F course you'd be pulling off a thing like that when I'm on duty and not with you for the fire works!" Dennis mourned, when later still that afternoon McCarty presented himself at the engine house and reported his recovery of the emeralds. "Whatever put you in mind of that Bodansky again?"
"When I was going over the whole case in my head from the very start I saw a kind of a picture before me of that young crook slinking along to his job and it came over me all of a sudden that 'twas not by accident he picked on the Creveling house. I only wonder I never thought of it before." McCarty shook his head. "'Twas easy enough to make him talk when I once got him going, and then I took Martin and Yost and trailed up Third Avenue looking for the little jewelry shop of my new friend Kosakoff. We found it all right and him mending watches behind his counter as meek and respectable appearing as the next one! He had a gold pair of spectacles on himself, down on the tip of his nose, and a full set of white whiskers that would do credit to Santa Claus, and not the sharpest dick in the business would have taken him for Bronheim's right-hand man.
"He made out to be hard of hearing at first and acted the scared, bewildered old innocent to the life, knowing nothing about anything and having his business ruined and his good name took away from him because of some mistake of the hard-hearted police, but he sang a different tune when I opened up on him. I took a chance and told him that Spanish Lou and Diamond Harry had been run in and were down at headquarters telling all they knew, and then I sprung it that we were looking for those emeralds. He swore by all the little fathers of Russia that he never saw them nor heard of Crawford, but when Martin pulled out the warrant and the bracelets he saw that the game was up and made a grab down behind the counter. Then Yost—"
"And where were you while them two lads were making the pinch?" inquired Dennis.
McCarty grinned.
"I got to him before he reached his gun," he remarked modestly. "I took a glass case with me that was filled with cuff-links and such, and there was a bit of a commotion around the place for a while, but Kosakoff was willing to talk when he woke up after the little nap he decided to take, sudden, when he first hit the floor. Some more of the boys had come over from the station house to keep the crowd back and we got him into the room at the rear of the shop, and made him come across.
"He knows who 'Crawford' was all right, though he won't admit it, nor that he had the least suspicion the emeralds were the same the papers were making such a holler about when the girl was held for trial and jumped her bail. It seems that a swell who gave the name of 'Foster' had sold him a pearl necklace and some other junk and when 'Crawford' came he said 'Foster' had recommended him there. Creveling had only meant to borrow those emeralds from his wife, not steal them, for he arranged with Kosakoff to hold them for three months and agree to sell them back to him for thirty thousand; he must have been in a tight squeeze, for he only got two-thirds of what they were worth, and then dug down for ten thousand for Ilsa's bail when his wife was determined to send her up."
"Well, why wouldn't she be?" Dennis asked. "Did Hill's wife make sheep's eyes at you that you can see only her side of it? It was tough luck, of course, her being innocent and all, but Mrs. Creveling didn't know that and you can't blame her for wanting the thief punished."
McCarty shook his head.
"I'm not so sure, Denny, that 'twas a matter of principle with her so much as protection. I've got an idea that after she started the rumpus about the robbery and called in the police she got more than a suspicion of the truth, but 'twas too late to back down from the stand she had taken and Ilsa was the goat. Mrs. Creveling is a hard woman, with the hardness that comes only to the proud when something has made them suffer and they don't take it right. There's some that tribulation makes gentle and forbearing and some that it turns to stone and she's the last sort. I'm thinking her husband broke her heart and if it hadn't been for her pride she'd have kicked him out long ago. 'Tis not love for him now that's made her so set on finding his murderer, but other women have been the cause of her suffering and she suspects some woman is at the bottom of his being shot. As long as all this notoriety and scandal have been brought down on her anyway, she's going to find that other woman and make her suffer too, or I miss my guess."
"And she had never a word of regret for all the harm she'd done Ilsa when you told her the truth?"