LESTER LEITH surveyed his valet through a film of blue cigarette smoke. His thought-slitted eyes were brittle hard with interest.
“Found him dead, eh, Scuttle?”
The valet nodded his ponderous head in vehement affirmation.
“Dead as a doornail, sir,” he said.
Lester Leith’s eyes became speculative. He inhaled a deep drag of smoke which made the end of the cigarette glow like a coal in the half darkness beyond the floor lamp.
There followed a silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames in the fireplace. The valet, poised on the balls of his feet, like a man about to strike a knockout blow, surveyed his master as a cat might stare at a mouse. And the flickering flames made little red reflections which danced in the staring eyes.
But Leith’s eyes were focused upon the twisting spiral of cigarette smoke which eddied upward from the end of the cigarette.
“Dead, eh?” he mused.
“Yes, sir.”
“Murdered, of course, Scuttle?”
The valet wet his thick lips with the tip of a nervous tongue.
“Why do you say ‘of course’?” he asked.
Lester Leith made a deprecatory gesture with the hand which held the cigarette, and the motion sent the blue smoke column tumbling about in wavy fragments of drifting haze.
“According to your statement, the man was an international gem thief. He’d arrived on the boat with a big shipment of stolen gems, or there’s every reason to believe he had them.
“The customs had a spy planted on the boat, a man who acted as room steward. He’d found out that a small steamer trunk, made along the lines of a miniature wardrobe trunk, had been cleverly designed with a false side that would slip out when one unscrewed the lock. And the smuggler evidently realized the steward had made the discovery, for he lured him down into a passage back of the baggage room, knocked him unconscious, bound and gagged him.
“Then the smuggler landed, got his ingenious trunk through customs and went to the Palace Hotel. You tell me that the steward regained consciousness, managed to free himself and telephoned the police and the customs authorities. They rushed to the Palace Hotel and found their man dead. It’s a natural assumption that he had been murdered.”
The valet nodded his head in oily and emphatic agreement.
“Well, sir, whether it’s the natural assumption or not, the man was murdered. There was a knife driven right through his heart.”
Lester Leith blew a contemplative smoke ring, watched it as it drifted upward and disintegrated.
“Humph,” he said at last, “any sign of a struggle?”
The valet’s voice lowered, as though he was about to impart a secret.
“Now we’re coming to the strange part of it, sir. The man had been tied in a chair, bound hand and foot, and gagged, and then he’d been stabbed, straight through the heart.”
Lester Leith’s eyes became level-lidded with concentration.
“Yes?” he said, his voice like that of a chess player who is concentrating on the board, “and the trunk?”
The spy’s voice became a dramatic whisper.
“The trunk, sir—was gone!”
And the last two words, coming at the end of an impressive pause, were hurled forth like a denunciation.
Lester Leith’s eyes lost their look of glittering concentration, became lazy-lidded with mirth.
“Come, come, Scuttle, there’s no need to be so dramatic about it. You’re like an amateur elocutionist at a charity entertainment, reciting ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew.’ Of course the trunk was gone. Obviously, the man was murdered by some one who wanted the jewels.”
The spy wagged his head solemnly.
“No, sir, you don’t understand. The police were right on the man’s heels. He hadn’t been in the hotel fifteen minutes when the police arrived.”
Lester Leith let his forehead crease in a frown of annoyance.
“Well, what of it? Obviously, fifteen minutes was time enough for a murder. It should have been time enough for a robbery as well. Hang it, Scuttle, what’s the big idea? You’re as mysterious about this as an old hen with a choice morsel of gossip. Why the devil shouldn’t the trunk have gone?”
The valet answered with the faintest touch of triumph in his voice.
“Because, sir, every piece of baggage that’s checked in to the Palace Hotel is listed on their records, and there’s never a piece of baggage that goes out that isn’t checked against that list. They had too much trouble with baggage thieves and with guests who slipped their baggage out of the back door. So they installed a baggage checker.
“Now that trunk of Cogley’s was distinctive. It was striped so it could be easily identified in customs. The baggage checker remembers it being taken into the hotel, and he’s positive it didn’t go out. And the bell boys and the freight elevator man are all certain it didn’t go out. The Palace Hotel is run on a system, and it’s easier to get money out of the safe than to get baggage out without a proper check!”
Leith yawned.
“Very possibly, Scuttle. The Palace Hotel has several hundred rooms. It’s obvious that the murderer simply took the trunk into a vacant room where he could work on it at his leisure.”
The valet snorted.
“You must think the police are fools, sir!” he exclaimed, and there was a trace of bitterness in his voice. “All of that was checked by the police. They realized that possibility within five minutes, and made a complete check of the place. It was done without any confusion or ostentation, of course, but it was done. A bell boy or a house detective or a police officer, under one excuse or another entered every single room in the hotel within twenty minutes of the time the murder was discovered. What’s more, every nook and cranny of the hotel was searched.
“And the trunk vanished. It simply evaporated into thin air. It went in, but it didn’t stay in. Yet it didn’t go out. There isn’t a single clew to the murderer, nor to the trunk!”
And the spy smirked at Lester Leith with that exaltation shown on the face of a pupil when he asks a question which baffles the teacher.
Lester Leith shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, well, there’s an explanation somewhere. Trunks don’t vanish into thin air, you know. But why bother me with it? I’m not interested.”
“I know, but you’re always interested in unusual crimes.”
“Was, Scuttle, was. Don’t say that I am. I admit that I formerly took a more or less academic interest in crimes. But that was before Sergeant Ackley got the idea I was beating the police to the solution of the crime and robbing the robber.”
The valet’s voice was insinuating.
“But this is such a very, very interesting crime, sir. After all, there’d be no harm in thinking out a theoretical solution, would there?”
Lester Leith did not answer the question directly.
“What other clews were there, Scuttle? How did the police decide that the murderer had entered?”
“Up the fire escape and through the window.”
“The fire escape?”
“Yes, sir. The room was locked on the inside, the key was in the lock. The window opened on the fire escape and it had been jimmied. The marks of the jimmy showed plainly in the wood, and there were traces of prints on the fire escape, rubber heels.”
Lester Leith blinked his eyes rapidly, twice.
“Rubber heels!”
“Yes, sir.”
Lester Leith tossed away the stub of the cigarette, took out his cigarette case, absently abstracted another cigarette and tapped it upon the silver side of the container.
“Funny that the murderer could have worked so quickly, and it’s strange that of all the rooms in the hotel the man would have secured one that opened on the fire escape. Of course, though, that solves the mystery of the trunk. The man took it down the fire escape with him—the murderer I mean.”
Long before Lester Leith finished, the valet was wagging his head in negation.
“No, sir, no, sir. If you’ll only take enough interest in the case to listen to me, I’ll explain it all. In the first place, it was the most natural thing in the world for Cogley to have a room which opened on the fire escape. The murderer had made all the arrangements. In the second place the missing trunk couldn’t possibly have gone through the window. The window is small, and the trunk, although smaller than the average wardrobe trunk, is, nevertheless, too big to …”
Lester Leith, hitching himself to an upright position in the reclining chair where he had been lounging, interrupted his valet.
“The murderer made arrangements for the room!”
“Yes, sir. You see, a Mr. Frank Millsap telephoned the hotel and said that he wanted two rooms, that they had to be adjoining and on the fourth floor. He seemed quite familiar with the hotel and suggested rooms four hundred five and seven. He said the name of the party who would occupy four hundred and seven was Cogley.
“Of course, it’s all apparent now. He wanted to get this man, Cogley, in a room which had the fire escape opening from it. But the request didn’t seem unusual then. When Cogley arrived from the boat and registered he was shown at once to the room. The clerk didn’t ask him about the reservation, he was so certain that …”
Suddenly Lester Leith chuckled.
“That would be the police theory,” he said.
“That is the police theory,” said the spy with dignity.
Lester Leith raised an eyebrow.
