Gentleman Called Read Online Free

her…”
    “The evening, not the night,” Adkins interrupted.
    “Do you remember it?”
    “Quite distinctly. It was a full moon when I drove home.”
    “I don’t suppose the man in the moon is an unfriendly witness,” Jimmie said, “but I doubt that he’ll be much help. Do you suppose anyone else could testify to seeing you that night?”
    Adkins shook his head. “I am solitary in my habits. I doubt it.”
    “Did you and Miss Thayer exchange any mementos of your affections for each other?”
    Adkins who had been standing before the fireplace whirled about on Jimmie. “What?”
    Jimmie repeated his question.
    “What, may I ask, suggests that, Mr. Jarvis?”
    Jimmie shrugged, unable to understand the turn that seemed to have given his client. “I was trying to find evidence of cupidity on the part of Miss Thayer. I should think she might have tried to get a ring or some token she might use as a pledge from you.”
    Adkins flashed a smile, a beamish boy, Jimmie thought. “Forgive me, Jarvis. I mistook you to be questioning my integrity. As a matter of fact she did ask me for a token. It came out of our conversation one evening, I think—she asked me if she might have my army ‘dog tag’ to keep for sentiment.”
    “And did you give it to her?” Jimmie said, leaning forward.
    “Yes. I had a devil of a time finding it, but I managed.”
    “And does she have it now?”
    “Oh no. It came back when we parted.”
    “Could you tell me the circumstances under which you parted?”
    “We quarreled one night over something trivial—and likely distasteful. A rather vulgar girl, Daisy, when one got to know her. As a matter of fact when I was leaving she told me then she was in a position to—to do what she has just done.”
    That, Jimmie thought, was a very roundabout way of saying that Daisy had told him she was pregnant. Squeamish as well as beamish, Mr. Adkins.
    “What did you say to her then, Mr. Adkins?”
    The little man threw up his hands. “I told her to do it, by all means. I assumed it to be a wishful sort of bluff.”
    “Have you any idea why she wanted your army ‘dog tag’?”
    “At the time it was, well, like an intimate bit of apparel. Or so I thought. A bit of animal, there is in that girl, Jarvis.”
    “There is indeed,” said Jimmie, “the vixen. A piece of vital information came to her by that tag: your blood type. And if, as you say, you are not the father of the child, she must have shopped to your specifications.”
    Adkins made a round mouth of shocked surprise. “For a…a…”
    “That’s right,” Jimmie said. “If you’ve been framed, it has been done in proper style. I don’t suppose you knew any other young men of her acquaintance at the time?”
    “Oh, no. I was not competitive,” Adkins said.
    “And would anyone else know of your having given her your ‘dog tag’?”
    Adkins thought about that. “My sister, Miranda, would know of my having looked for it at the time. It was she had it, and no small business was it to get it from her either. She’s rather possessive about me, you see. But naturally I did not tell her for whom I wanted it.”
    After threshing through, but not out, other incidents of Mr. Adkins’s relationship with the woman, Jimmie tried to put the alternatives in the case before his client. “We may in the end have to pay something to keep it from going to trial,” he said. “Would you consider doing that?”
    “I would, but Mama would not. As a matter of fact, Jarvis, this whole thing seems to be giving her an inordinate amount of pleasure. It seems to have rejuvenated her, and to tell the truth, I had rather counted on it to have the opposite effect. She has become a naughty old woman. And I am just afraid it is you who will have to deal with her. After all you are her lawyers, Wiggam and all of you.”
    Adkins seemed to be going to pieces at the very mention of his mother. It confirmed Jimmie’s suspicions of the woman. He gave a great