“Fine. Got it with you? That leaves you two hundred. Fair enough. A quick turnover, a reasonable profit and no trouble for anybody.”
“It is not in my office,” he said. “Do you take me for a fool?” He reached an ancient silver watch out of his vest on a black fob. He screwed up his eyes to look at it. “Let us say eleven in the morning,” he said. “Come back with your money. The coin may or may not be here, but if I am satisfied with your behavior, I will arrange matters.”
“That is satisfactory,” I said, and stood up. “I have to get the money anyhow.”
“Have it in used bills,” he said almost dreamily. “Used twenties will do. An occasional fifty will do no harm.”
I grinned and started for the door. Halfway there I turned around and went back to lean both hands on the desk and push my face over it.
“What did she look like?”
He looked blank.
“The girl that sold you the coin.”
He looked blanker.
“Okay,” I said. “It wasn’t a girl. She had help. It was a man. What did the man look like?”
He pursed his lips and made another steeple with his fingers. “He was a middle-aged man, heavy set, about five feet seven inches tall and weighing around one hundred and seventy pounds. He said his name was Smith. He wore a blue suit, black shoes, a green tie and shirt, no hat. There was a brown bordered handkerchief in his outer pocket. His hair was dark brown sprinkled with gray. There was a bald patch about the size of a dollar on the crown of his head and a scar about two inches long running down the side of his jaw. On the left side, I think. Yes, on the left side.”
“Not bad,” I said. “What about the hole in his right sock?”
“I omitted to take his shoes off.”
“Darn careless of you,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. We just stared at each other, half curious, half hostile, like new neighbors. Then suddenly he went into his laugh again.
The five-dollar bill I had given him was still lying on his side of the desk. I flicked a hand across and took it.
“You won’t want this now,” I said. “Since we started talking in thousands.”
He stopped laughing very suddenly. Then he shrugged.
“At eleven a.m.,” he said. “And no tricks, Mr. Marlowe. Don’t think I don’t know how to protect myself.”
“I hope you do,” I said, “because what you are handling is dynamite.”
I left him and tramped across the empty outer office and opened the door and let it shut, staying inside. There ought to be footsteps outside in the corridor, but his transom was closed and I hadn’t made much noise coming on crepe rubber soles. I hoped he would remember that. I sneaked back across the threadbare carpet and edged in behind the door, between the door and the little closed typewriter desk. A kid trick, but once in a while it will work, especially after a lot of smart conversation, full of worldliness and sly wit. Like a sucker play in football. And if it didn’t work this time, we would just be there sneering at each other again.
It worked. Nothing happened for a while except that a nose was blown. Then all by himself in there he went into his sick rooster laugh again. Then a throat was cleared. Then a swivel chair squeaked, and feet walked.
A dingy white head poked into the room, about two inches past the end of the door. It hung there suspended and I went into a state of suspended animation. Then the head was drawn back and four unclean fingernails came around the edge of the door and pulled. The door closed, clicked, was shut. I started breathing again and put my ear to the wooden panel.
The swivel chair squeaked once more. The threshing sound of a telephone being dialed. I lunged across to the instrument on the little typewriter desk and lifted it. At the other end of the line the bell had started to ring. It rang six times. Then a man’s voice said: “Yeah?”
“The Florence Apartments?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Anson in Apartment two-o-four.”
“Hold the wire. I’ll see if he’s in.”
Mr. Morningstar and I held the wire. Noise came over it, the blaring sound of a loud radio broadcasting a baseball game. It was not close to the telephone, but it was noisy enough.
Then I could hear the hollow sound of steps coming nearer and the harsh rattle of the telephone receiver being picked up and the voice said:
“Not in. Any message?”
“I’ll call later,” Mr. Morningstar said.
I hung up fast and did a rapid glide across the floor to the entrance door and opened it very silently, like snow falling, and let it close the same way, taking its weight at the last moment, so that the click of the catch would not have been heard three feet away.
I breathed hard and tight going down the hall, listening to myself. I pushed the elevator button. Then I got out the card which Mr. George Anson Phillips had given me in the lobby of the Hotel Metropole. I didn’t look at it in any real sense. I didn’t have to look at it to recall that it referred to Apartment 204, Florence Apartments, 128 Court Street. I just stood there flicking it with a fingernail while the old elevator came heaving up in the shaft, straining like a gravel truck on a hairpin turn.