“Indeed!” he muttered. “You seem remarkably well posted.”
“I only read it in the newspaper!” said the spy hastily.
“I see,” murmured Lester Leith, “and who was this Frank Millsap?”
“Probably a fence, a man who deals in stolen jewels on a large scale.”
Lester Leith lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, then extinguished the match with a smoky breath and smiled. There was something indulgent about that smile.
“The loot, Scuttle?”
“There were at the very least five magnificent diamonds. The customs detective was certain of that. And then there were some odds and ends of miscellaneous thefts, amounting in all to rather a goodly sum, but the most valuable part of the loot consisted of the diamonds.”
Leith nodded, a meditative, speculative nod.
“Are you interested, sir?” asked the spy anxiously.
Lester Leith sighed.
“In spite of myself I’m becoming interested.”
“Ah-h-h-h!” breathed the spy, and his tone contained the satisfaction of a salesman who has just secured the name of the customer on the dotted line.
“Yes,” resumed Lester Leith, “I can almost think of a possible solution, Scuttle. That is, you understand, an academic solution. And I say ‘almost,’ because I am afraid to let my mind complete the thought and actually secure a solution.
“This confounded Sergeant Ackley is so obsessed of the idea that I beat the police to the solution of crimes, simply by reading of them in the newspaper … bah! The overzealous, pigheaded boor!”
Lester Leith took the cigarette from his mouth to snort his contempt, then added, scornfully:
“As though a man could sit on the sidelines, read of crime in a newspaper and then beat the police to a solution, in spite of all the advantages the police have. If I were a policeman, Scuttle, I’d hang my head in shame if I were ever driven to make any such confession of incompetency.”
The valet followed the conversational lead.
“But you yourself have admitted that it’s sometimes possible for one to reach what you refer to as an ‘academic solution’ through a study of the newspaper reports of crime.”
“Certainly,” acquiesced Lester Leith. “Many times the facts necessary to solve a crime are all in the hands of the police, and in the hands of the newspaper reporters. They simply don’t fit those facts together—don’t seem capable of fitting them together.
“It’s like one of these jig-saw puzzles. There may be all the parts in one’s hands, but fitting each part so it dovetails with the corresponding part to make a complete picture is something else.
“What I was commenting on, Scuttle, was the attitude of the police. I would be ashamed to admit such a degree of incompetency as the sergeant admits when he accuses me of doing what he thinks I have been doing.”
The valet nodded, impatiently.
“Yes, sir. But I’ve always admired your academic solutions immensely. And you can confide in me quite safely. I’d sooner lose my life than breathe a word of anything you say, sir—so, if you have any ideas about a solution—er—an academic solution of the present crime, sir, I should like to hear them.”
Lester Leith yawned.
“You’ve given me all the facts, Scuttle?”
“Yes, sir. All the facts the newspapers have published.”
“Let me see the papers.”
“Yes, sir.”
The valet passed over the newspapers. Lester Leith read them through. His eyes were clouded with thought, his forehead furrowed in concentration.
“So the police have been watching every one that checked out of the Palace Hotel since the crime, eh?”
“Yes. That is, the police have felt that there might have been an inside accomplice, due to the disappearance of the trunk. If that were the case, it would undoubtedly be some transient guest, some one who checked into the hotel merely in order to help in the commission of the murder. And so they’ve been keeping an eye on those who checked out. Nothing offensive, but just a check-up to see who they are and what they do for a living.”
Leith nodded again. His eyes were narrowed now.
“Very interesting about the woman, Scuttle.”
“What woman, sir?”
“The kleptomaniac. Didn’t you read about her? The one who can’t remain away from department stores and who always tried to pick the pockets of gentlemen friends?”
The valet moved his massive shoulders in a gesture of impatience.
“Bah!” he exclaimed. “That’s just an ordinary case. She can’t be interested in this murder mystery. That’s what we’re interested in. That’s where the missing loot is!”
Lester Leith raised sternly disapproving eyes.
“Scuttle! Are you insinuating that you’d like to solve this murder case and find the missing loot?”
“Just an academic solution,” muttered the spy.
Lester Leith let his lips expand into a grin.
“Well, if I were getting an academic solution, and, mind you, it would have to be academic, I’d get the kleptomaniac and a bloodhound-canary and after that there’d be nothing to it.”
The spy blinked twice, as a man blinks who has received a heavy blow on the head, and hasn’t enough sense left to know exactly what has occurred.
“A bloodhound-canary!” he said.
Lester Leith nodded, casually.
“In a big cage, Scuttle. And I should say that the cage should be kept covered with canvas or a very heavy twill.”
The sigh of the police spy was much like a gasp.
“And the kleptomaniac. Whatever would she have to do with a solution of the case?”
Lester Leith arched his brows in well simulated surprise.
“But she’s a thief!”
“Well?” demanded the spy.
“And,” proclaimed Lester Leith, “there’s an axiom to the effect that it takes a thief to catch a thief. And one can’t disregard axioms, Scuttle. You know that as well as I do—or should.”
The valet shook his head as though he had taken a long dive through very cold waters and was seeking to catch his breath as well as to clear his vision.
“A kleptomaniac and a bloodhound-canary,” he said. “I never heard of any such thing.”
Lester Leith nodded.
“You’ll get accustomed to the idea after a while. It’s really very logical, Scuttle.”
The valet grunted.
“The thief to catch the thief,” he said. “But what in heaven’s name is a bloodhound-canary?”
Lester Leith lowered his voice.
“The bloodhound of the air, Scuttle.”
“Huh?” said the valet.
Lester Leith nodded.
“It’s the rarest breed of bird in the world, Scuttle,” he said. “I’m not at all surprised you’ve never heard of it. In fact, there’s only one specimen in this country. It belongs to a friend of mine who lives in the city—he brought it back from a dangerous trip to the tropics.
“The chief trait of a bloodhound-canary is that it can trail things through the air—other birds, or airplanes, or falling bodies—anything that goes through the air. That’s due to its wonderful ability to recognize scents. We have canine bloodhounds to trail things across the ground. The rare bloodhound-canary does the same thing in the air a bloodhound does on the ground.”
The valet looked thunderstruck, but for a moment he was speechless. Lester resumed.
“And since this trunk vanished into thin air,” he said. “I’d say a man would need the help of my friend’s valuable bloodhound-canary to trail them—”
The valet, his face purple now, whirled on his heel.
“Very well,” he gritted. “You’ve had your little joke. I tried to give you the facts you wanted because I thought you’d be interested, and this is all the thanks I get? Being made the butt of a joke! And rather a poor joke—if you will pardon me for saying so, sir!”
And he strode toward the door which led from the room.
Lester Leith watched the man with laughing eyes. The spy was huge, some six feet odd of hulking strength, and he moved with a ponderous stealth, like a stalking elephant. Lester Leith, on the other hand, was closely knit, feline, well formed, quick in his motions.
“Scuttle,” he called.
The spy paused, his hand on the door.
“I wasn’t making sport of you,” drawled Lester Leith. “And, since you seem inclined to doubt my statement, I’ve decided to show you just how a theoretical solution could be worked out with the aid of this wonderful canary and a kleptomaniac.
“Would you mind getting a cab, going to a bird store and getting me a bird cage? I shall want a perfectly huge cage, Scuttle, one that has a diameter of at least four feet. And I’ll want a cover for it. Have the cover tailored to fit smoothly—something made of dark cloth so that the canary will get lots of rest. It’s very delicate, you know.
“I’ll attend to getting the kleptomaniac myself, Scuttle. And I’ll see my friend and borrow his flying bloodhound. And you may start now. Of course you won’t breathe a word of this to Sergeant Ackley.”
And Lester Leith arose, flipped the cigarette into the fireplace and strode toward his bedroom, leaving a gaping spy standing awkwardly, one hand on the door knob.
“But,” stammered the spy, “I don’t understand.”
“No one asked you to, Scuttle,” said Lester Leith, and slammed the bedroom door.
