Old Wallach immediately disowned his daughter, but that didn’t seem to worry anybody else. Pat went on pounding his beat, but, now that he was conspicuous, it wasn’t long before his qualities were noticed. He was boosted into the detective bureau. Old Wallach relented before he died, and left Althea both of his millions.
Pat took the afternoon off to go to the funeral, and went back to work that night, catching a wagonload of gunmen. He kept on working. I don’t know what his wife did with her money, but Pat didn’t even improve the quality of his cigars—though he should have. He lived now in the Wallach mansion, true enough, and now and then on rainy mornings he would be driven down to the Hall in a Hispano-Suiza brougham; but there was no difference in him beyond that.
That was the big blond Irishman who sat across a desk from me in the assembly room and fumigated me with something shaped like a cigar.
He took the cigar-like thing out of his mouth presently, and spoke through the fumes.
“This Correll woman you think’s tied up with the Banbrocks—she was stuck-up a couple of months back and nicked for eight hundred dollars. Know that?”
I hadn’t known it.
“Lose anything besides cash?” I asked.
“No.”
“You believe it?”
He grinned.
“That’s the point,” he said. “We didn’t catch the bird who did it. With women who lose things that way—especially money—it’s always a