32 Caliber Part 15

"But, Warren, the things she says are all so weird and mixed up.

Sometimes she talks of things that happened just recently and then again she babbles of things that took place a long time ago when we were kids. Once when the nurse came into the room, Helen began crying as though her heart would break and begged that we wouldn't think too harshly of her. Again she repeated over and over, 'He didn't do it--He didn't do it!'"

"Her other fears," I replied, "probably had to do with Woods. But that cry to Jim to 'Look out!' is a real clue and I'm going to sift it to the bottom."

"What are you going to do?" Mary demanded.

"I'm going to accuse Zalnitch of Jim's murder--going to accuse him to his face."

"Oh, be careful, Bupps! Nothing must happen to you!"

The tone she used, her sweet anxiety for my safety, went to my head and I reached out to take her in my arms, but with a little protesting gesture she stopped me.

"Please don't be foolish, Warren!" Then as she saw my spirits droop, she added, "Not till Helen is well."

CHAPTER TEN

I ACCUSE ZALNITCH

"Mr. Zalnitch is busy and can't see you."

The girl, evidently a stenographer or secretary, looked coolly competent in her white shirt-waist and well-made skirt. I was surprised to find a young woman of her evident education and refinement in the employ of such a man.

"Did you give him my message?" I asked.

"Yes. He said he was not interested."

I felt vaguely disappointed that my strategy had not worked. I had given the name of Anderson, and had represented myself as the head of the Steamfitters' Union of Cleveland, anxious for instructions on how to settle a labor problem in our local union. I had done this, feeling that if I gave my own name, he might refuse to see me. Apparently my alias was to have no better success.

"When will he be free, can you tell me?"

"I couldn't say," the girl answered. "He is very busy at present, but if you will come in and wait, perhaps he may see you later."

It seemed to me there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on the girl's face as I stepped across the threshold into the small waiting-room, but I hadn't a chance to observe more closely, for she turned her back on me at once and immediately resumed her typewriting.

The room in which I found myself was one of a dingy suite in an old warehouse that had been converted into a newspaper building to house _The Uplift_, a weekly paper, edited by a Russian Jew named Borsky and financed by Schreiber. It was a typical anarchistic sheet, and had been suppressed for a time, during the war. Opposite where I sat was a door from which the paint had peeled in places. This evidently led into Zalnitch's office, for I could hear the murmur of voices behind it. The rooms were ill-lighted and unclean, and it made me mad to see as nice a girl as the stenographer working herself to death in such dingy surroundings and for such a man as Zalnitch.

I watched her as she worked and marveled that any one could make her fingers go so rapidly. I noticed with admiration and dissatisfaction, that unlike my stenographers, she didn't have to stop to erase a misspelled word every two minutes. I wondered what salary Zalnitch paid her and if she would like to change employers.

"I hope you will pardon my interrupting your work--" I began.

"You're not," the girl responded, without even glancing up.

"May I ask if you are entirely satisfied with your employment here?"

"Why do you ask?" she inquired, stopping for a moment and fixing me with clear gray eyes.

"I am badly in need of a competent stenographer and I thought you might prefer working in a place where the surroundings are pleasanter and the pay probably higher."

She studied me a moment, as though card-indexing me, then having apparently decided that I was in earnest and not merely trying to flirt, that elusive smile again played about her mouth.

"You are the first steamfitter I ever met that found himself badly in need of a stenographer."

Caught! I bit my lip at my stupid blunder, but had to laugh in spite of myself.

"Your make-up is all wrong, Mr. Anderson--if your name is Anderson. I don't know what you are trying to do, nor why you picked out steamfitting as your mythical life-work, but I do know you aren't a detective."

This time the smile came out in the open. I liked her immensely. She might make an ally. She would at least know what had happened in the office during the last few days.

"Miss--?"

"Miller," she added.

"Miss Miller. I am a lawyer, and my sister is about to be accused of a terrible crime which she didn't commit. I think I know who did commit it, but so far I haven't been able to connect him definitely with the crime. I think you can help me. Will you?"

"What makes you think I can help you?" she asked.

"Because you are so situated you can observe the person I believe to be responsible for the crime," I replied.

Her gaze changed from pleasant questioning to indignant surprise. When she spoke her voice was coldly final.

"I think you have made a mistake in judgment of character. Please let me finish my work now."

"Miss Miller, please don't think for a minute that I--"

Behind me a door opened and, as I turned, I found myself looking into the wrathful eyes of a stunted little man with an enormous head. Any one who has once seen Zalnitch can never forget him. His wizened, misshapen body is a grotesque caricature of a man's, which, surmounted by his huge head with its bushy hair, makes him look for all the world like some scientist's experiment. In the doorway to Zalnitch's private office stood Schreiber, a heavy-jowled, unsmiling mastiff of a man.

"What do you want that you should be keeping my stenographer from working?" Zalnitch's voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "Get out of here! You have no business here. Get out!"

"Zalnitch, I came here to speak to you."

"Get out!" he screamed. "I won't talk with you. I have no time to waste, even if you have. I know who you are. You're the brother-in-law of Felderson, the blood-sucking millionaire who sent me to jail. I won't talk with you, do you hear?"

As he grew more excited I seemed to grow cooler.

"Zalnitch, I'm going to swear out a warrant against you for my brother's murder."

For a moment the little man blinked at me in amazement; then he threw back his head and laughed, a shrill, giggling squeak. With his fists he pounded his misshapen legs.

"You arrest me for his murder? Hee-hee! You hear, Schreiber? He is going to--to arrest me!"

Suddenly he stopped, as quickly as he had started.

"Go ahead! Arrest me! Try to send me to prison again. I'll make you sweat blood before you are through. You think I killed him--your brother? I wish I had. I'd be proud to say I killed him! You hear?

I wish I had killed him. I wish he were alive so I _could_ kill him."

The little monstrosity emphasized each of his staccato sentences by stamping a puny foot on the floor. His gloating over Jim's death was more than flesh could stand.