'What is she going to do?'
'Don't quote me. But I told her we'd have to discuss exactly what she would tell the cops, so we'll hear from her if she decides to play. Do you want my guesses?'
'Yes.'
'Well. On her spilling it to the cops, the one thing that would spoil it, forty to one against. That isn't how her mind will work. On her deciding to play ball with us, twenty to one
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against. She's not tough enough. On her just keeping it to herself, fifteen to one against. On general principles. On her felling Miss Goheen, ten to one against. She hates her too much. On her telling Carol Berk, two to one against, but I wouldn't dig deep on that one either way. On her telling Mr. H, even money, no matter who is a Commie and who isn't. It would show him,how fine and big-hearted and noble she is. She could be, at that. It has been done. Is Saul there?'
'Yes. I never spent anybody's money, not even my own, on a slimmer chance.'
'Especially your own. And incidentally sticking my neck out. You don't know the meaning of fear when it comes to sticking my neck out. Do we proceed?'
'What alternative is there?'
'None. Has Saul got his men there?'
'Yes.'
'Tell him to step on it and meet me at the northeast corner of Sixty-ninth and Fifth Avenue. She could be phoning Heath right now.'
'Very well. Then you'll come home?'
I said I would, hung up, and got out of the oven. Nothing would have been more appreciated right then than a large coke-and-lime with the ice brushing my lips, but it was possible that Delia was already phoning him and he was at home to get the call, so I marched on by the fountain and out. A taxi got me to the corner of Sixty-ninth and Fifth in six minutes. My watch said 9:42.
I strolled east on Sixty-ninth and stopped across the street from the canopied entrance of the towering tenement of which Henry Jameson Heath was a tenant. It was no casing problem for me, since Saul Panzer had been there in the afternoon to make a survey and spot foxholes. That was elaborate but desirable, because it was to be a very fancy tail, using three shifts of three men each, with Saul in charge of one, Fred Durkin of the second, and Orrie Cather of the third. Fifteen skins an hour that setup would cost, which was quite a disbursement on what Wolfe had admitted was a oneintwenty chance. Seeing no one but a uniformed doorman
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in evidence around the canopy, I moseyed back to the corner.
A taxi pulled up, and three men got out. Two of them were just men whose names I knew and with whose records I was fairly familiar, but the third was Saul Panzer, the one guy I want within hearing the day I get hung on the face of a cliff with jet eagles zooming at me. With his saggy shoulders and his face all nose, he looks one- fifth as strong and hardy, and one-tenth as smart, as he really is. I shook hands with him, not having seen him for a week or so, and nodded to the other two.
'Is there anything to say?' I asked him.
'I don't think so. Mr. Wolfe filled me in.'
'Okay, take it. You know the Homicide boys may be on him too?'
'Sure. We'll try not to trip on 'em.'
'You know it's a long shot and the only bet we've got? So lose him quick, what do we care.'
'We'll lose him or die.'
'That's the spirit. That's what puts statues of private detectives in the park. See you on the witness stand.'
I left them. My immediate and urgent objective was Madison Avenue for a coke-and-lime, but I went a block north to Seventieth Street. Sixty-ninth Street now belonged to Saul and his squad.
ittVr eleven o'clock the next morning, Friday, I sat in the uu office listening to the clank of Wolfe's elevator as it brought him down from the plant rooms.
There had been no cheep from Delia Devlin, but we hadn't wanted one anyway. What we wanted we had got, at least the first installment. At 12:42 Thursday night Saul had phoned that Heath had checked in at Sixty-ninth Street, arriving in a taxi, alone. That was all for the night. At 6:20 in the morning he had phoned that Fred Durkin and his two men had taken over and had been briefed on the terrain. And
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at 10:23 Fred had phoned that Heath had left his tenement and taken a taxi to 719 East Fifty-first Street and entered the building. That was the gray brick house I had visited the day before. Fred said they had seen no sign of an official tail. They were deployed. I told him he was my favorite mick and still would be if he hung on, and buzzed Wolfe in the plant rooms to inform him.
Wolfe entered, got at his desk, looked over the morning mail, signed a couple of checks, dictated a letter of inquiry about sausage to a man in Wisconsin, and settled down with the crossword puzzle in the London Times. I carried on my routine neatly and normally, making it perfectly plain that I could be just as placid as him, no matter how tense and ticklish it got. I had just finished typing the envelope for the letter and was twirling it out of the machine when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall to answer it, took one look through the one-way glass panel, wheeled and returned to the office, and spoke.
. 'I guess I'm through as a bookie. I said forty to one she wouldn't spill it. Wengert and Cramer want in. We can sneak out the back way and head for Mexico.'
