Chapter IX: Jack O’ Diamonds

With a wide grin upon his beefy countenance, Mr. Jake Hines stepped into the real-estate office of Walter K. Sammis. “Hello, little one!” he said cheerily to the girl who sat at a typewriter in the outer office. “We’re lookin’ very charming to-day.”

Dallas Worthington looked up from her work, and stared at him coldly. “I haven’t time to listen to compliments,” she said. “I’m very busy. And, besides, I told you the other day that I want you to keep out of here. You must be very thick-skinned, Mr. Hines, to persist in coming where you know you’re not wanted.”

The young man smiled affably.

“If I wasn’t thick-skinned, my dear young lady, I wouldn’t be a politician,” he remarked. “The way I figure it, love and politics are pretty much the same sort of game. In both cases a feller has got to keep pluggin’ ahead, refusin’ to take ‘no’ for an answer, in order to succeed.

“When I want a thing very bad,” he went on, “I always manage to get it. I keep right on tryin’ until I do, and if anybody is foolish enough to get in my way they get crushed as flat as if a steam roller had gone over ’em. That’s the kind of a live wire Jake Hines is, my dear.”

The girl laughed scornfully. “What a terrible fellow you must be!” she mocked. “If I thought you could be as unscrupulous in love as I understand you are in politics, Mr. Hines, I should feel very much afraid of you. But let me tell you that there is one great difference between love and politics: In love the best man generally wins; in politics, from what I have heard, the reverse is usually the case.”

As she spoke, she glanced at a solitaire diamond ring which flashed from the third finger of her left hand.

The young man looked at her admiringly. “Say, that’s pretty clever of you. It sounds like a couple of lines out of a book. You can take it from me, though, Miss Dallas, that the best man is goin’ to win in this case--and his name is Jake Hines.”

His gaze suddenly fell upon the diamond ring. “Hello!” he exclaimed. “That’s something new, ain’t it? You wasn’t wearin’ that the last time I was here.”

“Perhaps not,” replied the girl coldly; “but really I can’t see that it is----”

“I don’t have to guess twice as to where you got it,” broke in Hines eagerly. “It was that crook, Sheridan, of course. So that’s where the money went to!”

Dallas flushed angrily. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded, in astonishment. “What money? And how dare you refer to Owen Sheridan as a crook?”

Hines grinned broadly. “Because it’s the truth. I’m only callin’ him what everybody else will be callin’ him after the next edition of the evening papers comes out. That reminds me that I came here to tell you a piece of news which ought to interest you. I guess that you ain’t heard yet that your letter-carrier friend Owen Sheridan was arrested two hours ago at post office X Y.”

The girl turned pale. “Arrested!” she gasped. “For what?”

“Robbing the mails,” Hines replied cheerfully. “He swiped a gold watch from a registered package yesterday, and pawned it for forty dollars. They found the pawn ticket in his trunk up at the boarding house.”

Dallas stared at him incredulously.

“You don’t have to take my word for it, little one,” he said. “The evening papers will be on the streets soon, and you can read for yourself.”

“Or, if you can’t wait that long,” he added, with a malicious smile, “why don’t you put on that pretty picture hat of yours and take a run around to Branch X Y? The boys there will tell you all about Sheridan’s arrest. The inspectors nabbed him right in the post office when he returned from the noon delivery.”

Dallas leaned weakly against the tall back of her typewriter chair. She looked as if she were about to faint. “But, anyway, he isn’t--guilty,” she faltered. “He can’t be guilty!”

Hines smiled sardonically. “Oh, can’t he, eh? You won’t say that, my dear girl, when you’ve read all the particulars. The post-office inspectors say they’ve got a mighty strong case against him. They’re tickled to death to have nabbed him. There’s been lots of mail stolen from Branch X Y of late, and they think they’ll be able to put it all up to Sheridan.”

His glance fell again upon the diamond ring which glistened upon the third finger of her left hand. “Say, if I was you I’d take that off,” he said. “A nice girl like you don’t want to wear jewelry that was bought with the proceeds of a larceny. It ain’t decent. Take it off, and I’ll get you a better one. I’ll give you a diamond twice as big--if you’ll promise to wear it on the same finger.”

The girl’s eyes flashed scornfully. “Thank you, but I much prefer to keep this one,” she said. “It wasn’t bought with stolen money. That’s a falsehood. Owen bought it with money he’d been saving for a year. He told me so himself.”

“Oh, indeed!” sneered Hines. “And you mean to say you’re willin’ to believe a fairy story like that? If I’m a judge of diamonds--and I rather guess I am--that there ring must be worth a hundred dollars if it’s worth a penny. Do you suppose for a minute that a first-grade carrier could save that much out of a six-hundred-a-year salary?

“And, besides,” he continued, “I’ll tell you somethin’ that ought to convince you. There’s several men employed at Station X Y who can testify that yesterday morning Sheridan was going among ’em tryin’ to borrow thirty dollars. Would he have done that if he had a hundred dollars saved up?”

Dallas gazed at him in horror, unable to find words to refute this argument.

“Now, when did Sheridan give you that ring?” Hines inquired.

“Only last night,” she answered simply.

