Her hand darted for the diamonds.
They moved with quickness, those two. The pawnbroker swooped his clawlike fingers upon the diamonds. The detective did not reach for the stones. He slammed his great paw down upon the lean wrist, held it in the grip of a vise.
“Say-y-y-y!” he said, the word having a snarling emphasis, “none o’ that! I asked you where you got ’em.”
The girl’s face showed conflicting emotions.
“I... I can’t tell.”
“She the one that’s been in here before, Moe?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, sister, you’re goin’ by-by in a wagon with wire over it. Better kick through right now. If you come clean we might give you a break.”
“I— No, no— I won’t!”
The detective laughed. The laugh was a sneer, coarse, grating.
“Th’ hell you won’t,” he said.
And he pulled glittering bracelets of steel from the vicinity of his left hip. His right hand still held the girl’s wrist.
“Take a look at these,” he invited.
The girl shook her head.
“I won’t tell. I don’t care what you do to me.”
The detective grunted.
“S’pose I tell then, if you won’t?”
His eyes were scornful, sneering. The girl’s face showed panic.
“You know?” she asked.
“Sure, I know. You’re a friend of Sally Barker, an’ Sally Barker’s the housekeeper out at Jake Goldfinch’s place. And Goldfinch got bumped off about five thirty this evening and there is a hell of a lot of diamonds missing. Now are you goin’ to talk?”
The effect of his words was magical. The girl began to talk, swiftly, almost hysterically.
“Yes, yes, now I’ll talk. I wasn’t going to get Sally into trouble. I wasn’t going to mention her name. But if you know of her it’s all right. Only I don’t want her to think that I was the one that told. You must explain that to her.
“It was yesterday that Mr. Goldfinch called Sally into his room. He told her that he was getting to be an old man. He said he hadn’t made any provision for her in his will. He said that he was leaving these diamonds in a vase over his desk, that if anything happened to him Sally was to take these diamonds at once and pawn them.
“He made her promise that she wouldn’t wait a minute, that she’d take the stones and sell them for the best price she could get. He said he wanted her to have them instead of taking anything from his estate. She’d been with him for years, you know.”
The detective grunted.
“Yeah,” he said, “I know.” And he winked at the pawnbroker, then moved toward the telephone, picked up the receiver.
“Gimme police headquarters,” he said.
There was a moment of silence, then the detective’s voice rumbled through a formula.
“Let me talk with Sergeant Gilfillan... Hello, sergeant. This is Renfoe talking. I’ve got the frail in the Goldfinch case and she was loaded with the hot ice. Came into the pawnshop. Yeah, I’m bringin’ her down... Okay... Okay, g’by.”
He hung up the telephone.
The thin man with the stooped shoulders and the bald head moved shufflingly over to where Sidney Zoom leaned against the counter.
“Watches?” he asked.
“I want,” said Sidney Zoom, “a watch that is of a particular make, and you do not seem to have one.”
The thin man lost interest in the detective and the girl in order to make a sale.
“I have here,” he proclaimed, “the best watches in the country. Don’t you want a good watch?”
Sidney Zoom raised his voice.
“I want a square deal, and I want to see that every one else gets a square deal.”
The girl started at the timbre of that voice, as solemnly resonant as the tone of a rich violin.
The pawnbroker looked puzzled.
“Don’t you believe my watches are the best in the country?” he asked.
Sidney Zoom’s voice retained its solemn timbre.
“I disbelieve in nothing,” he remarked, “not even in a divine justice which works through strange channels to see that wrongs are righted.”
And he strode calmly to the outer door, pushed it open, and walked into the night, leaving behind him a startled, sagging jawed pawnbroker, a very puzzled young woman, and a scowling detective.
Chapter III
The Murder Room
Sergeant Huntington regarded Sidney Zoom speculatively. Little puckers appeared at the corners of the keen eyes.
“I don’t know too much about it. Sergeant Gilfillan’s been handling most of the case. It broke around supper time to-night. Understand the old man was murdered, stabbed with a knife, I believe. We’ve got one of the brightest detectives on the force working on it. Think he came in a little while ago.”
He jabbed a button with his forefinger. A head bobbed in through a doorway.
“Tell Jack Hargrave to come in here,” rumbled the sergeant.
The head was withdrawn, the door dosed. Seconds lengthened into minutes. Neither Zoom nor Huntington made any further comment.
The door abruptly opened. A young man with keen eyes, a whimsical smile at the corners of his mouth, walking lightly, easily upon the balls of his feet, stepped into the room.
“Hargrave, shake hands with Sidney Zoom. Hargrave’s the brightest young detective on the force. Zoom’s a man who butts into a case once in a while, makes everybody sore, and usually turns out to be one hundred per cent right.”
The two men shook hands.
“Want to show Zoom around on the Goldfinch case?” asked Sergeant Huntington.
Jack Hargrave turned on the balls of his feet, his every motion as swiftly efficient as a prize fighter going into action.
“Let’s go,” he said.
It was the first word he had said since entering the room.
Sidney Zoom reached for his hat, grinned, strode his long length of gaunt strength toward the door. Jack Hargrave moved at his side, as smoothly and easily as water running along a flume.
They went down a flight of stairs, stale with the stench of poor ventilation, out into the crisp air of the night. Hargrave indicated a roadster with red spotlight and police siren.
Sidney Zoom got into the car.
“My dog,” he said.
The tawny police dog was watching his master with expectant eyes. He had been wailing just outside the door of police headquarters.
The detective flipped back a rumble seat.
The dog gathered his feet, crouched, sailed through the air, lit neatly and accurately upon the rumble seat. Hargrave crawled in behind the wheel, slammed the door, stepped on the starter.
The car ripped into speed, skidded at the corner. The siren was wailing by the time it hit the center of the car tracks and tore through the almost deserted street. Hargrave handled the wheel with the easy precision of one who is utterly certain of his muscular coordination.
Fifteen minutes and they drew up before a dark, forbidding mansion which sat back from the road, surrounded by a gloomy iron fence. A policeman was strolling at the gate of this fence on patrol. A police car was in the driveway, back of the swinging gates which had provided a carriage entrance in earlier days.
Hargrave switched off the ignition, stepped to the curb.
“Hello, Haggerty.”
The uniformed policeman stepped to one side.
“Evening, sir.”
They went up the walk, Jack Hargrave first, stepping with the latent power of a coiled spring; Zoom second, striding grimly, purposefully; the dog third, padding behind his master with that cautious strength which a wolf might display in stalking a deer.
They went up the wooden steps of the porch, through the door into a corridor which smelled musty. The atmosphere of the house reeked of death and decay.