that, spoken by a sophisticated smoothie like him. For a minute I really felt as if I were in the pages of a Black Hawk comic book.”
“In denial, I suppose,” Silvestri said.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“When are you going back to Smith’s property to play with your garage controls? It might pay off.”
“I agree, but give me a day or two, sir! The Judge can be very exasperating,” Carmine wheedled.
It got him nowhere. “Tomorrow, Captain, tomorrow.” Then Silvestri relented. “I’ll call the persnickety old terror and beg him to be nice. Once he hears the story, he’ll play ball.”
Abe and Corey were in their office, sufficiently bored to follow Carmine to his room with alacrity.
“We have two controls,” Carmine said, “and five acres of landscaped gardens as well as a three-storey mansion to search.”
“No, sir, three controls,” Abe said. “The one that opened the column might open another door out of signal range.”
“I don’t know about that,” Corey said dubiously. “I heard that a garage door control on Long Island was opening the missile silo doors on a base in Colorado.”
“Yeah, and we can all get Kansas City on our television sets if the weather’s right,” Carmine said. “Well, on this exercise we’re not going to worry about missile silo doors or Kansas City, okay? You’re right, Abe, we should use all three controls. What I want to do today is work out a plan.”
“Delia!” said Abe and Corey in chorus.
“Delia?” Carmine called.
She came in quickly, the only one of his little task force disappointed at the solution of the importance of Dee- Dee Hall; her mission of exploration had fizzled as soon as Smith explained about his daughter.
“Isn’t it lucky,” she said gleefully, “that I have aerial survey maps of Mr. Smith’s property? I got maps of all four suspects’ properties and had Patsy blow them up to poster size.”
“One step ahead as always,” said Carmine.
Though the picture was black-and-white, it displayed most features clearly, provided they were not under the canopies of trees. A border of tall conifers surrounded Smith’s five acres. The house showed all its exterior features, from cornices to the radio shack, and the artificial lake proved to have a tiny isle in its middle joined to land by a Chinese bridge. The picture had been taken with the sun directly overhead-a necessity for a useful survey from the air.
“The white or grey dots must be statues, and the fountains are self-explanatory,” Delia said. “The jumble behind the house must be garages, garden or equipment sheds, the usual appurtenances of a mansion on a fair- sized piece of land. See there? That’s a patch of dead or dying grass, so you should check it for a slab of concrete underneath. My papa insisted on building an atomic bomb shelter in our back lawn, and the grass was never the same over it. He still keeps it stocked with food.”
“Well, I don’t think we should deal with the outside first,” Corey said firmly. “If I were Smith, I wouldn’t have my secret compartments anywhere I’d get wet. And what about a hard winter?
“You’re right, Corey,” said Carmine. “We do the house first. Also the outbuildings and the immediate vicinity of the house. He has an army of Puerto Rican servants to clear snow away.”
“There’s one more thing,” Abe said.
“What’s that?” Carmine asked, enjoying listening.
“The controls might trigger more than one door each.”
“Depending on missile silo doors and Kansas City. What a bummer! Who can give us advice?” Carmine asked.
“The new guy working with Patrick,” Corey said. “I had lunch with him the other day. He was the one told me about the missile silo doors-he used to be a master sergeant in the air force. This guy-his name is Ben Tucker-is a utility player. Photography, electronics, mechanics. I can ask him for tips.”
“Do that, Corey.”
“What about warrants?” Delia asked.
“The Commissioner assures me that Doubting Doug will play ball,” Carmine said.
“Huh! I’ll believe that when I see it,” Abe muttered.
Whatever Silvestri had told Judge Thwaites worked. When Carmine appeared in chambers the next morning, his warrant was already waiting for him.
“Commie spies!” His Honor exclaimed, wearing the same face that saw him hand down a maximum prison term. “You nail this bastard to the wall, Carmine!”
Their plan had been worked out: they would start as far from each other as possible, Carmine upstairs on the roof working down, Abe on the bottom floor working up, and Corey in the outbuildings. Each had a control, understanding that, having done it all, they would have to exchange controls and do it again, and yet a third time. For that reason, a system was mandatory, and each man was doomed to the same territory three times over.
It took less time than they had originally envisioned. If the batteries powering the controls were kept fresh, one press on a button could last as long as the thumb or fingertip doing the pressing. They became expert at standing in the center of a space and pressing, rotating slowly as they did so. Provided the signal beamed out above occluding furniture or objects, it was powerful enough to work in situations where a garage control would not have. Carmine began to understand the Long Island garage and the missile silo doors. Wow! That must have sent people back to the drawing boards! But what genius to trace the offending control! Kansas City was more captious by far.
They discovered a total of seven concealed compartments, only one of which was triggered by the folly control. That one yielded a metal box similar to three others found elsewhere, all fitted with padlocks. Each compartment was photographed, contents in situ, then contents removed, and contents themselves.
“When are you going to tell the FBI?” Abe asked, back at Cedar Street.
“Only after I’ve filtered out evidence of eleven murders,” Carmine said. “Once that’s done, they can have the espionage data and the controls. Knowing Special Agent Kelly, they’ll be there for months, and end in tearing the place apart stone by stone. Pity, but I can’t think anyone would ever want to live there again.”
Carmine kept Delia but liberated Abe and Corey to take new cases and go back over Smith’s murders.
His trove consisted of four locked metal boxes the size of a shoe box, a stack of ten thin children’s exercise books, five fatter leather-bound books, and a series of Holloman County property plans, including the Cornucopia Building, the County Services building, the Nutmeg Insurance building, and Carmine’s house and grounds on East Circle.
“These, we keep,” he said to Delia, putting the plans to one side. “None relates to his spying activities.”
The leather-bound books were all to do with his spying: codes, ciphers, a journal written in Russian Cyrillic script.
“We hand these over to the FBI,” he said. “If they need additional proof of espionage, here it is.”
“The microdots were proof enough!” Delia snapped.
“Ah, but he’s an embarrassment, you see. In the social pages of papers and magazines, object of articles in the
“The boxes,” Delia said eagerly.
“Pandora at heart.” Carmine picked up the one taken from the compartment triggered by the folly control. “If there’s tangible evidence of murder, this is the one.” He picked up a pair of double-action snips and broke the padlock’s U.
“Ohhh!” sighed Delia.
The box held an ampoule and a vial of two curares, six 10cc glass Luer-Lok syringes, a hypodermic needle, steel wire, a tiny soldering iron, an ordinary safety razor, and two small bottles fitted with thick rubber caps.
“Bingo!” cried Carmine. “We’ve got him for the murder of Desmond Skeps.”
“Why on earth did he keep all this?” Delia asked.
“Because it amused him. Or fascinated him. Or he couldn’t bear to part with it,” Carmine said. “Mr. Smith is a
