other side there were three doors. One led to a small dining room on the right, one to a deep pantry, and a third to a hallway. At the far end of the hallway, there was light. As Parker started down the hallway, clocks all over the house began striking eleven.
They waited for the clocks to finish, unmoving. When the chiming ended, Handy whispered, “Jesus!”
Parker started forward again, and another chime sounded. He thought at first it was another clock, then he realized it must be the front door. “Hold it,” he whispered.
Ahead, at the far end of the hallway, one of the bodyguards went by. They waited, heard the front door open, heard voices, then a door closed and the bodyguard went back to the Monopoly game.
Parker moved again. The two of them hurried silently down the hallway to where it opened into the main front hall. Someone was going upstairs. They heard a casual voice. “Hello, Mr Bronson. A real mess, that Cockatoo situation.”
Another voice muttered something unintelligible.
“Very nice house, Mr Bronson. Really very fine. Really.”
“You said that last time.”
That would be Bronson. He sounded bitter about something.
“I must mean it, then.”
“Yeah. Well, Quill, come on into the office.”
There was silence, and then a door closed upstairs.
Parker whispered, “Watch the stairs.”
Handy nodded.
Parker moved to the right, at an angle, and came to the doorway where the bodyguards were playing Monopoly. He glanced in, saw them sitting there, concentrating on the game. They would be there another three or four hours. They played Monopoly all the time, as though they were addicted to it. They could be ignored.
Parker hadn’t expected a visitor. Bronson had had only one visitor in the five days they’d been watching his house, and that had been a youngish man with a briefcase who’d showed up in a chauffeur-driven limousine Sunday night. He’d looked like an insurance adjustor, except for the limousine. He’d stayed half an hour, and then had gone away again.
He wondered if this were the same one, back again. Whether it was or not, he was holding things up.
Parker went back to Handy and whispered, “They’re at the game again. We can forget them.”
“Right.”
Mrs Bronson was already in bed. They’d seen the light go on and off in her bedroom an hour before. So, except for the visitor, everything was set up the way they’d planned.
Parker led the way up the stairs. They were thickly carpeted, as was the hall on the second floor, so they moved without sound.
The third door on the right should be Bronson’s office. Bronson’s bedroom was beyond that, and his wife’s bedroom farther down, at the end. The hall was dimly lit by electric candelabras. Light gleamed under the door of Bronson’s office.
Parker moved up silently to the door and pressed his ear against it. He heard the stranger’s voice, a monotone. After a minute, he figured out what the stranger was talking about. His name was Quill. There’d been a hit at a place called the Club Cockatoo and he was describing the robbery to Bronson.
Parker smiled to himself. He’d been right. He wondered which of his letters had set off the robbery. He moved away from the door, back down the hall to Handy who was waiting at the head of the stairs. Handy was keeping an eye on the staircase, just in case anyone decided to come up.
Parker whispered, “The guy is called Quill. They’re talking about a robbery.”
Handy grinned. “Just one?”
“I don’t know.”
Parker went back and listened some more. Bronson didn’t like Quill very much. Quill was explaining how come the people who worked at the Club Cockatoo had let the robbers get away with it. Parker listened, as impatient as Bronson, and at last Quill said, “Well, I think we may have learned from this.”
Bronson’s voice was bitter, “And the others?”
“I’d heard there’d been some more.”
“Elevenmore.”
Parker moved away, back to Handy, smiling again. “Twelve,” he whispered. “They been knocked over twelve times.”
“That must have hurt,” said Handy.
“Karns will go along now. Twelve times! He’ll pay us to stop.”
Handy looked over the rail at the stairs and the hallway below. Faintly, the Monopoly players could still be heard. Handy said, “What do you want to do? Tackle him with that guy in there?”
“No. He’s maybe due some place else after he leaves here. We don’t want to keep him and louse up his schedule.”
“What, then?”
“We’ll wait. In Bronson’s bedroom.”