Bessie Bigelow glanced up at the man who sat in the taxicab, faultlessly tailored, wearing his evening clothes with an air of distinction.
“The bail,” she said, “was five grand.”
Lester Leith nodded, as though five thousand dollars was distinctly a minor matter.
“Plus about a thousand to pay the department store,” went on Bessie Bigelow.
Lester Leith nodded again.
Bessie reached over and placed a hand on his coat sleeve.
“Now listen, guy,” she pleaded. “I’m a good scout but I’m a shoplifter and a pickpocket, and I ain’t nothing else. Don’t get me wrong. You come along and play Santa Claus for me, but that ain’t going to get you no place.
“I’m a crook, all right. I’ve worked the department stores and pulled the pickpocket stuff for a long time. I ain’t no kleptomaniac. Kleptomaniac, my eye! That’s a line of hooey the lawyer thought up for the judge, and the newspaper boys glommed onto it and made a big splurge about the beautiful woman who was in jail because she just couldn’t keep her hands to home.”
Lester Leith lit a cigarette. He hadn’t even glanced at the blonde who was rattling off the conversation at his side.
“Listen,” insisted the blonde, “if you’re playin’ Santa Claus with the idea that you’re gettin’ a blond lady friend you got another guess comin’. And if you’re one of those settlement workers that always come around givin’ the girls a chance to reform, you got two more guesses comin’.
“I ain’t goin’ to be a sweetie, and I ain’t goin’ to reform. I’m spillin’ it to you straight because you got a chance to go back an’ glom the coin you put up for bail and to reimburse the department store. I’ve done lots o’ things in my life, but I ain’t never obtained no money from a gent under false pretenses. I’m a girl that shoots right straight from the shoulder, that’s me.”
Lester Leith nodded.
“Very commendable, your frankness,” he muttered.
The girl snorted.
“Listen, guy, what do you want?”
Lester Leith turned to face her.
“I want your help.”
“In what?”
“In convincing the police that I am innocent of certain crimes they try to pin on me.”
The girl’s blue eyes widened until they seemed like China saucers.
“Now that,” she said judicially, “is a new one!”
Leith nodded.
“And what do I do?” she asked.
“You go to a hotel with me, and we get rooms, separate rooms, but rooms which adjoin,” said Lester Leith.
The girl yawned.
“Pardon me,” she said wearily.
“For yawning?” asked Lester Leith.
“Naw,” she drawled, “for thinking your line was a new one. From there on, big boy, I know it by heart.”
Lester Leith shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I’m afraid you don’t.”
She shrugged her shoulders, shook her head, the smell of the jail disinfectant still clinging to her hair.
“Well, go on,” she said, “and don’t hesitate in the rough places. Spill it and get it over with. Exactly what is it you want?”
“I want you to occupy this room, probably as my sister or niece,” said Lester Leith, “and I want you to come and go as you please. You will probably be followed by police, but that’s a minor matter. And I want you to curb your illicit activities as much as possible. Use a certain amount of discretion as to the pockets you pick. That’s all.”
The girl’s eyes were narrow and hard.
“Listen,” she said, “I hate a damned mealy-mouthed hypocrite. Now you been pretty decent to me. So come clean. If that’s all, say so, and if it ain’t, say so.”
“That,” said Lester Leith, “is all.”
She sighed.
“Well,” she said, “I sure gotta hand it to you. If that’s all, you’re sure a new one.”
“Nevertheless, that is all,” said Lester Leith. “Only I want to warn you that the police will be watching you. If you do exactly as I say they can’t convict you of anything. If you fail to follow instructions you may get yourself into rather a tight fix.”
Bessie Bigelow nodded.
“Guy,” she proclaimed, “I like you, and I like the way you came across with the bail money. I’m going to do it.”
Lester Leith’s nod was rather impersonal.
“Thanks, Bessie,” he said.
The cab rumbled on in silence.
“Well,” said Bessie, rather ruefully, “if we’re going to be pals, I may as well start shooting square by giving you back your things.”
Her hand disappeared down the front of her dress, came out with something that glittered in the reflected street lights.
“Your watch,” she said.
Lester Leith took it unsmilingly.
“Thank you, Bessie.”
She regarded him with a puzzled expression.
“Didja know when I lifted it?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Within ten seconds after I got in the cab,” she said. “I sized you up as a settlement worker that was goin’ to pull a lot o’ hooey and wind up by having to be slapped to sleep, so I made up my mind I’d get mine while the gettin’ was good.”
Lester Leith returned the watch to his pocket.
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
Her next sigh was almost a groan.
“And your wallet,” she said. “It sure feels fat.”
She passed him over his wallet.
“Take that after the watch?” asked Lester Leith with a note of respect in his voice.
“Naw,” she said. “I took that while you was talking with the bail clerk, right after you put up the six grand … listen, guy, you ain’t lost nothing but a thousand bucks, that’s what the department store took to square up the charge account. The rest of the money is simply bail, and they can’t make that shoplifting charge stick. They can’t identify the goods. I’ll stick right around and demand trial, and they’ll dismiss the case. Then your five grand comes back.”
Lester Leith muttered a word of thanks.
“And if you let me work that hotel we’re goin’ to, I’ll have your thousand back for you inside of a couple of weeks.”
Lester Leith shook his head.
“No, Bessie. While you’re with me, your play is to be the sad, penitent kleptomaniac who is taking medical treatments from a psychiatrist, having, however, occasional symptoms.”
“Okay,” she said. “You shoot square with me and I’ll shoot square with you. Where we headed for now?”
“The Palace Hotel,” said Lester Leith.
“The Palace, eh?”
“Yes. Ever been in trouble there?”
The young woman knitted thoughtful brows.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “There was a rap there a coupla years ago, but I beat it.”
“That’s fine,” said Lester Leith. “I’d hate to cause the hotel any embarrassment. Why don’t you reform and go straight, Bessie?”
She stared at him as though he had made some astoundingly new suggestion.
“Now, that’s an idea!” she said. “The only trouble with it is that I’ve heard it somewhere before!”
And then she laughed, a low, purring laugh.
“Why don’t you?” insisted Lester Leith.
“Baloney,” she said. “Why should I? It’s a crooked world. I’m enjoying myself, le’me alone. You promised you weren’t going to try and reform me. Gimme one of those cigarettes. The Palace, eh? That place gives me a pain. They try to put on lots of dog so they can stick you on the bill.”
The cab drew up in front of the hotel.
Lester Leith assisted the girl to the ground. He indicated some three bags to the doorman, stalked into the lobby. The clerk bowed obsequiously and spun the register, handed him the desk pen.
“I believe,” said Lester Leith, with dignity, “that you have a reservation for me?”
“Yes?” asked the clerk. “What was it?”
“The name,” said Lester Leith, “is Frank Millsap. I wired about rooms. I was to have 407 reserved for me, and 405 for a friend of mine.”
And Lester Leith scrawled a signature across the hotel register.
“Frank Millsap,” he wrote.
Had he slapped the clerk in the face with a wet towel, that individual could not have shown greater astonishment or dismay.
“Mill … Millsap … Frank Millsap … 405!” he stammered, then ceased speaking to gasp for air, no sound whatever coming from his pale lips.
“Yes,” snapped Lester Leith, “Millsap, and I fail to see any reason for excitement or comment. I made the reservation over the telephone several days ago.”
The clerk took a deep breath, gripped the sides of the counter.
“But Mr. Cogley came here …”
“Mister Cogley!” snapped Lester Leith. “Who the devil said anything about a Mister Cogley? The room was reserved for Miss Cogley, my niece. And I want to warn you that she’s suffering from a certain type of nervous disorder and any commotion is quite likely to raise the devil with her nerves. Now get busy and assign us to those rooms.”
The clerk was gaping.
