“Come on, come on, Sergeant!” said Miss Genevieve, who with her sister had entered the lift by now. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Aw, the heck with it!” Gilligan surrendered, to Daisy’s relief. She didn’t want him delving into just how much Bridget had told her.
“Third floor, please, Kevin,” she said, joining the Misses Cabot.
“Going up!” he said in his usual jaunty manner and winked at her. The men crowded in after her and Kevin shut the gates with a double clang.
“Geez, I’m glad Larssen ain’t in here, too,” said O’Rourke as the laden lift creaked upward.
“The other detective?” ventured Lambert, squeezed into a corner. “Where did he go?”
“To get the mug book,” Daisy informed him, “so that you and I can try to identify the fugitive.”
“I never saw him! I swear, Sergeant, I never saw his face!”
“Then you won’t reckernize any of the shots, will you?” Gilligan grunted.
“Third floor,” Kevin announced.
The Misses Cabot’s sitting room was large enough to accommodate everyone easily, but by no means large enough to afford Gilligan any privacy he might have hoped for. Miss Genevieve, installed by the fireplace, listened avidly to every word as he took Daisy through her evidence again. This time he started with the overheard argument.
“Word for word, near as you can remember, including the rude word the dame used.”
“Cover your ears, sister,” advised Miss Genevieve, making no move to cover her own.
“‘You bastard,’” said Daisy, “‘I wouldn’t come back to you if you made a million dollars.’ Then Carmody said, ‘If I made a million dollars, you still wouldn’t squeeze one red cent out of me.’ More or less.”
“He said, ‘More or less’?”
“No, Sergeant,Isay that’s more or less whattheysaid.”
“More or less!” said Gilligan in disgust. “It can’ta been Carmody, though, it was this guy Bender he was blackmailing said that.”
“I still think it was Carmody,” Daisy persisted.
“Sure, more or less!” the sergeant jeered.
Daisy wanted to point out that, considering what Bridget had overheard, it made perfect sense for Carmody to have been the speaker. But she didn’t want to get the chambermaid into hot water. Besides, Gilligan had probably bullied the poor girl into changing her story to fit his preconceived notions.
Miss Genevieve put her oar in. “You believe Carmody was blackmailing Mr. Bender?” she asked.
“Sure thing!” said Gilligan. “There’s enough stuff inCarmody’s papers up in his room to worry Barton Bender plenty.”
“Such as?”
In the face of Miss Genevieve’s scepticism, the sergeant was too eager to prove his point to remember discretion. “He owns a whole lotta tenements, slum property, that he’s been paying off the city inspectors not to see they’re falling down. Not that that’s any big deal,” he added hastily.
The inspectors must be Tammany appointees, like Gilligan, Daisy guessed.
“His tenants don’t like it, they can go somewhere else.” Miss Genevieve’s sarcasm was obvious.
“Yeah, and he ain’t above encouraging ’em. Gotta gang of hoodlums he sends round to evict troublemakers, and he don’t care who gets hurt. Well, troublemakers, I got no beef with that, but them that’s a bit behind with the rent … The public don’t like reading about widders and orphans getting roughed up. That gets in the papers, the Police Department’s gonna sit up and take notice.”
“I should hope so!” Daisy exclaimed.
Gilligan shrugged. “It’s a free country.”
“Sister, may I remove my hands from my ears now?” Miss Cabot asked plaintively.
