Jack' reaction from the guy who had it to give me somethin' to go on. This offer goes to show you I haven't been talkin' to the right people.” He thought a moment. “Any signature on the cable that meant anything?”
“The signature was E. McPartland. No return address. Reply to be addressed 'Will Call' to the cable office in New York.”
“E. MacPartland,” Johnny repeated. “Never heard of him. More'n likely it's a phony, anyway. Sent 'Will Call,' it could be addressed to John Doe.”
“Where do you feel you stand, Johnny?”
“Nowhere,” Johnny admitted promptly. “I hate to have to tell you I'm such a muttonhead, Kiki, but it's the truth. Oh, I've got these people playin' footie with me on crooked schemes Dechant had cooked up, but so far nothin' leads back to the monstrance.”
“The thing that concerns me, of course, is that an offer might be made to a dealer who has a private client or two with no scruples about acquiring such an objet d'art.” The cardinal's voice sounded tired. “And there's the worse possibility that someone might break it up for the jewels.”
“I'll keep punchin',” Johnny promised gloomily. “Somethin' might drop. This Dechant was a whingdizzler. The man never drew an honest breath. Every stone I turn over there's a chance I'll find the right slug skitterin' off, but I don't see much daylight.”
“Well…” the cardinal's voice trailed off. “Good night, Johnny. Thanks. If I hear anything further, I'll call again.”
“Fine. Hope I can come up with somethin'.” Johnny replaced the receiver slowly. He stared out bemusedly through the booth's glass door at the darkened lobby. He roused himself finally, and went upstairs to change.
Vic Barnes waved a white envelope at him from the registration desk as Johnny stepped off the service elevator back into the lobby thirty minutes later. “Just came in, Johnny. Special messenger.
“Special messenger?” Johnny walked to the desk and took the plain white envelope with his name and that of the hotel on it. There was no return address. The envelope felt almost weightless. “What kind of special messenger?”
“Some kid in a kind of uniform. Western Union?” Vic asked himself. The round face creased with the effort of remembering. “No, I don't think so,” he decided. “Just some kind of uniform.”
Johnny slit the back flap with a thumbnail. He extracted the single bit of paper inside and looked at a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars, made out to Johnny Killain and signed in a bold, flowing hand by Maximilian Stitt. There was no message.
Now here's a man so anxious to avoid trouble he can't wait for a bill, Johnny thought. “Lend me a pen, Vic, will you?” Johnny endorsed the check, folded it, put it in the breast pocket of his uniform and went back upstairs to find Amy.
He found her in the laundry room counting sheets. “Take this an' pay off your sub-jobbers for the reclamation project,” he instructed her, handing her the check. He looked at her as she eyed him warily. “What's the matter with you?”
The colored girl's silvery giggle tinkled through the room. “Miss Sally said I should give you some elbow room 'cause you was mad at my tellin' her about your room.”
“Well, maybe I was right then.” He looked with amusement at Amy's widening eyes as she saw the check for the first time. “If you don't knock down on the deal for the price of an outfit, you're cheatin' on Amy,” he told her.
“Mmm-mhh!” she confirmed enthusiastically. “Man, man! I'll have ev'ry buck on Lenox Avenue fixin' to snap my garter.” White teeth flashing, she looked from the check back to Johnny. “Even with that chair not worth re-up- holsterin' it shouldn't come to nowhere near this.”
“I'll add what's left to the Killain Bourbon Fund.” He started for the door. “Don't skimp on that outfit.”
“Don' you worry your head one little bit about that,” Amy's voice floated after him.
Back in the lobby he found Paul at the bell-captain's desk, glumly studying the log. “Four check-ins on our shift,” Paul said. “They'll be padlocking the doors. I know I gripe when those school kids are here running up and down the corridors nights every spring, but they sure keep the old place from seeming so much like a tomb.”
“It's the permanents keep this place alive,” Johnny grunted. “Those cut-rate school bus tours don't add much except to the room occupancy percentages. Say, when the police went over Dechant's room after you and Rogers sealed it that night, who was with them from the hotel?”
“I guess someone from the auditor's office. It would have been on the day shift.”
“I'll talk to Rollins,” Johnny decided. “Hell have a list of anything removed.” He pulled at an ear lobe. “Dameron an' I are both lookin' for somethin' Dechant should have had in his room, or anyway not too far away from it,” he explained. “It struck me that the police could have found it right off the bat, or a claim check or somethin' like that, an' I could be spinnin' my wheels lookin' for a gadget Dameron already had on ice. I wouldn't put it past him.”
“How big?” Paul asked interestedly.
“Thirty pounds. Eighteen inches by fifteen inches by- hell, I don't know the other dimension.”
“If it only weighs thirty pounds, there can't be too much to the other dimension,” the practical Paul observed. “If you're carrying your burglary tools, there's a bag in the cloakroom been there since before Dechant's last trip.”
“Oh, no,” Johnny said softly.
“Don't tell me 'Oh, no',” Paul asserted sturdily. “I was looking at it over the weekend, wondering when they were going to do something about it.”
“I meant 'Oh, no, it couldn't be that easy,'“ Johnny said. “Let's have a look.” He followed the stocky Swiss through the door in the recessed niche between the elevators. Paul reached up to a rack and lifted a black bag down by the handle. “No good,” Johnny announced. “The way you swung it down it doesn't weigh enough.”
“Could be empty,” Paul admitted.
Johnny lightly toed the scuffed, cheap, pressed paper finish with its reinforced corners. The bag slid on the floor. “Not a chance,” he said disappointedly. He looked at the broad cloth straps encircling each end and buckled down at the top. “Looks like a sample case. What the hell. Watch the door.”
Quickly he unfastened the straps and tested the flimsy lock with his thumb. From his wallet he removed a thin strip of celluloid. He bent down for a second, and the lock popped open with a click. Johnny separated the two sections that nested within each other. From the bottom section he took four nine-by-twelve glossy photos swaddled in tissue, and knew the second he uncovered the top one that he was looking at a picture of the monstrance. Even in the stark black-and-white, thickly studded jewels were plainly visible in the base and along the graceful golden spikes.
The only other object in the bag was a battered black automatic.
“Call Rogers at the precinct, Paul,” Johnny said. “If he's not there, leave word for him to come by.”
CHAPTER X
“This was the bastard's sample case,” Johnny said to Detective James Rogers two hours later. Paul Sassella looked on silently as the sandy-haired detective shuffled glossy photographs. “He couldn't very well lug anything as valuable as the monstrance around with him all the time to show it, so he did the next best thing. He took pictures of it an' the other stuff he stole from Hegel, had 'em blown up an' he was in business.”
“He didn't need a case this size for four pictures and one handgun,” Rogers objected. He balanced the automatic on his palm.
“He needed a case this size if he contacted a live one who wanted to see the actual merchandise,” Johnny said. “It's our tough luck there's nothing in it now, that's all.”
The slender man held the automatic up to the light and squinted up the barrel. “Crime to leave a gun in this condition,” he said absently. “Hasn't been fired in months. Or cleaned, either.” He looked at Paul. “You got a little dab of machine oil around?”
“Sure,” Paul said readily. “I'll get it.”
Detective Rogers removed the clip from the base of the automatic and laid it aside. “Empty,” he said tersely.
