Part 2
“They haven’t told me all the details of what they think,” Curly remarked, “but they’ve got hold of that quarrel the Kid and me had this afternoon. I don’t know how much the boys heard--I don’t think they heard anything I said--but I was declaring myself to him after I found out him and her were going out to supper together.”
“They were?” exclaimed Pres. “They didn’t.”
It was Curly’s turn to exhibit astonishment.
“She told me they were going to,” he said. “If she hadn’t---- Tell you the truth, judge, she and me had a date for supper tonight and when you come up on the Kid and me, that-a-way, she had just a few minutes before turned me down and said she was going with him--told me with him present. And while I didn’t so much care right at that minute about her going with me, thinking of her going out with him got me mad.”
“Why didn’t you want her to go with you? If she didn’t, were you going to meet the Florrine lady?”
“Oh, judge! Her name isn’t going to get into it, too, is it?”
“How are you going to stop these police digging up all sorts of things?” Pres countered. “And if Miss Florrine can alibi you----”
“But she can’t,” Curly protested. “I haven’t seen her since this afternoon at the rodeo and then I didn’t see her to speak to.” He hesitated a second, then said: “We don’t want to drag any nice lady’s name into this, judge, but between you and me I was looking for her, Millie having turned me down and all that. But she wasn’t where she and I met last night. So I looked round a while and then went home and went to bed.”
* * * * *
He explained further. “Being kind of upset, one way and another, I forgot to clean my pistol like I’d intended to. Red Peeks had used it for the show, you know. And the police, finding it had been fired--telling ’em about Peek’s firing it made no difference, because it wouldn’t be no dirtier if I had fired it afterward----”
“I know,” interrupted Campbell. “You didn’t call on Miss Florrine at her home, I take it.”
“She thought her folks might object, me being a cowboy and all,” Curly confided. “So we met at one of these cabaret dance places--the Monaco is the name of it.”
“The Monaco, eh? Who did you see there you knew--not last night when you were with Miss Florrine, but tonight, when you couldn’t find her?”
“Nobody,” declared Curly with obvious sincerity. “Not a soul. I went in and looked around and she wasn’t there, so I bought me a drink for manners, and pretty soon I went out and looked in a couple other places and then I beat it home to the hotel.”
“Was there anybody in the alley when you came out of the Monaco?”
“Alley?” Curly queried. “What alley?”
“Where the side door is.”
“I never noticed any side door on any alley. Me, I went in at the front--tonight and the other two times I’ve been there. I went there the first time with Pearl--I mean Miss Florrine----”
“Got real well acquainted for three days, didn’t you, son? Quite a few folks must have noticed it, one place and another. And it never occurred to you, I s’pose, that when Millie said she wa’n’t going to supper with you, it might be because she thought prob’ly you’d rather be out again with the new girl. I don’t know that, but I don’t guess it’s a bad shot in the dark.
“Girls are fussy that a way about dividing their time with new ladies,” he went on. “Millie didn’t tell me either that or anything else about it all, but I gathered from something she said that you had trompled on her feelings. That didn’t stop her saying she knew you didn’t kill him, though.”
“Who do you suppose did, judge?”
“No more idea’n the man in the moon,” Pres had to admit. “But we aim to do some investigatin’ between now and sunup, me and this friend of mine that’s a detective. I see you’re wearing the usual red handkerchief.”
Curly’s fingers went to it.
“What’s that got to do with things?”
“I dunno,” the ex-ranger replied. “I dunno as it’s got anything to do with ’em a-tall. I only happened to notice it. Have you happened, escortin’ her round to one place and another, to meet any of Miss Florrine’s friends?”
“I don’t remember any names. Just folks we met there in the Monaco and another dance place we went into.”
“All seem to be well-dressed, up-to-date folks?”
“Yes. Look here, judge, there ain’t no reason to go ringing her or her friends in on a mess of trouble like this. Her folks are kinda old-fashioned and don’t like her to go round to dance halls where it’s lively----”
“Lots of old folks are that a way. Did you say they were father and mother both?”
“I didn’t say. I don’t know as I ever heard her mention. What difference does it make? I didn’t find her tonight.”
“That’s so; so you didn’t. Well, I’m sorry to leave you here, son, but I’ve got to. We’ll be doing all we can.”
“A habeas corpus and reasonable bail and----” Curly began, but Campbell shook his head.
“This ain’t Texas. Up in this country they don’t fix reasonable bail for homicide. But keep smilin’. Your friends are all on the job--especially Millie.”
