the blank wall.
“No one came out,” Gazzo said softly. “There was no way out. Only a killer got out with five rubies. So, like Kelly says, we rule out magic, and somehow a guy walked out.”
Gazzo turned to the Burns guard who had been on the main door.
“Do you know
“Sure, Captain,” the Burns man said. “Well, I mean, I know most of them to look at. I know the boys in my shift, and-”
“Yeah,” Gazzo cut him short. “There it is. So damned simple. He just walked out in the confusion. Right, Kelly? He was probably behind the front door waiting. He probably even helped search the suite with all of you. He was just…”
“Wearing a Burns uniform,” Slot-Machine said. “He simply mingled in with us. That’s why he timed it for two shifts to be here. He mingled with us, and walked out through the front door.”
The swearing in the room would have done credit to a Foreign Legion barrack. Everyone began to move at once. Mingo called in to alert the Safe and Loft Squad to start watching all fences in the city. Ed Green went to check with the guard on the elevator. Jonas called downstairs to the single exit door. Gazzo just swore. Ed Green came back.
“Burns man on the elevator says he did see a Burns man go for the stairs,” Green said. “God, he was lucky! How could he know we wouldn’t search him? I mean, we searched all the guards mighty quick. He couldn’t be sure he could get away so fast. He took a hell of a risk.”
Sergeant Jonas hung up the telephone in anger.
“Green’s shift of Burns men passed out twenty minutes ago,” Jonas said, “and they were all clean. That scanner didn’t find anything on them.”
“How many men?” Gazzo said.
“Six,” Jonas said.
Gazzo cursed. “He’s out!”
“But the rubies aren’t,” Green said. “He must have stashed them somewhere inside. That means he plans to come back for them.”
Slot-Machine shook his head. “I don’t know. He planned this mighty careful. We could have searched him right here in the room like Green says.”
“All right, genius,” Gazzo said. “You’ve figured how he got into the suite and how he got out. Now tell us how he plans to get the stones out if he didn’t stash them. No one’s gone out of this hotel since it happened except through that front door where the scanner is.”
“He just had to know about the scanner,” Slot-Machine said. “This was a foolproof plan. So he must have figured a way around that scanner.”
“Great,” Gazzo said. “Only, no one got out of here without being checked.”
Slot-Machine stood up suddenly.
“One person did! Gazzo, come on!”
Slot-Machine led them all from the suite in a fast dash for the first elevator.
The night was dark on the city. The streets were bare and cold in the night. Traffic moved in small tight groups down Sixth Avenue as the lights changed. The late night revellers staggered their weary way home. In the all-night delicatessens the clerks yawned behind their counters.
In Gazzo’s unmarked car the five sat alert and waiting. Gazzo swore softly, and Ed Green smoked hard on his cigarette. Slot-Machine leaned forward tensely and watched the car-exit below the towering glass and steel of the North American Hotel. Suddenly Slot leaned over and touched Jonas, who was behind the wheel.
The morgue wagon came out from under the hotel and turned left down Sixth Avenue. Jonas eased the car away from the curb and followed the morgue wagon.
They drove down Sixth Avenue, turned across town toward the west, and the morgue wagon moved steadily on its way a half a block away. The silent procession turned again on Ninth Avenue and continued on downtown toward the morgue.
Suddenly, as the morgue wagon slowed at a traffic light, the back door of the wagon opened. A man jumped out. The man hit the pavement, stumbled, and then began to run fast toward the west.
The man wore the uniform of a Burns guard.
The morgue wagon continued on its grim journey. Jonas swung the police car in a squealing turn and gunned the motor down the side street. The running man was forty feet ahead. Jonas roared after him. The man heard the motor, looked back, and then dashed toward a fence. In a flash he was over the fence, and gone.
Slot-Machine and Gazzo were out of the police car before Jonas had brought it to a halt. Mingo and Green were close behind them. Slot-Machine was the first of the three over the fence with a powerful pull of his single arm.
The man in the Burns uniform was scrambling over a second fence just ahead.
The chase went on down the rows of back yards and fences in the silent darkness of the night. At each fence Slot-Machine gained on the uniformed runner. As he went over the last fence before a looming dark building ended the row of back yards, the uniformed man turned and shot.
Slot-Machine ducked but didn’t stop. He went over the last fence in a mad leap and dive. Another shot hit just below him, and wood splinters cut his cheek. In the next second, Slot-Machine was on the uniformed man who was trying frantically to get off one more shot.
The man in uniform never made it. Slot-Machine drove him back against the brick wall of the building with the force of his rush. His pivoting body slammed into the wall, his gun went flying, and he came off the wall like a rebounding cue ball on a lively pool table.
Slot’s one good hand caught the uniformed man across the throat. He collapsed with a single choking squawk like the dying gurgle of a beheaded chicken.
By the time Gazzo, Green, and Mingo had caught up with Slot and his victim, Slot was holding the rubies in his hand. In the beam of light from Mingo’s flashlight, the deep red stones shone like wet blood.
Slot-Machine handed the pistol to Gazzo.
“This’ll be the murder weapon,” he said. “It’s a regulation Burns pistol; he was a meticulous type.”
Mingo was bending over the supine man, who had not even begun to wake up. The lieutenant looked up at Gazzo and shook his head.
“No one I recognize,” Mingo said. “Chances are, he’s not a known jewel thief.”
“That figures,” Slot said. “I think you’ll find his name is Julius Honder, a legitimate jewel merchant.”
“Why Honder?” Ed Green said.
“He had to have cased the job,” Slot said. “He knew we’d all go running into the suite. Remember that woman? The one who thought the alarm was a waiter’s button? She was Honder’s secretary. I expect we’ll find her waiting at Honder’s office for the boss to bring home the loot.”
From the dark, Sergeant Jonas came up. The Homicide sergeant looked down at the sleeping killer and thief.
“So he made another change,” Jonas said, “and played one of the morgue boys?”
Slot-Machine shook his head.
“Too risky,” Slot-Machine said. “Gazzo said no one had gotten out of the building through the front door. You don’t take a stiff out the front way, right? He knew that. The stiff went out through the basement. What tipped me was what I said myself- why did he kill the guard
