He replied amiably, "Indeed? Did you try pressing the b.u.t.ton which frees the locks?"
"I certainly did!"
He examined the intricate array on the dash, and said, "Why, the master-switch seems to have been open. I hope you weren"t inconvenienced."
It seemed a thin explanation. I believed he had locked me in the machine merely out of a childish whim he could show me that he could make me stay put. I was also riled inwardly by his inscrutability, the lack of an emotional display on his features; I was curious to know his thoughts, and his face told me nothing.
"What did you ask the costume shop man?" I demanded sharply.
He pretended not to hear my query. He started the engine, and the car joined the traffic. He drove with the sort of carelessness which characterizes taxi drivers in New York City, the ease which some people feel comes from skill and experience in coping with traffic, but which always makes me nervous.
"What did you ask the man?" I shouted.
"Henry," he said thoughtfully. "Do you suffer from pains in the chest, headaches, nightmarish dreams, and do you occasionally awaken from sleep with violent starts?"
"Certainly!" I snapped. "I am a nervous sort."
"You should," he advised, "take things less seriously, including yourself."
"All right, don"t tell me!" I yelled.
THE man Savage had a fabulous laboratory. I had heard rumors of it, exaggerated, I supposed. But they weren"t exaggerated. The laboratory was really superb, and particularly remarkable in that it was equipped for scientific research in many fields-it was not just a general lab; it was one in which a man could specialize in chemistry, electro-chemistry, electronics, metallurgy, surgery, and Heaven knows how many other things.
It was dumfounding. One had to be a scientist to appreciate the place. It occupied, on the eighty-sixth floor of a midtown skysc.r.a.per, the entire floor with the exception of a reception room and another room containing a scientific library that was also breath-taking.
"Goodness!" My tone was awed. "Who designed this place for you?"
"It"s my own arrangement," he said, not as though he was boasting, but as if he was preoccupied withother thoughts.
I hardly believed that. It was even improbable that the mind of one man would acc.u.mulate enough variety of specialized knowledge to use all this apparatus.
Moving over to a section devoted to metallurgy, which is my field, I was amazed to note the advanced nature of the equipment, and also of the experiments that had obviously been performed there. Enough signs of the sort of work done were lying about to inform me that some of the work exceeded my own knowledge considerably. I was aware of a bitter jealousy, combined with envy.
It just wasn"t possible that this man Savage had such scientific ability. There had to be another explanation.
I was speechless.
The telephone rang.
Savage was on the instrument instantly. "Yes. . . . Monk? You have? . . . That"s a bad break. We"ll be there in a hurry."
He hung up, turned to me, and said, "Let"s go, Henry."
"Where?"
"Monk has found your friend."
"Friend?"
"The one we"ve been calling polite-boy."
"No!" I gasped. "Found him? But Mayfair couldn"t have! He had no clue!"
Not until we were northbound in that tank-like automobile-which, incidentally didn"t much resemble the rolling fortress that it was-did Savage condescend to explain.
He said: "Finding the fellow was no trick. As you know, we planted midget radio transmitters in the cabs he was likely to take, and also a radioactive powder where he was likely to get it on his shoe soles."
"The powder would have worn off his shoes by now!" I said skeptically.
"Here"s what someone forgot to tell you, Henry. There was some preparation before the fellow left the hospital. One of his shoe heels was hollowed out, and an ultra-short-wave exciter placed there. In other words, another radio gadget which can be traced."
I was speechless some more. Such devices were preposterous, but I was getting to the point where almost any wild thing seemed logical.
THE house was a brownstone in the upper Eighties, west of Central Park. The street was dark, fairly quiet, although a newsboy was hawking his wares at a distant corner. Savage parked and waited a while, his eyes searching different directions.
In a moment, the Mayfair fellow separated from the slightly blacker shadow of a doorway. He waddled to us, opened the door, leaned inside, said, "Ain"t nothing new happened.""Seen anyone around?"
"Nope." Mayfair jerked his cowcatcher jaw at the house. "Ground floor. Front room. Not bad diggings."
Savage said, "We"ll have a look." He alighted from the car.
Mayfair gazed at me. "Henry going in with us?"
"If he wishes," Savage replied.
I had been thinking of polite-man with terror. After all, the chap had endeavored to kill me.
"Aren"t you going to call the police?" I demanded uneasily.
Not answering this, Mayfair said, "Henry"s liable to throw one of his whing-dings."
He was aspersing my courage, naturally. "I was struck on the head!" I snapped. "I wasn"t hysterical at the Farrar apartment-it was a dazed condition."
Mayfair grinned. "Your nerve is all right, then?"
"Absolutely!"
"Okay. You can lead the way for us," Mayfair said.
Savage said impatiently, "Cut it out, Monk. Henry isn"t accustomed to this sort of thing."
Not until we were in the house, and in polite-man"s rooms, did I understand the grisly death"s-head humor Mayfair had been indulging.
