“Mister Holmes is resting and cannot be disturbed,” the cool voice said with a positive accent.
“This is Precinct Detective Edward Johnson on a matter of police business of an urgent nature,” Coffin Ed said.
“I’ll switch you to the supervisor,” the reception nurse said.
The supervising nurse was patient and polite. She said that Mr. Holmes was not feeling well and could not for any reason be disturbed at that time; he had postponed his scheduled press conference until ten o’clock, and the doctor had given him a sedative.
“I can’t say that I believe it, but what can I do?” Coffin, Ed said angrily.
“Precisely,” the supervisor said and hung up.
He phoned Casper’s house. Mrs. Holmes answered. He identified himself. She waited.
“Have you been in contact with Casper?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“He telephoned this afternoon.”
“Not during the past hour?”
“No.”
“Might I ask when he is expected home?”
“He said that he will come home Tuesday evening-if there are no complications.”
He thanked her, hung up and went back to the car.
“I don’t like this,” Grave Digger said.
Coffin Ed drove up Lexington Avenue, going fast, and turned over to Park Avenue at 35th Street, where the traffic moved faster. He skirted Grand Central Station on the upper ramp, skidding on the sharp corners and causing taxi drivers to shout at him.
“If I know Casper he’d get the hell out of that hospital as soon as he could,” he half muttered as he accelerated up the slope toward 50th Street.
“Unless he’s hiding,” Grave Digger offered.
From the back seat Roman said, “If you-all are talking about Mister Holmes, he done already left the hospital.”
The car slewed about and just missed a Lincoln limousine highballing in the middle lane. Coffin Ed pulled over to the curb, easing between two fast-moving cars, and parked at the corner of 51st Street He joined Grave Digger in staring at Roman.
“Leastwise, that’s what them people were saying in that house back there,” Roman added defensively. “He’d phoned one of ’em from the hospital and said he’d be home by eight o’clock-one named Johnny.”
“It’s thirteen minutes to eight now,” Coffin Ed said, looking at his watch. “I’d like to have that supervisor-”
“He fixed her; you know Casper,” Grave Digger said absently.
They were both thinking hard.
“If you were Casper and you wanted to slip out, how would you do it?” Grave Digger asked.
“I ain’t Casper, but I’d hire an ambulance.”
“That’s too obvious. The joint is crawling with newsmen, and, if anybody was laying for him, they’d spot it too.”
“A hearse,” Coffin Ed suggested. “As many people as die in that hospital-”
“Clay!” Grave Digger said, cutting him off.
He looked about; the street was flanked with new skyscraper office buildings and a few remaining impregnable apartment houses.
“We got to get to a phone,” he said, then added on sudden thought, “Drive over to the Seventeenth.”
The 17th Precinct was on 51st Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. They were there in two minutes.
Coffin Ed telephoned Clay with Grave Digger standing by. They had left Roman handcuffed in the car.
“Clay’s burial home,” came the old man’s querulous voice.
“Clay. Ed Johnson and Digger Jones this end. Did you send a hearse to take Casper home?”
“I’m getting sick and tired of everybody wanting to guard the hearse I sent for Casper,” the old man said tartly. “He already had Joe Green’s boys-as if he couldn’t take care of himself, mean as he is. And besides which he wanted it kept quiet. Then the Pinkertons sent men up-”
“What? The Pinkerton Agency?”
“That’s what they told me. That they were sending three men on orders from-”
“Jesus Christ!” Coffin Ed said, breaking the connection. “Get the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” he asked the switchboard operator.
When he had finished talking, he and Grave Digger looked at one another with as much fear in their eyes as either had ever seen.
“They no doubt got him by now-but why?” Coffin Ed said.
“That ain’t the question now,” Grave Digger lisped. “It’s where?”
“There’s got to be a tie-in,” Coffin Ed said. “We’ve just missed it is all.”
“We got one more card that we can play; we can make like we’re a joker called Bernard Kaufman.”
“We’d need to know his straight moniker.”
“Makes no difference; we can play that one, since it’s all we got to play,” Grave Digger argued, “it might flush Baron into the open.”
Coffin Ed began getting the idea. “You know, it might work at that,” he conceded. “But we’re going to need Roman’s girl friend.”
“Let’s go get her, and let’s hurry. We’ve just about ran out of time.”
They went outside to their car and braced Roman.
“We’re going to set a trap for Baron, son, and we’re going to need your African queen to identify him,” Coffin Ed said.
“I can’t do that,” Roman said. “You-all don’t need her.”
“We want you both, and there isn’t any time to argue about it. A man’s life might depend on this, a big man’s life, an important man to us colored people any way you look at it-the way things are set up. If you help us now, we’ll help you later. But if you don’t we’ll crucify you. Have you ever been cold?”
“Yes, sir, lots of times.”
“But not as cold as we’ll make you. We’ll take you over to the river, handcuff your feet together, and let you hang in the water with all that snow they’re dumping from the bridges.”
Roman began to shiver just thinking about it.
Afterwards Coffin Ed admitted it might only have worked on an Alabama boy.
“If I tell you where she’s at, you won’t arrest her, will you?” Roman begged. “She ain’t done nothing.”
“If she helps us catch Baron, we’ll decorate her,” Coffin Ed promised.
They stood in the deserted office of the boathouse beside the lagoon, across from the apartment house in which Casper Holmes lived, using the telephone.
It was cold and damp; an inch-thick coating of ice covered the floor.
Coffin Ed was on the telephone, talking through the fine-tooth end of a gutta-percha comb held tight against the mouthpiece.
“This Bernie,” he said. “Just listen, don’t talk. There’s a police tap on your line. Have Baron get in touch with me immediately.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” a voice said coldly at the other end of the wire.
He hung up.
Grave Digger looked a question.
He shrugged.
Roman and Sassafras, standing to one side and handcuffed together, stared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.
“If you is trying to imitate the Mister Bernard Kaufman, who stamped that bill of sale Mister Baron gave to Roman, you don’t sound nothing’ like him,” Sassafras said scornfully,
