He had the detective-politician-gambler’s habit of simulating an intense interest and enthusiasm which he did not feel, his face wreathing itself into a cheery smile the while his eyes followed one like those of a basilisk, attempting all the while to discover whether his assumed friendship was being accepted at the value he wished.
“Gee, sport,” he began familiarly in my presence, patting the burglar on the knee and fixing him with that basilisk gaze, “that was a great trick you pulled off. The papers’ll be crazy to find out how you did it. My paper, the _Globe-Democrat_, wants a whole page of it. It wants your picture too. Did you really do it all alone? Gee! Well, that’s what I call swell work, eh, Cap?” and now he turned his ingratiating leer on the county sheriff and the other detectives. In a moment or two more he was telling the latter what an intimate friend he was of “Billy” Desmond, the chief of detectives of St. Louis, and Mr. So-and-So, the chief of police, as well as various other detectives and policemen.
“The dull stuff!” I thought. “And this is what he considers place in this world! And he wants a whole page for the _Globe_! He’d do well if he wrote a paragraph alone!”
Still, to my intense chagrin, I could see that he was making headway, not only with the sheriff and the detectives but with the burglar himself. The latter smiled a raw, wry smile and looked at him as if he might possibly understand such a person. Galvin’s good clothes, always looking like new, his bright yellow shoes, sparkling rings and pins and gaudy tie, seemed to impress them all. So this was the sort of thing these people liked—and they took him for a real newspaper man from a great newspaper!
Indeed the only time that I seemed to obtain the least grip on this situation or to impress myself on the minds of the prisoner and his captors, was when it came to those finer shades of questioning which concerned just why, for what ulterior reasons, he had attempted this deed alone; and then I noticed that my confrère was all ears and making copious notes. He knew enough to take from others what he could not work out for himself. In regard to the principal or general points, I found that my Irish-Jewish friend was as swift at ferreting out facts as any one, and as eager to know how and why. And always, to my astonishment and chagrin, the prisoner as well as the detectives paid more attention to him than to me. They turned to him as to a lamp and seemed to be immensely more impressed with him than with me, although the main lines of questioning fell to me. All at once I found him whispering to one or other of the detectives while I was developing some thought, but when I turned up anything new, or asked a question he had not thought of, he was all ears again and back to resume the questioning on his own account. In truth, he irritated me frightfully, and appeared to be intensely happy in doing so. My contemptuous looks and remarks did not disturb him in the least. By now I was so dour and enraged that I could think of but one thing that would have really satisfied me, and that was to attack him physically and give him a good beating—although I seriously questioned whether I could do that, he was so contentious, cynical and savage.