“You mean to say …”
“I mean to say,” snapped Lester Leith, “that I have come here to secure treatment for my niece, that she’s highly nervous, and that I wanted rooms on the fourth floor because she prefers the fourth floor, and that I wanted rooms back from the street to be away from the noise. I secured the assurance of the manager that 405 and 407 would be reserved, and I want those rooms.”
The clerk nodded.
“Just one moment,” he said. “I’ll have to consult the manager!”
“Very well. Consult him then!” snapped Lester Leith. “While you’re doing that I’ll bring in the rest of my baggage, a very valuable bloodhound-canary, and I don’t want him subjected to any undue jar or noise. He’s very delicate. In fact I’ll carry the cage myself!”
He stalked to the door, where a second taxicab had drawn to the curb. Inside that cab was an enormous cage tightly covered with a black cloth which had been tailored to fit over the bars like a glove.
Lester Leith pushed aside the curious doorman, the eager bell boys, gently lifted the big cage from the cab, raised it to his shoulder, carried it into the hotel.
From the interior sounded little fluttering noises.
Sergeant Arthur Ackley, bull-necked, grim-jawed, sat at the battered desk at headquarters which had been the scene of many a stormy interview.
The side of the desk bore scratches made with the nails of police shoes where they had been elevated from time to time in moments of relaxation. The surface was grooved with various charred lines, marking the places where cigarettes had been parked and forgotten.
Across this desk, facing the sergeant, was Edward H. Beaver, the man who worked under cover as valet for Lester Leith, and upon whom Leith had bestowed the nickname of Scuttle.
“I know a canary has got something to do with it,” Beaver was saying. “It sounds goofy, and it is goofy. A bloodhound-canary! But when you stop to think it over, it ain’t so goofy after all. He’s always getting some fool thing that don’t make sense, and then using it to …”
He broke off as the telephone shrilled its summons.
Sergeant Ackley grunted as his vest pressed against his diaphragm in the process of leaning over the desk, then scooped the telephone to him, raised the receiver and grunted an inarticulate sound into the instrument.
He twisted the cigar to one side of his mouth, sighed wearily.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
There was a moment of silence, then a metallic, rasping sound from the receiver.
“Yeah!” growled Sergeant Ackley. “Him talkin’ right now. Spill it!”
The receiver rattled like a tin can tied to the tail of a fleeing canine. Sergeant Ackley gradually hitched himself bolt upright. His eyes popped wide open. The sagging lips caused the end of the cigar to droop.
“Huh?” said Sergeant Arthur Ackley.
The receiver rattled in repetition of its almost hysterical sounds.
Sergeant Ackley cleared his throat, by a conscious effort tightened his lips and raised the cigar back to its former angle of belligerency.
“Okay. Now get this straight. Play right into his hands. Let him get away with it, with anything. And rush ten of the boys right down there. Let ’em register as guests. Stick a dick on the elevator. Put one of our men at the desk. But keep the whole thing under cover. Don’t let him think there’s a plain-clothes man in the place. Get me? Let him think he ain’t tailed.
“But keep a watch on his door, and keep a watch on that fire escape. Don’t let him make a move that ain’t reported. And if he ever tries to leave that hotel have one of the boys pretend to be a sucker from the sticks that’s had his pockets picked. See?
“Let him make a squawk and there’ll be a man in uniform always within call. Let them hang the pickpocket rap on this guy for a hurry up search. Get me? This is once I ain’t taking no chances.
“Now get busy!”
Sergeant Ackley slammed the receiver back on the hook, banged the telephone down on the desk and glowered at his undercover man.
“The crust of the damned fool!” he exploded.
“What’s he done now?” asked Beaver.
“Gone to the Palace Hotel and claimed he was the Millsap that telephoned in the reservation for Millsap and Cogley, and that the broad he’s got with him is his niece.”
Beaver wet his lips.
“You mean the kleptomaniac?”
“That’s the baby. He put up the bail and squared the department store charge account for a thousand bucks, cash money. Then he shows up at the hotel and says her name’s Cogley and that she’s suffering from a nervous trouble.
“The clerk stalled him along while he telephoned in, and now I’m going to get enough men on the job to cover the case right. I ain’t going to let that damned, supercilious, smirking …”
Beaver interrupted.
“Has he got the canary?” he asked.
“He sure as hell has. He’s got the thing all wrapped up in a cage that’s big enough for an eagle.”
Beaver furrowed his brows.
“What the devil does he want with a canary? And why does he insist it’s a ‘bloodhound-canary’?”
Sergeant Ackley waved his hand, the gesture of one who brushes aside an unimportant detail.
“Forget it. He’s just got that canary to kid us along. He wants to sidetrack us. Concentrate your attention on the main problem, Beaver. We gotta find out what he’s doing in that hotel … Not that we don’t know. It’s simple as hell. What I mean is that we gotta do like the Japs do with their pelicans.”
Beaver’s eyes widened.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Sergeant Ackley laughed.
“Plenty. They starve the birds and then take ’em out on their boats. They clamp a ring around their necks to keep ’em from swallowing. The bird sees a school of fish and flies over, swoops down and scoops up a whole beakful of ’em, an’ a pelican’s beak holds a lot. Then the bird tries to swallow ’em, but the ring keeps the fish right where they belong. The Jap pries the bird’s bill open, spills out the fish, and sends him away after more fish.
“Now this guy, Leith, has been lucky. I ain’t giving him credit for any great amount of brains, but for a lot o’luck. He’s managed to dope out the solution of a few crimes from having the facts told to him, and he’s always thrown us off the trail by kidding us along with a lot o’ hooey.
“This time he ain’t going to kid nobody except himself. He’s got the hiding place of those diamonds figured out, and he’s going there to cop ’em off. Well, I’m going to just stick the ring around his neck, and let him cop. Then when he tries to swallow, he’ll find that we’ll just pry his jaw open an’ make ’m spill the goods.
“See? He’ll be just like the trained pelican. He’ll go get the stuff for us, then we’ll shake him down and take all the credit for solving the case. After that we’ll cinch the stolen goods rap on this guy, Leith, and fry the murderer. And if we can’t find the murderer, we’ll just hang the whole works on Leith, frame him for the murder, and fry him.”
Beaver sighed.
“It sure sounds nice the way you tell it, Sarge, but I wish you’d find out what he’s goin’ to do with that there canary before we get into this thing too deep. Somehow or other I got a hunch that canary is goin’ to be the big thing in this case …”
Sergeant Ackley’s face turned red.
“That’ll do, Beaver. You go ahead and obey orders, and don’t ball things all up trying to get intellectual. You leave the thinkin’ to me. You do the leg work.
“That’s where you’ve always gummed the works before. You let this guy drag some red herring across the trail, and you go yapping off on that side trail while Leith gets his stuff across and ditches the swag.
“Now I don’t want to offend you, but I’m in charge of this case, and I’ll do the thinking. You beat it on back to Leith’s apartment, and telephone me in a report whenever anything breaks. I’m going to play this hotel end of it my way.”
The undercover man started to say something, thought better of it.
“Yes, sir,” he said, saluted, turned on his heel and walked out.
Lester Leith stared around him at the hotel rooms.
There was nothing to indicate that one of these rooms had been the scene of a grewsome murder. Hotels have press agents who thrust forward certain favorable facts and keep others very much in the background when it becomes necessary.
The newspaper accounts of the Cogley murder had only mentioned the location of the crime as having been in a “downtown hotel.” They had been indefinite as to the name and location of this hotel and none of the accounts had so much as mentioned the floor on which the room had been situated, let alone the number of that room.
People have a superstitious dread of sleeping in a bed in which a murder has been committed, and some persons shun a hotel merely because a crime of violence has been committed under its roof.
The girl stared at Lester Leith with uncordial eyes.
“You’re leavin’ that connecting door unlocked?”
“Yes. I want to get into this room without going down the hallway.”
She sneered.
“Well, don’t walk in your sleep.”
Lester Leith bowed.