“Say, judge,” said the cowboy with some embarrassment. “I been kinda foolish, maybe. These new folks I met are right nice folks, but I didn’t really---- I don’t s’pose anything can be done to square it, but sitting here I’ve been thinking that our own kind o’ folks is our own kind o’ folks. If Millie could sort o’ forgive----”
“Curly,” said the older man, “Millie’s daddy and me were friends as long as he lived--such good friends that she’s been callin’ me ‘uncle’ ever since she was old enough to talk. I aim, when she gets married, to do anythin’ an old-timer like me can do to see she gets a fairish sort of husband.
“Personally,” he continued, “I’d rather she took a kid that had made a few kinds of fool of himself and got over it than one that city glitter was going to get some time after he married, maybe. Millie’s got a heap o’ sense. She might see it the same way--and then, again, she mightn’t, dependin’ upon whether the fool kid acted like he’d got over it or not.”
* * * * *
“Listen, judge,” said Curly. “From the minute she ’lowed she was going to eat with Jack Marling, I’ve been looking at things different. I don’t s’pose she could understand that starting right out to try to find another lady was a sort of--a sort of getting square, as you might say.”
“I don’t suppose she could--not right away,” Pres replied. “But time and good fruits of repentance has given her confidence in many a hawse that was a right bad bronc when she first forked him. So long, son! Don’t go to frettin’ too much--about anything.”
Out on the street again, Campbell said to Graney:
“What sort of place is that Monaco Cabaret?”
“Bum!” the detective answered. “But prosperous. The gang that hangs out there has plenty money, these days.”
“Bootleggers among ’em, maybe?”
“And hijackers and a few other things. And sports that like to travel with ’em.”
“Just between ourselves, did you ever hear of a young lady named Pearl Florrine?”
“‘The Red Pearl?’” Graney replied promptly. “Some stepper!”
“Red?”
“Fits her two or three ways. For one thing, she always wears it. Another, she trains with Reds, anarchists, or communists or sump’n--I don’t pretend to know just which kind they belong to. Her regular married name is Ricotti, although Angelo don’t go by it.”
“Angelo?”
“Her husband. He calls his last name ‘Rich.’ ‘Quick’ Rich is how the gang knows him. Got it--though we’ve never been able to convict him--by his speed in pulling a gat.”
“A gunman?”
“Sure. What’s all this got----”
“Where is he?”
“He’s been out o’ town the last week or so, but I seen a report from one of our railroad station men that he got back, unexpected, about six o’clock tonight--last night, I mean; it’s morning now.”
“Mr. Graney,” promised Campbell with confidence, “you take me to Angelo Ricotti, and think up a good way to get him mad and talkative, and I’ll give you a laugh on Mr. Detective Moore that he won’t get over till Texas is annexed back to Mexico.”
* * * * *
Briefly, he went into details. Unhesitatingly, enthusiastically, Detective Graney agreed with him.
It was a little past three o’clock when they found Quick Rich in the back room of a hang-out whose sentry they and the policeman on the beat had succeeded in suppressing without any alarm being given. One other man was present and Campbell seized and disarmed him while Graney jammed a pistol into Rich’s midriff and took from his coat a .38 automatic with its barrel powder stained.
“It’s no good, Quick,” the detective said, when the handcuffs were on. “We know all about the killing. The Pearl turned you in.”
“So she was there, was she?” raved Angelo. “If I’d seen her, I’d ’a’ made a double job of it. Well, I got him anyway, the whelp! Waving his hand at her every day in the grand stand in front of five thousand people--and her waving back! And the nerve to take her out and make a fool of me to the whole gang! And Pearl--just because we had some words--kidding him along, with his big hat and cowboy clothes and red handkerchief!”
“You identified him by his red handkerchief, of course, just as he was heading into the side door of The Monaco,” Pres suggested mildly.
“Sure I did! They told me he was the only one of that wild-West crowd that ever wore one. Who are you?”
“Mr. Campbell,” said Detective Graney unctuously, “is a guy from Texas that used to be a Roughrider. And him and me is going to do some more roughridin’--with a certain know-it-all gent to be rode--along about court time in the mornin’.”
“Moore was right at that, in a way,” murmured the ex-ranger as the patrolman left to ring for the patrol. “‘Look for the woman;’ that’s as good a rule in some killin’s in Texas as it is here in the East. And I followed his hunch and did the same thing. But down in my part of the country we use words some different. When we say women, we usually don’t mean ladies.”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the September 20, 1925 issue of The Popular Magazine.]