“I hope you’re not talking about Pinks,” Duggan said. “Just ‘cause it was a silver-tongued Scotsman who started them, I don’t hold much truck with them railroad boss siding, strike breaking bastards.”
“Amen, Comrade,” Coleman said straight-faced.
“They’ll be hand-selected by me,” Renwick said.
“Okay. Let’s go over the Scotty to make sure nothing else is amiss.”
“You read my mind.”
“I’ll see you two a little later,” Renwick said.
The pilot and the mechanic said their goodbyes and walked back to the experimental craft. Renwick drove away in his Chrysler roadster. He stopped in town to get an egg cream and use a pay phone in a drugstore as there were no phone lines out where the airfield was.
“Hello, Dash, is that you?” he said, after he’d settled in the booth and got the operator to dial the number he wanted after consulting his pocket address book. “It’s Hugo Renwick...yes, that’s right, how are things? What are you working on now?’ He listened for several seconds then spoke again, “Huh, all about a black falcon statue you say, sounds damn interesting. Look, I wanted to pick your brain for some thick necked chaps for a spot of guard duty. Hush, hush stuff. But that must be reliable. Right, no, they don’t have to have been in harness.”
Renwick took another sip of his soda and began jotting down a few names offered by former Pinkerton detective, and current teller of hardboiled tales, Dashiell Hammett.
CHAPTER FIVE
The gaunt white man had slept longer than he’d intended. Though not heavy, the rusty springs squeaked as he swung his legs over the side and, his rather long feet on the floor, he got his bearings. He’d run out of laudanum the day before and had told himself that he didn’t need the drug to get his work done. That, really, he should do his best to keep clear-headed and able-bodied. This was not a new argument. But no more. Too much was at stake.
Dr. Henrik Ellsmere, product of an Old-World upbringing and education in his native Austria at the University of Vienna and the Graz University of Technology, lecturer at Cambridge and Princeton, rose in his ratty pajama bottoms and undershirt, scratching at himself. He bent down to the mattress, turning his head this way and that, sure there were bedbugs, but like every morning, saw no evidence save the little red bites on his body. There were a lot of cats prowling around here—it had to be fleas, he glumly concluded. In the small room was one table. On this was a raft of loose sheets of paper, spilling onto the floor. The pages were filled with Ellsmere’s calculations and projections in his precise numbers and letters in pencil.
After a trip to the bathroom at the end of the hall, he picked up his notes, seeking to put them in rough order. Maybe next week he’d give up laudanum, as he felt a belt or two of the wonderful elixir might provide the key to his formulations. No, he resolved yet again, he must be strong. A sound caused him to look up from his papers. The sash in the window leading to the fire escape was being raised by a tiger.
He blinked hard, worried that the hangover from the laudanum was playing with his mind. Ellsmere realized it was a man in a coat and hat, wearing a tiger mask, bright orange with black stripes like what would be worn at a Halloween party, held in place by a rubber band attached to either side. The hat was pushed up on his head. The Tiger Man came into the room
“All right, prof, you’re coming with me, and don’t give me no guff.” He was large, over six-two, and the bunching around the material of his coat sleeves told Ellsmere this was a muscular individual indeed. He advanced on the older man, blocking the window. The only other way out was the door, and the man would be on him in two bounds should he try and run. And how far would he get anyway? He was old and had arthritis in a knee. This man would be on him like a fish monger’s cat on a mouse. The Tiger Man had worn a prophetic disguise.
“Look here, my good man,” he began, realizing he was speaking in German—he tended to revert to his native language under stress. Continuing in English, he said, “I’m in the middle of most important work and have no time for circus hijinks or whatever this is.”
“Come on, big brain, this won’t hurt a bit. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Let me get dressed first, please.”
“Okay, you do that. But no funny business.” He glanced around the room. “Jeez, what a dump. I’m doing you a favor taking you out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” His pants were draped over a chair, as was his shirt. He dressed, put on his shoes and then stepped to the chesterfield, picking up a hair brush.
“Okay, Casanova, let’s go,” the Tiger Man said impatiently. “Ain’t no chorus girls where I’m taking you.” A cigarette he’d lit dangled from the slot in his feline mask. He ground it out on the floor to join other black spots there.
Ellsmere had combed back his tangle of hair, regarding himself in the mirror as if he cared about this appearance. He turned from the dresser toward the door.
“This way,” said the masked man, jabbing a thumb at the window. My jalopy’s in the alley.”
Ellsmere walked up, breaking a glass capsule he’d taken from the dresser against the man’s cheek. A plume of green smoke arose
