“And you think Henrik tells me what to do?”
“It was said you were deferential to him.”
“Like I was with Peary?” He meant to sound sarcastic, not bitter.
She held up her hands.
“Henrik is my friend. I’m especially protective if I’m trying to avoid them getting hurt at my expense. Were those Schultz’s men in the masks?”
“He is not a man given to whimsy.”
“But you have an idea who they worked for?”
She sipped her drink. “What can I say?”
“I’d be curious as to your guess.”
She smiled enigmatically. “I wouldn’t want to speak out of turn. Was it just an old adversary looking to settle a score with you, or was it also about taking the professor?”
“Now I’m the one who has to demur.” He wasn’t about to let on she knew more about what was going on than he did.
She chuckled. “Very good, then.” St. Clair rocked back in her chair.
He took his last sip of the coffee and stood up. “Thanks for the java.”
“My man can take you back.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Yes, you will.”
After Henson left, Venus Melenaux, came back in. “What do you think, Queenie?” She sat on St. Clair’s side of the desk, raking out a Gauloises cigarette and placing it in an ivory cigarette holder. She did so with a surgeon’s precision.
“I think we need to determine who hasn’t been dealing square with us, chérie. Better get our Irish friend on the blower.”
“Sounds right.”
“Certainement.” The rackets’ boss looked up at the younger woman, who lit St. Clair’s cigarette, took it from her fingers and, after taking a puff a puff, handed it back. Their eyes lingered for several more moments then Melenaux moved away, withdrawing her hand from where it rested on the other woman’s shoulder.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning Henson got over to the Beaumont where Henrik Ellsmere had been staying. His lawyer Ira Kunsler had asked around, given he knew from Henson that Ellsmere had been staying on the lower east side, and what with his German accent, his previous location hadn’t been too hard to pinpoint. Two dollars passed from Henson to the desk clerk told him the room number.
“You won’t need no key,” the haggard-looking man said. “It’s already been broken into.”
“Yesterday?” Henson said.
“Yeah, locksmith’s coming sometime today.”
“The cops?”
Shrugging he replied, “Big shouldered gees like you.”
Upstairs, Henson entered the obviously searched room, the door hung lopsided on hinges kicked loose from the frame. He stood just past the threshold for a moment, taking in what little there was to see. The drawers of the chesterfield had been pulled out and dumped, containing a few items of Ellsmere’s clothing. The lone chair and table had been upturned, and the shades pulled off their rollers in case the professor had hidden anything that way. If there had been of value here, it had been taken. But the condition of the room lent credence to what Kunsler had speculated, that Ellsmere was now in the hands of the government. But the authorities were not the ones who’d held him at the mansion in Poughkeepsie.
Henson hadn’t come here to look for what Ellsmere was working on —he knew what, in a general sense. What he wanted to know was who’d had him and sent masked hoods to get him back. That meant he had to backtrack to identify his quarry. Securing the door as best he could from nosy passersby, Henson went down on all fours, probing the lower quadrants like a sled dog out on the trail. He went about like that, not self-conscious at all. Behind the chesterfield which had been pulled away from the wall, below the window, then over to a far corner. He didn’t turn up anything. Back over by the bed frame, the mattress having been tossed aside, he noticed the rear leg seemed slightly higher than the others.
Henson got up and, turning the frame over, saw that the tubular end of the leg could be pulled free and he did so. He then lifted the entire frame and shook it. Nothing. He assembled the leg again and put the bed back down. Mouth twisted in concentration, Henson took a last circuit around the room. He paused, then went back to the chesterfield. Several coins were on the top, some atop the others. He lifted what looked like a quarter off the other coins. It was silver—only it wasn’t money. The disk was larger than a half dollar, but could easily be overlooked among the other coins if you weren’t paying close attention. It was an emblem of some sort. On it was stamped a futuristic-looking cityscape and the words “Weldon Institute” arching above the image. Back and front were identical.
Whistling a sea shanty, Henson quit the room carrying the item in his pocket. Back outside, he made a call to his lawyer but got no answer. Thereafter Henson made several more inquiries by phone or in person. He stopped at a florist to have flowers delivered to May Maynard as a way to say thanks, then made a trip to a brownstone on the upper west side.
“Help is addressed at the side door,” the butler sniffed after answering Henson’s knock.
“Tell Lacy it’s Matt.”
The butler, a sallow-faced reedy white man of maybe sixty glared at this upstart negro. “Be gone with you.” He started to close the door.
Henson stiff armed the door. “You best tell Miss DeHavilin