“I am a sound sleeper. When you are in the room you can lock the door. But when you are absent I want to be free to come and go.”
“And you want me to do my stuff?” asked the girl.
“Meaning?” inquired Lester Leith.
“Copping watches and that sort of stuff?”
He nodded.
“But you don’t want me to do anything with ’em, hock ’em or anything like that?”
Lester Leith shook his head vehemently.
“No. I want you to give everything you take to me.”
The girl sighed, half turned, slid the hem of her dress up along the silken contour of a shapely limb.
“Hell,” she said, bitterly, “somebody’s always taking the joy outta life. Here it is!”
And she tossed a hard object to the hotel dresser, an object that rattled, that rolled and sent forth sparkles of scintillating fire.
Lester Leith stared at it.
“Where did that come from?”
“The hotel clerk’s necktie, of course,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d pass up anything like that, did you?”
Lester Leith stared at her in appreciative appraisal.
“Good work! Did you get anything else?”
She shook her head.
“I lifted the bell hop’s watch, but it was a threshing machine movement, so I slipped it back again.”
Lester Leith smiled, crossed the room to the telephone.
“Can you shed any tears?” he asked the young woman.
She shook her head.
“Never shed a sob in my life. I never regretted anything I did bad enough. All I ever regretted was gettin’ caught, an’ that was somethin’ somebody else did.”
“Can you look meek and regretful?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. Get gloomy then, because I’m getting the clerk up here.”
Lester Leith took down the telephone receiver.
“The room clerk,” he said.
There was a pause, then the click of a connection.
“A most unfortunate occurrence,” muttered Lester Leith apologetically into the transmitter. “Please come up right away to room 407. I’ll explain when you get here. Come at once.”
He hung up the telephone, turned to the girl.
“Pull out the handkerchief and droop the eyes,” he said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, hung her head.
“Okay, but don’t put it on too thick, or I’ll giggle.”
There was a knock at the door.
The clerk, white faced, wide-eyed, stood on the threshold. Back of him was a lantern jawed individual with pig eyes. Out in the corridor, two men were engaged in a casual conversation of greeting, exclaiming that it was a small world after all, shaking hands with a fervor that was too audibly exclamatory to be entirely genuine.
The clerk stepped into the room.
“Meet Mr. Moses,” he said, nervously.
Lester Leith bowed.
“The house detective, I take it?”
The clerk cleared his throad nervously, but the big form of the man with the lantern jaw barged forward.
“Yeah,” he growled, “I’m the house detective, if that means anything.”
Lester Leith was suavely apologetic.
“So glad you came, so glad we can have this little conference. I’m so sorry it all happened, but so glad we can discuss it privately.
“You see my niece is suffering from a nervous disorder. In short, gentlemen, she’s a kleptomaniac. Her hands simply will not let other people’s property alone. She’s particularly hard on department stores.”
The house detective glowered at the girl who sat on the edge of the bed, head hung in shame, her hands clenched.
“Klepto—hell!” he exclaimed. “What you mean is that she’s a shoplifter. I’ve heard of lots of these here cases of nervous troubles, but they’re all the same. They used to be just plain sneak thieves until some slick lawyer hired a crooked doctor, and then they all became kleptomaniacs. Now, don’t you try to pull nothing in this hotel, because …”
“No, no!” exclaimed Lester Leith. “You don’t understand. The girl has everything she could wish for, everything that money can buy. She simply has an irresistible impulse to steal. Now what I wish to do is to assure you that if there is anything taken from any of the guests of the hotel I will be financially responsible. I will make good the loss.”
The house detective sneered.
“Daddy, eh!” he said.
Lester Leith paid no attention to the interpolation.
“I had intended to have my niece examined by the best brain specialist in the city. But unfortunate symptoms have developed which make me realize that there is an acute attack developing, and I cannot reach the brain specialist. I think, perhaps, your house physician would be able to handle the situation until we could secure a specialist.”
The clerk fidgeted, looked at the house detective.
The house detective yawned, visibly and audibly.
“Bushwa!” he said. Then, after an interval, added: “Baloney!”
Lester Leith extended his hand toward the clerk.
“Permit me,” he said.
He opened the hand.
“Good God!” exclaimed the clerk, his hand darting to the knot of his tie, drifting down the glistening silk, “That’s my stickpin!”
Lester Leith was smilingly suave.
“Exactly,” he said.
The detective got his feet in under him, half raised his body from the chair he had been occupying, then settled back. The clerk clutched at the diamond pin.
“Now,” purred Lester Leith, “perhaps you will be so good as to call the house physician.”
The clerk and the detective looked at each other.
The house detective carefully twisted his head to one side and closed a surreptitious eyelid.
“I think,” he said, “I got a friend who’s a specialist on this sort of a case. I’d better get him. The house sawbones ain’t no good for anything except liquor prescriptions … And,” he added, ruefully, “he ain’t no good for those anymore. His book’s used up.”
Lester Leith arose, bowed politely.
“As you say, gentlemen. I will endeavor to keep my niece under restraint until the physician arrives. I hope I don’t have to confine her in an institution.
“In the meantime, remember that I will be responsible for any loss which occurs in the house. And perhaps it would be advisable to notify the occupants of the adjoining rooms that there is an … er … unfortunate case located here. They could be asked to report promptly on anything they might find … er … mislaid.”
The clerk sniffed.
“And spread it all over the hotel that we got a criminal stuck in one of the rooms! Not much. We’ll go get this brain specialist, and then you get out!”
The house detective yawned, stretched, and as he stretched, managed to move his leg so that his toe gently kicked the shin of the indignant hotel clerk.
“Now don’t go talkin’ that way,” he soothed. “People can’t help it when they get that kleptomania, any more than they can help sleep-walkin’ or coke-snuffin’.”
Leith flashed him a grateful glance.
“I’m certain,” he muttered politely and deferentially, “that you’re an expert in your line, Mr. Moses.”
“You said it,” said Moses, and nodded his head to the clerk.
“C’mon,” he said.
They shuffled out. The door closed. The girl raised an unpenitent face and grinned.
“Now what?” she asked.
Lester Leith regarded her gravely.
“If you had to build an ironclad, copper-riveted alibi, what would you do?”
She puckered her lips, narrowed her eyes in thought.
“Absolutely ironclad?” she asked.
Leith nodded.
The girl grinned.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve pulled a stunt once along that line that ain’t never been improved on. I let a cop who was pretty well up in the big time date me up. He was married. It would have been a swell alibi if I’d had to use it; only I didn’t have to use it.”
Leith took out a wallet.
“I think,” he observed, “it would be a fine time to start building an alibi.”
She took the bill he handed to her, let her eyes widen, whistled, thrust the money down the top of her stocking, and grinned.
“I like,” she said. “You’d rate a good-by kiss if I hadn’t just smeared my mouth all up pretty for the clerk. As it is, you’re a good guy. G’by.”
“Good-by,” said Lester Leith.
The girl turned to go.
She went out the door, as graceful as a slipping shadow. The hallway seemed to be unduly active. Three men were strolling along. A fourth man was arguing with a porter about the cost of transporting a trunk.
Lester Leith smiled.
He locked the door, walked through room 407 to room 405, took a small leather packet from his pocket, extracted a tiny drill. With this drill he bored a very small hole in the panel of the communicating doorway which led to room 403.
When this hole was completed, Lester Leith applied his eye, saw that the room was dark and vacant, nodded sagely, and took additional tools from the leather case.
After some ten seconds the bolt twisted and the communicating door swung open.
The room showed that it had been occupied for some time. The furnishings were those of the stock hotel bedroom, but there were individual touches, photographs on the walls, a pennant or two, a sofa cushion, and a special reading lamp.
Lester Leith noted them, noted also that the clothing had been unpacked from the suitcases and trunk and placed in the closet of the room, the drawers of the bureau. The massive trunk was presumably empty, but it was tightly locked.
