She nodded.
“Fifteen grand apiece. Gosh, Finney, it was worth it. And I sure got a sap! Wasn’t he a dream! I hate to let anything that’s as green as that get away. We should keep in touch with him. We could find lots of use for him.”
Finney laughed shortly, sarcastically.
“Bah. We couldn’t use him for anything except ballast on a boat. By this time tomorrow he’ll have so much lead in him he won’t fit into a coffin.
“Now listen, sis, we gotta play this right. I go get the checks cashed, then I come back and you handcuff me to the other bed. Then you telephone Gilvray we’re both here, see?
“That’ll give me a good alibi, and Gilvray can find out all about this guy from where he rented the house. He left the name and address of his rooming house and gave the landlady for reference, the poor sap!”
The woman’s forehead furrowed.
“Any chance he’ll squeal?”
“He won’t get a chance. I’ll tip him to make a run for it, and then I’ll tip Gilvray that I’ve spotted the train he’s on. The poor sap won’t ever have a chance to squeal. He won’t even say nighty-by.”
The girl grinned.
“I hate to lose him. He was priceless.”
They grinned again, and the grin became a rasping, mutual chuckle.
“Well,” said Finney, “let’s go.”
They went.
Finney presented the check at the window of the Farmers & Merchants National.
“Cash,” he said.
The teller looked at him suspiciously.
“That’s a large sum.”
Finney yawned.
“Sure it is. It’s a big deal. You know Tommy Drake’s signature. The check’s certified. It’s payable to bearer. I’m the bearer. You can ring up Arthur Manser if you want to. He’ll verify that the check’s O.K. and that it’s to be cashed. But your own certification is on it. You can’t question that, and bearer means bearer don’t it?”
The teller nodded.
“I guess so. Just a minute.”
He stepped back in his cage, started counting out piles of money, but his right foot surreptitiously reached out and pressed a concealed button in the floor.
Finney heard the sound of the buzzer, frowned perplexedly.
Then he saw two uniformed figures, bank police, on special duty, bearing down upon him. Startled, he flipped a hand beneath his coat, only to remember that his fall-guy muscle-man hadn’t returned the automatic he had taken.
He felt his elbows grasped in an iron grip.
“Try anything and you’ll get your head smashed,” said one of the men. “Take it quietly. What is it, Fred?”
The teller slipped the check through the bars.
“Forgery,” he said, “and a clumsy one. The signature of Tommy Drake looks O.K., but the rest of it is awful. It’s a rank forgery, certification stamp and all.”
Finney heaved a great sigh, and managed a laugh.
“Hell, is that all you’re squawking about? I thought you really had me for a pinch! Just ring up Manser, and he’ll tell you He signed this check and had it certified himself.”
The teller shook his head.
“That’s true all right. But the genuine check was cashed ten minutes before you came here. It was passed through to the account of Paul Pry, a gentleman we happen to know.”
Finney’s mouth sagged. He gasped for air. Twice he tried to speak and each time words failed him. The third time he managed to get out sound, but the voice was strained, husky.
“Paul Pry— Good God! Did sis pick on that bird as a fall guy! Paul Pry—”
And Finney, known in the profession as Four Flusher Finney, slipped to the floor in a faint.
Outside of the bank, a very well-formed figure of a young woman, dressed in a mode that was calculated to disclose the lines of rounded beauty, had been staring through the window.
When Finney slumped to the floor in a faint she turned gloomily away and entered a taxicab. She moved with graceful haste.
The cab driver turned to regard her, and saw that she had raised the hem of her skirt, disclosing a long expanse of rounded limb, that she had taken a roll of large bills from the top of her stocking and was counting it carefully.
“Where to, ma’am?” he asked, his eyes flitting between the attraction of the green currency and the soft flesh of the rounded symmetry which was exposed between pink silk and black chiffon.
She spoke sadly.
“To the Union Depot. I’ve got nine hundred and fifty dollars here, and I’ve got a sucker in New Orleans that had ought to be good for a thousand more.”
She raised her eyes, encountered the gaze of the taxi driver, and unhurriedly returned the roll to the top of her stocking.
“Lovely morning, ain’t it!” she said.
Big Front Gilvray raced in person to the bungalow, the address of which had been given to him in the mysterious telephone call which terminated a night of frenzied activity.
When Tommy Drake had failed to report, Gilvray had had attorneys search the records of the precinct stations to see if Tommy had been picked up and buried for questioning. He had cruising cars making a grim round of places where rival gangs held headquarters, searching for some trace of the missing man.
With the coming of the telephone call, Gilvray knew that the worst had happened. A week’s pickings gone glimmering. He skidded the car to a stop, rushed up the steps. The door of the bungalow was open.
A table was littered with empty bottles, sticky glasses and cigarette stubs. In the bedroom he found Tommy Drake, sleeping peacefully. To his chest was pinned a brief note, scribbled upon the back of a tinted oblong of paper, one of the blank checks of the Farmers & Merchants National.
Big Front Gilvray stooped to stare at the paper which read—
“Dear Goosie, thanks for laying another golden egg. To the police you’re a tough gangster. To me you’re just a nice little goosie, laying golden eggs.”
The note was signed, simply, “Paul Pry, Muscle Man.”
Big Front Gilvray hopped about from one foot to the other. The air of the bedroom was sulphurous with profanity. Tommy Drake slumbered peacefully in drugged unconsciousness.