"Did you send your nephew to him?" "Me?" Pennold's tones quickened in surprise. "I ain't seen him in a long while, an' I don't believe he even remembers old Jimmy; he was only a kid when Jimmy went up the river. What would I send Charley for, when I'd gone myself an' it hadn't worked?" It was evident to Morrow that the man he was interrogating was ignorant of Brunell's connection with the Lawton case, and he changed his tactics. "Tell me about Charley. You say you tried to do right by him." "Of course I did! Wasn't he my brother's boy?" Pennold hunched over the table, and continued eagerly: "Mame kept him clean an' fed, an' we sent him to public school, just like any other kid. But it wasn't no use. He had it in him to go wrong, without the wit to get away with it. He was caught pinchin' lead piping when he was sixteen, an' sent to Elmira for three years. Them three years was his finish. When he came out he'd had what you'd call a graduate course in every form of crookedness under the sun, from fellers harder an' cleverer than he'd ever thought of bein', an' he was bitter besides, an' desperate. There wasn't no chance for him then, an' he just drifted on down the line. I never heard of him turnin' a real trick himself, an' he never got caught at nothin' again, but he chummed in with the gang, an' he always seemed to have coin enough. I ain't seen him in more'n a year. The last I heard of him, he was workin' as a stool-pigeon an' snitcher for the worst scoundrel of the lot." "Who was that?" asked Morrow. Pennold hesitated and then replied with dogged reluctance. "I dunno what that's got to do with it, but the feller's name is Paddington, an' he's the worst kind of a crook--a 'tec gone wrong. At least, that's what they say about him, but I ain't got nothin' on him; I don't believe I ever seen the man, that I know of. He's worked on a lot of shady cases; I know that much, an' he's clever. More'n a dozen crooks are floatin' around town that would be up the river if he told what he knew about 'em; so naturally, he owns 'em, body an' soul. Not that Charley's one that'd go up--he's only in it for the coin--but I'd rather see him get pinched an' do time for pullin' off somethin' on his own account, than runnin' around doin' dirty work for a man who ain't in his father's class, or mine. He's a disgrace; that's what Charley is--a plain disgrace." Pennold's voice rang out in highly virtuous indignation. Morrow forbore to smile at the oblique moral viewpoint of the old crook. "What does he look like?" he asked. "Short and slim, isn't he, with a small dark mustache?" "That's him!" ejaculated Pennold disgustedly. "Dresses like a dude, an' chases after a bunch of skirts! Spreads himself like a ward politician when he gets a chance! He's my nephew, all right, but as long as he won't run straight, same as I'm doin' now, I'd rather he'd crack a crib than play errand boy for a man I wouldn't trust on look-out!"