“Why, the newspapers gave a list of everything that was taken.”
I laughed sarcastically.
“Be your age, Willie,” I told him.
He was leaning forward now, his mouth open, his eyes wide.
“No,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re getting at. What’s the low-down?”
“The newspapers,” I said, “published the facts that we gave them, but they didn’t get all the facts. The stuff that they listed was stolen all right, but there was a lot of other stuff in the loot. The messenger was carrying it in a black bag. In addition to the Loring stuff, he had the Matlink necklace and the Rajah’s Seal. Those two things are worth three times as much as all the rest of the Loring jewels put together.”
“Willie The Weeper’s” face showed incredulity, and then a cunning comprehension.
“But why weren’t those things reported as stolen?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, “the messenger was pretty badly shot up. He was unconscious when he got to the hospital. Mrs. Loring knew only about the stuff she gave out to the newspapers. Mr. Loring had made a clean-up on a business deal, and he’d bought the Matlink necklace and the Rajah’s Seal for her. He was sending them out as a surprise.
“After the first announcement in the newspapers, the police decided it’d be better to keep the other stuff quiet, and see if they couldn’t spot the crook because of his knowledge that the other stuff had been taken.”
“Willie The Weeper” stared at me as though I had given him a new lease on life.
“And you’re for the insurance company?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you playing with the police?”
“Only to help us get the stuff back,” I told him. “What we want is the stuff, and we’re willing to pay big for it. We’re willing to make a payment and no questions asked.”
“Jeeze!” he said. “What a swell chance that is for the crook who pulled the job.”
“What do you mean?” I wanted to know.
“Just suppose,” he said, “that it had been a gang job, planned by a gang, but pulled by one man? Suppose that the crook had grabbed the bag and found that extra stuff in there, and had turned over to his gang only the stuff that the newspapers published as being lifted? Gawd! What a sweet chance it would be for a crook to hold out on his own gang! The Matlink necklace and the Rajah’s Seal. Jeeze, what a sweet break!”
I nodded moodily.
“Of course, Willie,” I said, “don’t say anything about that end of it. We’re working under cover, but I’m willing to pay a hell of a price for the stuff. I thought, perhaps, you’d know who I could make an offer to.”
He shook his head.
“No, Bob, I don’t, and that’s gawd’s honest truth. I’ll cross my heart and hope to die.”
He made a swift mechanical gesture of a cross over his heart.
“Well,” I said, “don’t say anything about it.”
He stared at me steadily, put out an uncertain hand until he touched my arm.
“Bob,” he said, “you’ve been like a brother to me. You’re one of the few men I can depend on. I wouldn’t double-cross you by telling anything you didn’t want me to tell for all the money in the world. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.”
He started to weep, then his shoulders quivered, and the weep became a blubber. Tears coursed down his cheeks.
Willie was like that.
They say he’d had a college education at one time, and started out as an architect. A woman had jilted him, and he’d tried to forget his troubles in booze. The booze had mastered him and he’d switched to dope.
That’d been twenty years ago.
I sat and watched the man weep, the shoulders shaking with the convulsive sobs, the tears dropping unheeded to the table.
It was part of his stock in trade. Guys that didn’t know him well said he was nuts. It was just a habit of his. Back of all that weeping was a mind that was keenly alert to any bit of underworld news.
After a little while he straightened up and the coat sleeve smeared the moisture over his face.
“Just like a brother,” he said.
I waited and said nothing.
“How much would your company pay to get the stuff back, Bob?” he asked me.
“Plenty,” I told him.
“How much is that in money?”
“I’d have to bargain with the man who could produce the stuff, and with the company.”
“Maybe I could help you, Bob,” he said.
“You know where the stuff is?” I asked him.
He shook his head with such eager vehemence that I knew he was lying. There wouldn’t have been any occasion for so emphatic a negative if he hadn’t known.
“Honest to gawd I don’t, Bob. And I’d tell you in a minute if I did. You’ve been just like a brother to me. But,” he went on, “I get around. Every once in a while I pick up a little piece of gossip here and there. I might be able to help you.”
“You would if you could, wouldn’t you, Willie?” I asked him.
He nodded and started pawing at my arm again.
“Well,” I told him, “I’m on my way. I just had a couple of cubes and thought I’d bring them in for you. Keep your ears open, Willie, and if you hear anything let me know.”
He was weeping again as I went through the door.
“
Willie The Weeper” had his hide-out in a place that was near the border of Chinatown. There were cheap, fire-trap structures huddled together in dirty proximity. It was a fine neighborhood for shadowing. Every few feet was a doorway, and the street was narrow and dark.
I planted myself in a doorway and had the car parked in an alley by the corner. I didn’t think Willie would use a taxicab, but I couldn’t tell. I knew there was no telephone in his room.
I waited for not more than ten minutes.
“Willie The Weeper” came out and looked up and down the street, not because he suspected anyone might be tailing him, but simply because it was a matter of habit.
“Willie The Weeper” was one of those creatures who are of the shadows. Turn them loose in a desert where there wasn’t a human being within a hundred-mile circle, and they’d still slink from shadow to shadow, hugging the sage and skirting the cacti, peering, pausing and listening.
He fooled me, at that. He stepped to the curb and started looking for a cab. I had to wait until one came along and Willie had climbed in, before I could duck around the corner into the alley and start my roadster.
I tagged along behind the cab, keeping it in sight but not being too ambitious.
The cab swung down towards the streets of the high-class shopping district, went through the district, and along a side street, until it came to a locality that didn’t have any individuality whatever. It wasn’t respectable, and it wasn’t tough. It was simply a place that had been outgrown. Once it had bordered the better grade of stores, then the better grade of stores had moved away and left the district high and dry.
The place that “Willie The Weeper” went into looked like a speake with a restaurant on the ground floor, a bar downstairs, and bedrooms upstairs. I didn’t know the place, and I didn’t dare follow “Willie The Weeper” any farther. I had to content myself with sitting in my roadster and cooling my heels.
Willie had discharged the taxicab, and he remained inside for what must have been fifteen or twenty minutes.
When he came out, I knew that his mission, whatever it had been, was completed, and completed very much to his satisfaction. There is no one who is more prone to moods than the dope fiend, and no one who is more ready to show those moods by tricks of mannerisms and expressions.
When “Willie The Weeper” had gone into that speake he had been hopped up with morphine, and yet his manner had been uncertain. His clothes hung on his bony frame, and there was a nervous uncertainty about him.