Lester Leith nodded, as though he was finding exactly what he had expected, and set to work. He dragged the bulky trunk into room 405, then across the floor into room 407. He pulled the clothes out of the bureau drawers, took the suitcases, then reading lamp, the sofa cushion, even the photographs on the walls. He denuded the room of every single item of individual furniture.
Then he retired once more to room 405, locked the communicating door, applied his eye to the peep hole he had gimleted in the panel, and waited.
He had something over an hour to wait.
His room was dark, save for such light as came through the windows, light which ebbed and flowed with the regularity of clockwork, marking the clicking on and off of some of the intermittent electric signs which were on the roofs of adjoining buildings. The noise of the side street came to his ears in a confused roar. The blare of automobile horns, impatiently trying to move traffic more expeditiously, the muttered undertone which marks the restless motion and conversation of hustling throngs, all blended into an undertone of sound.
Lester Leith remained at his post, silently observant.
His vigil was at last rewarded.
A key clicked in the lock of 403. The door swung open, showing light from the corridor, the silhouette of a chunky man. The door closed. The bolt clicked, and the light switched on.
Lester Leith could see the look of stunned amazement on the face of the man in the adjoining room as his horrified vision appraised him of what had happened.
The man was in the early forties, alert, broad shouldered, self-sufficiently aggressive. But now his self-sufficiency melted away from him. His face writhed with conflicting emotions. He glanced back of him at the door through which he had just entered, then at the doorway where Leith watched.
For some ten seconds he stood motionless, apparently adjusting himself. Then his hand slipped beneath the armpit of his coat, abstracted a snub nosed automatic, and he tiptoed toward the door behind which Lester Leith crouched.
Softly, silently, he twisted the knob of that door, and found that the door was locked. Then he stepped back, letting light once more come through the small hole Leith had bored.
The man walked on the balls of his feet to the telephone in the corner of the room, took down the receiver.
“Room clerk,” he rasped, and his voice sounded with the strain of his feelings.
That voice was rising in a vibrant emotion which was akin to nervous hysteria as he recounted his troubles to the hotel clerk. Lester Leith could not catch all the words, but he could hear the tone, and gather the import of the conversation.
Then the man in the adjoining room hung up the telephone, crossed swiftly to the window, pulled down the shade, went to the door, made certain it was locked, looked at the transom, making sure it was closed.
Then he secured a chair, stood on it, and unscrewed the brass screws from one of the wall lighting fixtures. The fixture lifted out, disclosing a cunningly designed hiding place. In that hollowed out hiding place, at one side of the spliced electric wires which conveyed current to the wall fixture, was a chamois bag.
The man opened this bag with fingers that quivered.
Then he gave an exclamation of relief. For several seconds his greedy eyes stared down at the bag, and the contents of the bag, sending scintillating shafts of light upward, were, in turn, mirrored in the man’s eyes, until the reflections seemed to turn the eyes to cold fire.
Then the man hastily closed the bag, pushed it back into its hiding place, paused for a moment’s consideration, and then replaced the screws in the wall fixture. He got down from the chair, moved it so that its back was against the wall, unlocked the outer door, stepped into the corridor, and closed the door, locking it from the outside.
Lester Leith worked with swift rapidity.
He opened the communicating door, glided into the opposite room, pulled the chair back to the place directly underneath the wall fixture, untwisted the screws with a rapidly geared screwdriver, opened the chamois bag.
There were many gems in that bag, gems that sparkled and glittered. But Leith was careful to take only a certain limited number, a very few, but those few the best. Then he closed the bag, pushed it back into its recess in the wall, screwed back the light fixture, replaced the chair and slipped from the room into his own room, number four hundred and five.
He thrust a cautious head out of the window.
The fire escape stretched down the side of the building like a black ribbon. Three men were seated in the alley underneath that fire escape, shooting craps. Another man sprawled on the seat of a truck that was parked a few feet to one side.
Leith abandoned the window.
He tiptoed to the door of his room, pulled up a chair, climbed on the chair, stared out through a crack in the transom.
He could see a section of the hallway.
Two men, wearing the uniform of bell-hops, yet seeming strangely mature for bell boys, were walking up and down, their manner that of sentries on duty. A burly porter, who would have never been taken as a porter save for the cap he wore, was seated on a trunk. A well dressed man with alert eyes was standing well down at one end of the corridor.
There was no possibility of escape from that room, undetected.
And, as Leith stared, three purposeful men emerged from the elevator and moved toward his room. They were the clerk, the house detective, and the self-sufficiently belligerent man who occupied 403.
Even as Leith stood there, they started to knock on the door, and, as they knocked, the two mature bell boys crowded forward, the porter jumped down from his seat on the trunk, and the gimlet eyed man at the end of the hall moved forward on rubber soled feet.
Lester Leith stepped from the chair, moved into swiftly purposeful action.
What had been a polite knock was repeated with more noise. Then it was repeated again with two fisted emphasis.
“What is it?” called Lester Leith in the blurred tones of one who has been aroused from slumber.
“Open this door,” said the hoarse voice of the house detective. “We want to talk with you. This is Sam Moses, the house man.”
“Oh,” said Lester Leith. “Just a minute.”
And he jumped on the bed to give a creaking noise to the springs, then let his feet thud to the floor.
Yet it was several seconds later that he opened the door.
His hair was tousled. His eyes were blinking. His collar was wrinkled and his coat was off. There was an air of dazed perplexity about him.
“… lay down for a minute,” he explained sheepishly. “Must’ve dropped off.”
He sucked in a prodigious yawn.
Sam Moses lowered his broad shoulders and pushed past Lester Leith into the room. Directly behind the detective, walking with a certain catfooted belligerency of manner, his right hand hovering near the lapel of his coat, his eyes narrowed, anxiously alert, came the occupant of 403. The clerk was a tardy third in procession.
One of the mature bell boys cleared his throat suggestively.
The house detective turned, called over his shoulder:
“Come in here, Joe.”
The bell boy pushed eagerly forward, forcing the clerk into a quicker step.
Lester Leith seemed more awake now.
“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously.
The house detective switched on the light, looked the room over.
“Where’s the broad?” he asked.
“You mean my niece?” asked Lester Leith.
The house detective sneered.
“To hell with that line,” he said. “You know who I mean. I asked where the broad was. She went out. Did she come back?”
It was the bell boy who answered.
“Naw,” he said, “she didn’t come back.”
“Certain?” asked the house detective.
“Sure,” said the bell boy.
Lester Leith let his eyes widen.
“Why,” he exclaimed with a simulation of ingenuous innocence and surprise, “you’re a detective!”
The man who was dressed as a bell boy snorted.
“Go sit on a tack!” he invited. “Let’s take a look around.”
They moved forward, a compact knot, save for the squat man who occupied room 403. He gravitated slightly to one side.
“All the personal belongings from my room,” he said, “have been stolen.”
Lester Leith let his jaw sag.
“Good heavens!” he said.
The detectives strode through the connecting bathroom, walked into 407.
“This the stuff?” asked the man who had posed as a bell hop.
The occupant of room 403 stared at the assortment.
“Good Lord, yes!” he exclaimed. “How did it get here?”
Lester Leith joined in the exclamation, his tone one of dismay.
“Good heavens!” he groaned. “She’s had an attack!”
“Yeah,” sneered the detective. “Ain’t that too bad!”
Lester Leith turned to the occupant of room 403.
“But I’m responsible,” he said. “I’m financially responsible. Only I want to know for just what I am responsible. Here, in the presence of these officers, we will open this baggage and list the contents.”
There was a sudden swirl of motion behind Lester Leith. Two hands clamped down on his arms. Glittering bracelets of steel clicked around his wrists.
“Yeah,” sneered the man who had posed as bell hop, “and we’ll just keep you out of mischief while we’re making the examination.”
Lester Leith stiffened. His face mirrored dismay.
“Listen, officer,” he said. “I can’t explain, but you’ll ruin some very precious plans I have if you do not remove those handcuffs. I demand that you release me. I have important plans.”
