“You were locked in that night?”
“Yes, but overcoming a mortise lock was not hard,” he said proudly. “Prowling around, alert after those remarks about my atomic work, I overheard my beautiful captor talking to someone on the phone. I did not gather all of it, but I distinctly heard her mention the Daughter. Also, I understood they would be resorting to more… direct methods to get me to cooperate.”
“You figured to lam it out?”
Ellsmere frowned.
“Escape?”
“Here I am.”
“But if the Daughter’s been found, I’m sure I would have gotten word,” Henson said, tamping down any urgency in his voice. No one knew he possessed the Daughter, a dangerous piece of space rock that scared him.
“Unless the resourceful Ootah is dead. For this is something those of that ilk would kill for to possess.”
“You think she worked for some oil or coal outfit? This part-Inuit woman?”
“That is a possibility. At any rate, I’ve been hiding out near the Bowery. Frankly, and I suppose the psychiatrists at Dunwich would say this was a diversionary tactic on my part, I allowed myself to become immersed in what would it take to tap the Daughter’s potential.”
“That ciphering of yours?” Henson said.
“Yes.”
The lunch crowd began entering, a mix of working men and women and others in snappier clothes. Henson keenly aware of the presence of more eyes and ears. “Let me settle up and we’ll go back to my place.”
“Very good.” Stepping to the counter to pay, a portly man in glasses and a striped shirt looked over at him from his stool there. He took hold of his copy of The New York Amsterdam News he’d been reading with his meal.
“Would you mind autographing this, Mr. Henson?” the man said.
Henson smiled at the coffee-stained newspaper which was folded to a print ad. The ad depicted a drawing of a smiling Henson’s face, a fur hood over his head. In big letters the wording read: “There’s only one discovery for me, Clicquot Club Pale Dry Ginger Ale.” Smaller type went on attest that the product was made from the purest spring water, fresh juices of lemons and limes, pure cane sugar, and only the best in Jamaican ginger.
“Here you go, glamor boy.” Mayfield handed Henson a pencil from behind her ear and he signed the advertisement. Handing the newspaper back, he noted on the flip side was a brief article about Daddy Paradise’s upcoming talk at Liberty Hall.
Henson paid, and the two men stepped out onto the thoroughfare. As he’d told Destiny Stevenson, there hadn’t been anything in print or radio about the escapade from the other night. At a corner newsstand, a man with several days’ growth of whiskers and a balding head stood behind the array of newspapers, slicks and pulps such as Argosy and Weird Tales prominent. Despite the warmth of the day, he wore a threadbare sweater buttoned to his breastbone. He nodded at Henson, who nodded back.
“Mr. Greene, how goes it?”
“Same old sixes and sevens.”
“I hear you.”
A car with a canvas top screeched into view, nearly running down a woman crossing the street who made her objections known.
“Get down,” Henson yelled, the glint of sunlight on the end of a Thompson gun’s barrel filling his vision. The gun rattled rounds at them, the spray of high-pitched bullets sending up a blizzard of newsprint and lurid color covers. Henson grabbed Ellsmere and they plunged behind a parked car. People screamed and ran and dived for cover all around him. A man, praying loudly, dove with his arms in front of his face through a plate glass window of a bakery.
“Are you hit?” Henson asked.
“I believe I’m whole, for now,” Ellsmere replied.
The machine gunner was not the one called Eddie Henson had encountered the other night. These Chicago Typewriters were too damn plentiful. And that didn’t mean these men didn’t work for the Dutchman, too. Though could be they were working for whoever put the snatch on the professor, as he didn’t figure that to be Schultz.
The canvas-topped car drove past, then, tires smoking, made a U-turn to roar back toward the two.
“Stay put,” he told the scientist, getting into a crouch.
“Just what is it you intend to do, Matthew?”
“See if I can get us out of this.”Normally he didn’t go around armed, but since taking the job to protect Daddy Paradise’s daughter, he’d been keeping a couple of his throwing stars on him. He’d have to get close enough to use them—and stay alive in the process.
On the passenger side of the car, a man rode the running board, pistol in his hand. He was in a suit and hat, a lion’s mask like something for a Halloween party covering his face. The car slowed, and he leapt off. On the other side, the one with the machine gun also got out of the car. He was dressed similarly, a rhino mask covering his face. The driver, in a cheetah mask, remained behind the wheel, engine idling. The lion with the handgun grabbed a small man who’d ducked behind his pushcart. The handgun’s muzzle was put against this man’s head.
“Okay, Henson, give us the bookworm and I’ll let this poor bastard keep breathing. If you don’t, he’s the first one I kill—but not the last.”
Hands up, Henson took several steps toward the two. “Maybe we can talk this over.” The machine gunner in his rhino mask was flanking him to the left. Even if he could plant a star in the head of the lion, the other one would cut him down in a blink.
“You’re in no position to dicker,” the lion said.
Henson chanced more steps. “Maybe I got money to
