He raised my pay fifty a week, and gave me a thousand bonus for sitting in on the bank job, and I didn’t have no choice in the matter. None whatever!”
The girl interrupted.
“That was wrong, Finney. You should have come to me right then and there. That wasn’t the way us Slades were brought up. You should have gone to the police right then. I’m ashamed of you, taking gangster money!”
He gulped and looked embarrassed.
“I guess you’re right, sis. I was a fool. But the way Tommy Drake put it up to me it didn’t seem like there was any other — way out of it. He said I was in already, that he’d stand back of me if I played the game, and that I’d get on the spot if I didn’t.
“That’s why I didn’t get in touch with you for a while. I was ashamed, and I didn’t want to drag you into the thing.”
She nodded.
Paul Pry interrupted.
“But I read about that case in the paper. The cashier died, didn’t he?”
The man who posed as the brother of Slick Sarah regarded Paul Pry grimly.
“The man died,” he said.
There was silence in the room for the space of seconds.
Then Four Flush Finney again took up his narrative.
“When the man died, Big Front Gilvray wanted a fall guy to turn up if anything happened. Two nights later one of the men who was on the bank job held up a restaurant and the cops took after the car.
“There was some shooting. The gangsters got to safety all right, but the bullets had found a mark. One of the men was dying. He knew he was kicking off. Big Front knew he was cashing in. And he had the man sign a dying confession. In that confession the man took all responsibility for croaking the cashier. He claimed there was only one other man on the job with him, and that man was me!
“See what he done? He left himself an out. If it ever came to a showdown he could spring the confession and maybe clear the other men. But it would put me on the hot seat.
“That’s the kind of a double cross they gave me. And Big Front’s going to use that confession to make me do his dirty work. That’s the way he plays the game.
“He’s got another job planned for me now, sis, and he says if I don’t go through with it he’ll mail the confession to the bulls. That’s why I came here. You’ve got to keep me for a while until we decide what to do.”
The girl got up from her place beside Paul Pry and crossed to him. “That’s all right, Finney, dear. We’ll just stand together. They can’t pin a dirty frame-up like that on you. They simply can’t!”
He grunted. “Shows all you know about it. Those that are on the inside will tell you that two out of three who get the chair are railroaded to it as fall guys by higher ups who throw out victims to the crooked police.”
He put his head on her shoulder. She stroked his hair.
“Why don’t you go to the police and tell them the whole story?” asked Paul Pry.