Polite-man was dead.
He lay on the floor, about ten feet inside the door of his sitting-room, lay on his side and there was an awful crimson lake that had spread from his throat, which had been incised from ear to ear.
Savage was on his knees beside the victim for a brief time.
"Couple of hours ago," he remarked. "That would mean it was done to him very shortly after he escaped from the Farrar apartment. Whoever did it might have been waiting here for him-or followed him here."
Mayfair said, "Some of his stuff is interesting."
Savage frowned. "Eh?"
"Take a look at the writing desk there, the letters and bills-" Mayfair broke off, stared at me. "The bathroom"s yonder, Henry."
"I have a nervous stomach," I blurted, and made a dash for the place he was pointing.
THEY had their heads together when I came back, and they ended whatever they had been saying.
Letters, some first-of-the-month bills, were spread out on a modest writing desk. There were many racing forms and dope sheets.
"What have you found out?""Polite-boy"s name was Davis. Hugo Davis," Mayfair replied. "Seems to have made his living sharp-shooting. Race player." He indicated some small slips, the nature of which mystified me. "Numbers slips. The guy was a pusher for a policy racket, part of his time. Summing him up, I"d say he was a small-time plug-ugly."
"I surmised as much."
"And," added Mayfair, "Dido Alstrong paid the bills for this apartment."
"What!"
The homely chemist"s enormous forefinger probed the duns. "You can see for yourself. Rent receipts made out to Dido Alstrong."
"But can this be Dido Alstrong"s apartment?"
Mayfair shook his head. "Nope. The cops have found that. Alstrong lives in a hotel on Madison Avenue.
He"s not there. He hasn"t been home since this morning. The cops are sitting around there with their arms open for him."
"But what crime can they charge Dido Alstrong with?"
"Search me. Maybe with having a friend who got a carving job on his throat."
"Then," I exclaimed, "this fellow must really have been Dido Alstrong"s friend!"
"Could be. What"s amazing about it?"
"It just occurred to me that, earlier today when he informed me he had been asked by Dido Alstrong to receive the package from me, he might have been telling the truth."
Mayfair wasn"t interested in this. "Well, he"s through telling the truth or anything else," he said.
Savage continued to examine the rooms. Presently he stated, "The place has been searched. Thoroughly, too." He indicated certain letters. "And with a sort of purpose, too. These letters have no envelopes."
"I got a habit of throwing envelopes in the wastebasket, if there ain"t an address on "em I want," said Mayfair. "Maybe I ain"t the only one with the habit."
"But all the New York letters have envelopes."
"Huh?"
"The letters without," said Savage, "are apparently from Hugo Davis"s home town." He read some of the letters. "Two are from his mother, evidently. I gather he wasn"t a very good son. The others are from a girl named Anne, whom I judge Hugo Davis had led to believe he would marry her."
"That doesn"t tell much," Mayfair said.
"No, except that Anne mentions that she works in a branch of the Farrar Products Company plant in the small town where she lives. Hugo Davis got her the job through his friend Dido Alstrong-reading between the lines, I"d say he got her the job to keep her from coming to New York and bothering him."
"Hey," said Mayfair, "that should give us a line on the town.""We"ll ask Farrar about it." Savage said.
Chapter IX.
MR. FARRAR received us politely. This seemed, in view of the hour, considerate of him. Also he was considerably upset, for he met us clad in a bathrobe and his hair was disheveled.
"Oh, come in," he said. "I"ve been trying to sleep, but with no luck. This thing has me upset."
We entered. Farrar led the way into a room which we had not seen earlier, a large library which was filled with volumes of literature and fiction-more fiction than literature, in fact, for I think of only the cla.s.sics as literature. However, there was a small section devoted to the container business; mostly bound trade volumes, and a few works on the preservation of food, and the chemistry of various forms of decomposition and spoilage. It was, I was saddened to note, not a very comprehensive library. But then I imagined Mr. Farrar was primarily an executive.
Farrar was manifestly nervous. One felt sorry for the man. The way he"d explained it to us, he"d really been involved in this unwillingly, and without his knowledge.
Savage said, "We"re investigating Dido Alstrong more thoroughly, Mr. Farrar. . . . I wonder if we could speak to your daughter on the matter?"
Farrar did not approve of this.
"I fail to see the point to it," he replied. "You gentlemen were with Lila a good part of the day-and I must say that the a.s.sociation wasn"t soothing to her nerves."
"She was upset?"
"Very."
"She did not," Savage remarked, "seem so agitated when we left her here."
Farrar frowned. "It was after your telephone call that she really went to pieces."
Savage stared at the manufacturer of food-packaging containers.
"My telephone call?" he asked. "When was that?"
"Why, about five o"clock." Farrar"s lean, sensitive face suddenly showed puzzlement. "You"re not saying you didn"t call her? You did, didn"t you?"