The detectives joined in a guffaw.
“Ruining plans of crooks is one of the best things I do,” said the detective.
“No, no. You don’t understand. Call Sergeant Ackley. Get him here at once. I demand that this baggage be opened. And I want Sergeant Ackeley here …”
The squat occupant of room 403 moved easily toward the door.
“I’ll open it fast enough,” he promised. “But I’ve got to go to my room to get my keys.”
He took swift steps toward the door.
“No, no!” yelled Lester Leith. “Stop him. Get Ackley! Get Ackley. I dare not make an accusation while that baggage is unopened, but I want Sergeant …”
The detective swung his right fist.
The blow contacted Lester Leith on the jaw. Leith slumped to the floor, inert.
“Hell,” said the detective. “I didn’t hit him hard. He must be playing possum. I didn’t want any more of his damned bawling. Where’s the sarge?”
“Coming,” said a voice from the corridor.
A compact body of men moved into the room.
“Better frisk him,” said some one.
“He’ll keep,” chuckled one of the detectives. “Let’s look around.”
“Maybe we went a little too fast, Joe,” cautioned one of the men. “Orders was to give him enough rope to spring his stuff, and then clamp down on him.”
“Well,” countered the individual addressed as Joe, “he had enough rope, and he was pulling his stuff, or I miss my guess.”
Hands went through Lester Leith’s clothing.
“Nothing here,” said a voice.
“Look the room over,” ordered some one else. “Close that damned door. We don’t want a crowd in on this. Where the hell’s the sarge? He was sticking around for a while. Then he said he had a sick friend he had to see, and left a telephone number where we could call him if anything broke.”
“You call him?” asked the clerk.
“Yeah. Soon as the guy from four-oh-three made the squawk. Say, where is that bird?”
“Gone to get his keys.”
“Well, we better go down there, and … here’s the sarge now.”
There were purposeful steps, the banging of the door as it slammed open, then shivered on its hinges, then the voice of Sergeant Ackley.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “what’s up! See you got the bracelets on him. Did you catch him with the goods?”
“We caught ’m right enough,” said the voice of the man called Joe. “I don’t know just what he was pulling, but …”
Lester Leith stirred, moved his eyes, groaned.
“Open the man’s trunk,” he said, and then slumped back into silence.
“What happened to him?” asked Sergeant Ackley.
“Oh, he was squawking, and I cracked him an easy one an’ he wilted. Don’t know what got into ’m.”
Sergeant Ackley grunted.
“Better be careful. He’s a smooth one. And he keeps a good lawyer. If we haven’t got the goods on him …”
“We got the goods on ’m right enough,” said Joe.
“Open the trunk anyway,” said Sergeant Ackley.
“Guy’s gone for the keys,” said Joe.
There was a period of shuffling silence. Some one scraped a match and lit a cigarette. Then some one coughed.
“Say, where the hell is that guy?” asked some one.
Lester Leith moaned, twisted.
“Don’t let him get away,” he pleaded in a groaning whisper. “I tried to get you, sergeant …”
Sergeant Ackley suddenly exploded into action.
“Go grab that bird, Joe. Bill, get that trunk open. This looks like a job that’s been bungled. That guy in 403 … Get started!”
There came a scurrying motion, swift voices, shouted comments. Then a report was called down the hallway. “Went down the stairs. Thought you sent him, Joe. He said you did!”
Profanity spouted from Sergeant Ackley’s lips.
“Get that guy! He’s the murderer and gem thief. Hurry up. Throw out the dragnet. Give the signal. Close the block!”
And he ran to the window, flung it open, raised a police whistle to his lips, blew a shrill blast.
Lester Leith sat up.
For a man who had been knocked out, he seemed to be in serene possession of his senses.
“I warned you, sergeant,” he said. “Will some one please give me a cigarette?”
Sergeant Ackley flung back from the window, glowered at the handcuffed figure on the floor.
“Hell!” he said.
Lester Leith talked fluently.
“We’ve had our differences, sergeant, but I thought I could patch them up by putting a feather in your cap. I figured the trunk the murdered man had held the gems, but that the trunk had proven obstinate. The murderer, however, would never have carried the whole trunk with him unless something had happened to make that the only course possible.
“He’d killed the gem thief, and was opening the trunk when something happened to alarm him. That something must have been the arrival of the officers. That meant the murderer was trapped in the room when the officers were demanding an entrance.
“He’d previously forced the window over the fire escape to make it seem like an outside job. But he couldn’t have escaped through that window because it’s obvious that he took the trunk with him.
“Therefore there was only one escape he had, through the communicating room, and into his own room. If my theory was correct, the murderer had been at work on the trunk when the officers banged on the door. He didn’t want to leave his loot, so he shouldered the trunk, slipped into 405 and through it into his own room and locked the door.
“Then he had to do something with the trunk. He realized there’d probably be a search for it. So he did the obvious. He simply put the stolen trunk, which was small, inside his own trunk, which was large.
“That meant he had to wait for a later time to tackle the secret combination. It also meant that he had to be an old resident of the hotel, both for the purpose of avoiding suspicion, as well as to have been sufficiently familiar with the hotel to know that the rooms he wanted for his victim, which would adjoin his room, would have an opening on the fire escape.
“He knew Cogley was coming here, and he planned to get Cogley in his power by setting a trap, reserving a room for him. Cogley walked into that trap …”
Lester Leith was interrupted by a man bursting into the room.
“There’s a secret hiding place in 403 back of a wall fixture. A guy jerked it out by the roots, and …”
And that man, in turn, was interrupted by the rattle of gunfire from the street, revolver shots which stabbed the night with exploding pulsations.
There were more than a dozen of them, exploding in rapid succession. Then the wail of a siren, the sound of shouts, a police whistle blowing frantically.
A woman screamed, and the scream came up through the window.
“They’ve got him!” exclaimed Joe.
The men rushed toward the window.
“Go see what happened, Joe!” rasped Sergeant Ackley.
Men piled from the room.
Left behind, Sergeant Ackley glowered at the handcuffed figure.
“I think I’ve got you this time!” he said.
Lester Leith sighed.
“I did so want to give you an olive branch by letting you take the credit for capturing the murderer. And then you had to spoil it all. And one of your men struck me, when I was handcuffed! An unprovoked, brutal, police assault.”
Sergeant Ackley grinned.
“Tell it to the jury,” he said.
Lester Leith shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I shall tell it to the newspapers!”
Sergeant Ackley looked worried.
He surveyed the room with glittering, suspicious eyes, strode to the covered birdcage, ripped off the cover. A startled canary hopped about the cage, chirped indignantly. Ackley cursed the bird, kicked the cage.
A man rushed into the room.
“Bagged him!” he exclaimed. “He was shot half a dozen times. They closed in on him and he tried to smoke his way out. Dead now, but he had enough life left when they got to him to tell them that he did the job. And he had the loot with him.”
There was disappointment in Sergeant Ackley’s voice.
“Had the loot with him!”
“Yep, in a small chamois bag that he’d kept hidden in the space back of the wall light. He told ’em how he did the job. Knew Cogley was coming here to the Palace. Knew he was going to keep an appointment with a fence. So this bird reserved the room he wanted, trapped Cogley, and tipped off the fence the bulls were hep. That kept the fence away.
“The guy sneaked into Cogley’s room when he was washing up, cracked him on the dome, tied and gagged him, intended to get the stuff and beat it. But Cogley came to, recognized him, so he croaked Cogley, then started after the trunk when he heard the officers coming.
“He dragged the trunk into his own room, and …”
“Never mind all that,” snapped Sergeant Ackley. “I had deduced that much myself. I would have arrested this man only I wanted to use him to bait a trap for this man Leith. But did the police recover all the gems?”
“The whole sack!” gloated the detective.
“Hell!” said Sergeant Ackley.
Lester Leith smiled.
