“I can eat again.”
They reached the lobby and stepped out of the elevator. The switchboard operator regarded them suspiciously and followed them out with her eyes.
4
When they reached their room at the Forty-Fifth Street Hotel, Johnny took off his coat and sat down on the bed. He upended the bronze goose bank and shook it. Nothing happened and he examined the slot by which the coins were put into the bank.
“Looks like they made this one-way,” he observed. “But if the money went in, it’s got to come out.”
“I used to be pretty good with a piggy bank when I was a kid,” said Sam Cragg.
“So was I, but I’m out of practice.” Johnny shook the bank mightily and a coin fell to the bedspread. He picked it up. “An Indian head penny!”
“Hey, I ain’t seen one of those in a long time,” exclaimed Sam.
“Nineteen hundred and seven,” said Johnny, looking at the date on the coin. “I thought maybe it might be rare, but I guess this isn’t old enough.” He shook the bank for another moment or two and a dime fell out. A 1912 Barber head dime.
“Her grandmother must have saved these coins,” said Johnny. He continued shaking the bank and a third coin fell out. This, too, was a penny, dated 1902.
“Why’d they have to make this thing out of bronze?” complained Johnny. “It’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth to get all the money out.”
“I can flatten it,” offered Sam.
“That might make the slot even narrower,” Johnny sighed. “I guess the hard way’s the only way with these banks.”
“I’m hungry again,” complained Sam. “All that walking.”
Johnny picked up a five-dollar bill from the money given to him by Alice Cummings. “Here, go and get yourself another steak. You need it — you haven’t been eating regularly lately.”
“Aren’t you coming along?”
“No, I’ve had enough to eat for a while. I’ll keep at this.”
Sam hesitated, but his stomach won. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said and went out.
Johnny continued with the bank and extracted another dime and a penny, in the next few minutes. Both were fairly old coins, although not worn much.
He got up to stretch a moment and the door was opened and Mr. Kilkenny, the skip tracer, entered. He was grinning wickedly.
“Don’t you knock?” Johnny asked angrily.
“A skip tracer never knocks,” Kilkenny said cheerfully. “Nobody loves a skip tracer and nobody lets him in anywhere, if they can keep him out.” His eyes went to the roll of bills on the bed. “Well, well, Fletcher, you made a score, I see. Not from Miss Alice Cummings, though?”
“Why not? I said I’d find her and collect, and I did.”
“Great,” enthused Kilkenny. “I got to hand it to you. I wasn’t going to drop by until tomorrow, but I happened to be across the street and saw your partner going by. The big moose!”
“He’ll be back in a minute,” Johnny said uneasily.
“Sure, but let’s finish our business first. Seventy-four dollars, eh?”
He reached past Johnny and scooped up the bills. He flipped through them quickly. “Hey, there’s only fifty-two dollars here.”
“She didn’t have enough.”
“Well, fifty-two is close enough. You got to knock off a little once in a while.”
“True,” said Johnny, “and, like you said earlier, it don’t really count if the client hasn’t got the money. But this one did have most of it and I collected. So you owe me ten dollars.”
“Mmm,” said Kilkenny. He pursed up his lips. “Okay, you won the bet. I’ll give you ten credit—”
“Credit?”
“Sure, on the bill you owe.”
“Now, wait a minute,” said Johnny angrily. “I don’t owe you any money.”
“Your partner does. Same thing. You helped spend the money, I’ll bet, when you hocked the mandolin.”
“You’re not going to get away with this,” snapped Johnny. “I worked hard to collect that bill and I want my money.”
“Try and get it,” said Kilkenny nastily. “Talk me out of it. You said you could out-talk me. Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Johnny advanced upon the skip tracer. “There’s a time for talking and a time for—”
“For action?” cried Kilkenny and slammed Johnny a savage blow with his fist. The punch caught Johnny on the cheekbone and knocked him backward over the bed.
Kilkenny stood over him. “Too bad the gorilla ain’t here. You want more?”
Johnny hesitated. The big man outweighed him by at least forty pounds. He was too much for Johnny. He said, “Stick around until Sam comes back.”
“It ain’t worth it,” sneered Kilkenny. “But you’ll be seeing me again. As soon as you get some more dough...”
He went out, slamming the door.
Johnny touched his cheek, found that it was already swelling and went into the bathroom. He doused cold water over his face, soaked a towel and, holding it against his face, returned to the bed. He picked up the bank and began to shake it with renewed zest. He would need these pennies and dimes and quarters now.
5
When Sam Cragg returned, Johnny was just getting the last coin out of the goose bank. A penny.
“I think we got gypped,” he said. “There isn’t seventeen dollars here.”
“It’s all pennies and dimes and quarters.”
“And most of them old ones.” Johnny scooped up the heap of dimes and quarters. “Here, count these.”
While Sam was counting the dimes and quarters, Johnny himself counted the pennies. After a few moments he said, “I make it ninety-eight pennies...”
“And twenty-four dimes and twelve quarters,” said Sam.
“Two forty, plus ninety-eight cents, plus three dollars — six dollars and thirty-eight cents.”
“The bank ought to be worth something,” suggested Sam.
“Sure, about forty cents.” Johnny picked up the goose bank. It was quite heavy. He studied it a moment. “Nice-looking bird,” he said, “but one of the feet is smaller than the other.”
“Do you suppose that means something?”
Johnny shrugged. “It looks more like an imperfection in the casting. These things were made to retail for about forty-nine cents.”
Sam took the goose from Johnny’s hand and set it on the dresser. It was somewhat wobbly on its feet and Sam wiggled it back and forth. “Look, it limps.”
Johnny tried the goose bank himself. “A limping goose.” He studied the bank closely, finally took a nail file from his pocket and scratched at the bronze. He finally shook his head. “It’s bronze, all right. I hoped for a minute that it might turn out to be gold.”
“That’d been something.” Sam’s eyes went to the two heaps of coins on. the bed. “What about those dimes and pennies? They’re pretty old-fashioned. You said something about you thought they might be rare.”
“I don’t know enough about coins,” Johnny said. “I wish I did. It won’t hurt to find out, but I have a feeling that all of these are too new. The oldest one’s only about eighteen sixty.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “I remember seeing a book on rare coins down at the Times Square newsstand. It sold for about a dollar. I wish I had a dollar.”
“You’ve got a dollar,” reminded Sam.
“I haven’t,” Johnny corrected, turning his face squarely to Sam for the first time since the latter had entered the room.
Sam exclaimed, “What happened? You bumped yourself?”
“Yes, I bumped myself. Against Mr. Kilkenny’s fist. He was here right after you left—”