The politician smiled triumphantly. “Well, there you are! It’s as clear as daylight. We can prove that he was tryin’ to borrow money from his comrades yesterday at the post office; yesterday evenin’ he was so flush he could afford to buy a hundred-dollar ring. Where did he get the money? By pawnin’ the watch he stole, of course. What more proof could you want?”

“But forty dollars wouldn’t buy a ring like this,” declared Dallas hopefully. “If the watch was pawned for only that much, where did he get the rest of the money?”

“That’s easy,” retorted Hines promptly. “He may have had seventy when he tried to borrow the thirty. Perhaps he’d managed to save that much, or--what’s more likely--perhaps he stole the balance from other letters. Or it may be that he bought the ring on the installment plan--paid forty down with the money he got on that watch, and agreed to pay the rest later on. If that’s the case, the post-office inspectors will soon find it out when they interview the jeweler who sold him the ring.”

“But the post-office inspectors mustn’t know about this ring,” gasped Dallas apprehensively. “You’re not going to tell them, Mr. Hines?” Her tone was pleading.

“Well,” said Hines hesitatingly. “I really ought to, you know. It’s my duty as a citizen to give the authorities all the help I can. It would be wrong of me to keep it dark. The fact that Sheridan bought that ring only last night will probably be one of the strongest links in the chain of evidence they’ve got against him. It would be enough to convince any jury.”

He paused and looked at her eagerly. “But I ain’t got any wish to make things any harder for the young feller than they are already. He’s a crook, and I ain’t got any use for crooks; but I’d like to see him get off, for I know it would make you feel bad to see him in stripes. I’d do almost anything to prevent you from feelin’ bad, Dallas. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, little girl. You promise me to take off that engagement ring, and wear one that I’ll give you, instead, and I’ll promise to keep mum.

“And not only that,” he went on, “but if Sheridan’s convicted, as he probably will be, even without this bit of evidence, I’ll do my best to save him from goin’ to jail. Us politicians has a lot of influence with judges, you know. I think I can manage to get him off with a suspended sentence. Is it a bargain, Dallas?”

“It is not!” she replied indignantly. “I’ll keep the ring I have. I am still confident that it was bought with honest money. Go ahead and tell the post-office inspectors what you please, Mr. Hines. The chances are that Owen Sheridan has already told them about the ring himself. I feel quite sure that he has no wish to conceal the fact that he gave it to me. He’s not a thief, and he’ll be able to explain how he got the money.”

Hines shrugged his shoulders. “You’re very foolish,” he said, as he backed toward the door. “Take it from me, you’re doin’ your carrier friend a bad turn. However, the other part of my offer still stands. When Sheridan’s convicted, I’ll use my political pull to get him off with a suspended sentence, provided you’ll agree to shake him and marry me. Think it over, little one. It’s a mighty generous offer. You ought to be glad to marry an honest man instead of a crook.”

He walked up the avenue, whistling gayly, and ten minutes later entered the headquarters of the Samuel J. Coggswell Association, and climbed the stairs to the room marked “Director’s Office--Private.”

He was the only member of the club who was privileged to enter that room without first going through the formality of knocking on the door.

As he now closed the door behind him, turned the key in the lock, and stepped across the soft, thick Persian rug to the mahogany roll-top desk at which sat Samuel J. Coggswell, the latter swung around in his desk chair, and confronted him eagerly.

“Well, Jake?” he said.

“Everything’s went fine, boss,” replied Hines, with a grin, seating himself beside the desk. “Your scheme worked like a clock from start to finish. Sheridan was pinched at half past twelve, and is in the jug at this minute.”

Boss Coggswell’s face lighted up. “Good!” he said. “That is, I mean to say: What a pity that one so young should turn out to be such a bad egg! To think of a nice-looking, clean-cut young fellow like that having to go to jail almost makes me weep, Jake--almost makes me weep.”

There wasn’t a ghost of a smile upon the district leader’s face as he uttered these words. On the contrary, his expression was so sad, so virtuous, that Hines might have believed that his master actually meant what he said if he hadn’t known what he did, and if he hadn’t noticed that all the time the boss was talking his ears were wiggling rapidly--a sure sign that Old Nick was at work inside that cunning brain.

“Let this be a lesson to you, Jake,” Coggswell went on. “Let this be a warning to you, my boy--for you, too, are very young--never to do anything dishonest.”

“Or never get gay with Boss Coggswell,” chuckled Hines, looking at his chief admiringly. “You’re a wonder!”

“And how does the young man take it?” inquired Coggswell, after a long pause.

“Very calmly so far,” replied Hines. “He can’t believe that he’s in any danger of being sent away. Says it’s a frame-up, and that he won’t have any trouble in proving his innocence.”

“Poor, misguided youth!” murmured the boss.

“He’s got ex-Judge Lawrence to defend him,” Hines went on. “As soon as the judge heard that he was under arrest, he went to police headquarters and offered to take the case for nothing.”

“And what does the judge think?” inquired Coggswell, somewhat anxiously, for he knew that Mr. Sugden Lawrence, ex-justice of the supreme court, was one of the most able lawyers in the country.

Hines chuckled. “I got it from a friend at headquarters that the judge, havin’ heard all the evidence, seems to think that he’s goin’ to have a pretty hard time provin’ his client’s innocence.”

A relieved smile came to Samuel J. Coggswell’s face. “The judge is a smart man,” he said. “I agree with him.”