“Now can I have a cigarette?” he asked.
Sergeant Ackley walked to the door, slammed it shut.
“Listen, this guy never had the chance to check all the jewels. There were a lot of diamonds in that haul. Maybe some of ’em got away. Let’s search this room and the two adjoining. And I mean search ’em. No maybe about it. Take ’em to pieces. Rip out the wall fixtures, X-ray the furniture. This bird is too smooth to have let anything like that slip through his fingers.”
The detective stared at Sergeant Ackley.
“Well,” he said dubiously, “we can do it. This guy couldn’t have hid nothing, though. The fire escape was watched, and the hall was watched, and there wasn’t a chance, not a single chance.”
Sergeant Ackley grunted.
“This guy don’t need a chance. He only needs a half a chance, and sometimes not even that. Get busy and search!”
They got busy and searched, and the net result of that search was to uncover nothing at all. Never had rooms been subjected to such a complete search, and Lester Leith, himself, was one to make the search more complete. Whenever the police seemed to be overlooking a single cranny or corner, Lester Leith would point it out.
“The brass in the bed is hollow, sergeant,” he suggested. And: “There might have been a hole bored in the curtain pole in the closet.”
Those suggestions were received in sullen silence, but acted upon with alacrity. The morning was sending its chill fingers through the air when the officers finished. A clock struck two somewhere, and Sergeant Ackley ran doubtful fingers through his matted hair and surveyed the wreckage.
“Well,” he said, “they ain’t here.”
Lester Leith grinned.
Sergeant Ackley scowled at him.
“But you still got some explaining to do. I’ve half a mind to throw you in on suspicion and let you explain how you happened to be trailing this crook around. You intended to hijack him, even if we did beat you to it!”
Lester Leith looked hurt.
“Tut, tut, sergeant! I was doing you a favor. My solution was only academic. I could even bring evidence to show that it was suggested by Scuttle, my valet. I really had finished with these academic crime solutions, but Scuttle egged me on. He’d have to admit that—if he were questioned.”
And because Sergeant Ackley knew that this was true, knew also that any further investigation would result in the real capacity of the undercover operative being brought to light, he sighed, turned away.
“All right, boys,” he said wearily. “Let ’m go.”
One of the detectives had a bright idea.
“The woman accomplice,” he said, “the one that posed as his niece. She was away …”
Sergeant Ackley hastily interposed an interruption.
“Let her out,” he growled. “She’s got an ironclad alibi, one that don’t need to enter into the case, but one that’s good. I checked it up myself. That’s what delayed me getting here.”
The detective’s voice held a trace of admiration.
“Gee, sergeant, you sure work fast!”
Sergeant Ackley nodded.
“That’s the way to work!” he said. Then his eye fell on the canary in the huge cage.
“Say,” he demanded, “what the hell’s the idea of that bird?”
“A very valuable bird,” said Lester Leith. “A Peruvian bloodhound-canary. I was hoping to try him out.”
Sergeant Ackley stared at the cage.
“False bottom, maybe,” he said.
The detectives shook their heads.
“Nothing doing, sergeant,” said Joe. “Every inch of it has been checked.”
Sergeant Ackley fixed his moody eyes upon the canary.
“Birds have craws, boys, and maybe there’s a fine stone stuffed down this bird’s craw. Wring his neck and let’s have a look!”
Lester Leith’s voice suddenly became ominous.
“Sergeant, I’ve let you ride roughshod over my rights long enough. If you take the life of that canary, I’ll have you arrested for cruelty to animals, and, by God, I’ll spend a hundred thousand dollars prosecuting the charge! That’s a very rare species of canary, and very delicate. It’s worth thousands!”
Sergeant Ackley’s face broke into a smile.
“Now,” he gloated, “we’re getting close to home. Pull that damned bird out here and let’s see what he’s got inside of him.”
One of the detectives was more humane.
“We’ve got the house physician’s X-ray machine,” he said. “We can use that just as well, and then this guy won’t have any squawk.”
“Okay,” said Sergeant Ackley, too weary for further argument. “Give ’m the once over.”
The bird was held under the X-ray. The result was as the search had been, negative.
Lester Leith made a facetious comment.
“The bird in the hand,” he said.
“That’ll do!” bellowed Ackley.
Leter Leith continued to smile.
“All right. We’ve solved the Cogley murder. That’s a good night’s work. Let’s get home, boys,” said Sergeant Ackley. “It’s getting along—”
He fished mechanical fingers in his watch pocket, then let his jaw sag, his voice trail into silence as those searching fingers encountered nothing.
“My watch!” he said.
The men stared at him.
His hand darted to his necktie.
“And my pin! Good heavens! What’ll my wife …”
He paused.
In the moment of tense silence which followed, Lester Leith’s drawling voice carried a cryptic comment.
“I’m so glad the young lady has an alibi,” he said.
Sergeant Ackley’s face purpled.
“Shut up!” he bellowed. “I remember now, I left my pin and my watch on my dresser at home. Let’s go, boys. Get out of here. Leave the damned slicker and his canary!”
And Sergeant Ackley pushed his men out into the hall, showing a sudden haste to terminate the entire affair.
Edward H. Beaver, undercover operative of the police department, detailed to act as valet to Lester Leith, suspected hijacker of stolen jewels, held up a grayish feather between his thumb and forefinger, and stared reproachfully at Ackley.
“I told you, sergeant, that he never did anything without a reason. That canary, now …”
Sergeant Ackley banged his feet down from the desk. His face was distorted with rage.
“Beaver, you’re detailed on that suspect. You live with him, hear everything he says, know everything he does, and yet the guy keeps pulling things right under your nose. It’s an evidence of criminal incompetency on your part.”
“But,” interpolated the spy, “I suggested this about the canary before, sir. I suggested that the solution of the whole affair might be …”
Sergeant Ackley raised his voice.
“You’re all wet, Beaver. I even X-rayed the damned canary. He couldn’t have had a thing to do with it!”
“Yes, sergeant,” said the spy, meekly, a little too meekly, perhaps; “but I found this feather in the bottom of the cage.”
“Well, what of it?”
“It’s not the color of the canary, sir. It’s not a canary feather.”
Sergeant Ackley stared, his eyes slowly widening.
“Well, what sort of a feather is it?”
“I had it classified at the zoölogical gardens. It’s a feather from a pigeon, one of the sort known as a homing pigeon. It’s barely possible that covered cage contained half a dozen homing pigeons, beside the canary, trained to go to a certain particular spot immediately upon being released.
“And then Lester Leith could have picked out a dozen of the most valuable stones, slipped them into sacks that were already attached to the birds’ legs, tossed the birds out of the window, and then later on, gone to the place where they had flown and picked up the diamonds. After all, we have no assurance that the cage contained only a canary except what Leith said. The cage was always covered. It may have contained homing pigeons, and …”
Sergeant Ackley glowered, bellowed his comment.
“Well, that was your business! You’re a hell of a spy if you can’t tip us off to what’s going on!”
“I warned you, sergeant, that this canary was the key to the crime. But you overlooked the bird in the hand to go chasing off after …”
Sergeant Ackley’s chair scraped back along the floor as the big bulk of the sergeant got to its feet, as the sergeant’s face glowered down upon his subordinate.
“That’ll do, Beaver! Your suspicions are absurd, your statements incorrect, and your deductions too late. This department is interested in getting results, not in diagnosing failures. Get out!”
“Yes, sergeant,” said Edward H. Beaver.
“And keep your mouth shut, Beaver!” warned the sergeant as the spy’s hand was on the doorknob.
The retort was a grunt, inarticulate, undistinguishable, but hardly respectful.
Then the door banged.
Sergeant Ackley raised a hand to his necktie. His fingers caressed the smooth expanse of silk where his diamond stickpin had formerly glistened. That spot was now bare, unornamented.
Sergeant Ackley’s face was twisted into an expression which was neither prepossessing nor pleasant.
“Damn!” he said.
