next afternoon, when Rodman Wyatt dropped in at the bone yard of the Messenger for a bit of a chat with John Lomax, that cynic had more than a bit of news for him.
“Here's a tip on your Lockwood story, old scout,” Lomax drawled, in a voice as dry as his own bloodless self. “Mellish picked it up in a Pi Alley beanery this morning.”
“Nothing like Pi Alley for tips,” smiled Wyatt. “Any place where chauffeurs loaf and chew the rag is a regular hotbed of 'em. Every garage and cheap beanery in town ought to have dictaphones connecting with police headquarters in Pemberton Square. What's this particular tip?”
“The old blueblood seems to be completely off his handle. That damned spiritualist bunk artist has him going, for fair!”
“What's Veazie putting over now?”
“Big-time stuff, I should judge.” Lomax scratched his bald spot. “He's been up to Lockwood's, pulling some kind of telepathy flubbydub, and using an African witch doctor's skull to give him a line on the long lost daughter. Hot dog, eh?”
Wyatt laughed.
“You don't mean the old boy would fall for any such—”
“Don't I, though? He'll eat it alive! If you were half the writer you think you are, you'd know that half the world's crooked and the other half foolish. Lockwood's in the foolish class. He's Mr. Lamb and the prof is Mr. Wolf. What's the answer? I'm asking you!”
“H-m-m-m! Looks as if Lockwood was in for rather a thin time, doesn't it? But is this straight dope?”
“Straight as a string. The maid up there spilled a whole mess of beans to the chauffeur. He's her sweetie, I hear, and a bad nigger all around. I bet all Coontown knows by now that there's hoodoo stuff being pulled up there.”
“By gad, there's the makings of a story in this, all right!” Wyatt's eye kindled with professional enthusiasm. “So you think Veazie's going to locate the daughter—for a consideration?”
“He's located her already, from what's buzzing in the beaneries.”
“Has, eh? Where?”
“Charleston, South Carolina; and—”
“You don't suppose that old moron would go all the way down there on any such wild-goose chase?”
“Hell, it won't be a wild-goose chase, you simp! Ill bet you a feed at Thompson's Spa that Veazie's got the daughter planted there already.”
“That's right—he might have. Great stuff! Looks to me as if I'd better dig out and hunt the chauffeur, pretty ”
“Intelligent young man!” gibed Lomax. “You've got a right hunch, for once in your pure life. Lockwood and the prof are going to chercher la femme. It's up to you to chercher le chauffeur, and do it now! Here's your hat. What's your hurry?”
Inside of an hour Wyatt had located the garage where Lockwood kept his limousine. It was not at the rear of the Lockwood mansion, there being no room for a private one there, but was a public establishment down on Charles Street, at the bottom of the hill. A little judicious questioning and a few cigars paved the way to the information that the chauffeur's name was Andrew Todd, that he roomed out in the Roxbury district, on Marble Street, and that “he's 'most always hangin' around some pool room or another, mornin's.”
“Odd he doesn't live at Lockwood's,” thought Wyatt; “but I guess the old man figures that one of the colored persuasion is enough to be under his roof at once.”
The day being drizzly, blustering with east wind, and raw with February chill, there seemed slight probability that Lockwood would go driving. Wyatt betook himself to Marble Street, in the heart of the Roxbury negro section, and after some two hours' scouting ran Andrew Todd to earth in the Black Eagle Pool Parlor, on Shawmut Avenue.
Andrew, he saw, was a “high yaller” with a cast in his right eye and a sinister expression. That Lockwood should intrust his life to such a type rather surprised Wyatt.
“If this baby doesn't shoot the needle, or sniff snow, I never saw the symptoms of it,” Wyatt judged. “Lomax had it right when he called him a bad nigger. However, that's not my funeral. The worse he is, maybe the more he'll spill.”
Andrew, at the moment having no partner for a game, was engaged in inhaling cigarette smoke, idly knocking pool balls around a badly scarred table, and humming to himself, on the tune of “It Ain't Goin' to Rain No More”:
He abandoned his vocalism to answer a question from Wyatt.
“No, sir, I don't know nothin' about no skull,” he affirmed in an exculpatory manner. “What skull are you talkin' about, anyhow? How would I know about a skull? There ain't no skull, none at all, at no house I works at!”
