Death out of Thin Air (20 page)

One of the reporters buttonholed a detective who owed him money from last night's poker game. “All right, Joe,” he threatened. “Talk, or else.”

The detective whispered a few words in his ear and the reporter, his eyes popping, whirled and vanished. He made the drugstore phone booth down the street just as Woody Haines was coming out. The reporter saw him and slowed to a walk at once. “Hi, Woody,” he said, “Can I use the phone? The wife's having a baby and I ought to call the hospital.”

Woody nodded, stepped aside and then as the door closed, turned, scowled after his colleague, muttered, “Damn, that guy only got married last week!” When that realization exploded under his hat Woody legged it for the street at a pace that would have made Seabiscuit envious.

The reporter in the phone booth, half a minute later, was getting one of the biggest nickel's worth of phone service the telephone company had ever sold.

“The Invisible Man,” he shouted, talking in headlines, “double-crosses police! Takes fortune in precious stones from Nathan Ziegler while New York's Finest are barking up wrong tree!”

The rewrite man on the other end of the wire dug savagely into a sheet of copy paper with his pencil, broke the point off short, swore and grabbed for another. A few minutes later teletype machines in a hundred cities were chattering madly.

And a few blocks away Patricia Collins leaned forward breathlessly on the seat of a taxicab that moved down Fifth Avenue close behind another cab in which Mr. L.C. Gates sat with a satisfied smile on his face and a large pigskin bag between his feet.

C
HAPTER
VI

The Mysterious Mr. Gates

W
HEN
Inspector Church burst like a raging cyclone into Nathan Ziegler's shop he found its proprietor in a hysterical and incoherent state. In answer to Church's torrent of questions he held out a shaking hand and gave the Inspector a small card whose size and shape were now all too familiar.

It was another impudent, taunting note from the invisible correspondent.

My apologies for having misled you. And be careful. I intend to do it again. Better luck tonight. Best regards.

— T
HE
I
NVISIBLE
M
AN

A coldly determined, vindictive expression settled on the Inspector's red face as he read those words and his frosty blue eyes were like twin volcanoes spouting fire. He was really mad now.

He turned from Ziegler, whom shock had left nearly speechless, and went to work on the clerk, an elderly little man who sputtered with excitement, but who was still able to answer questions with some degree of coherence.

He told about Gates' visit and said that when he and his employer had started to return the miniatures to the big safe in the corner of the display room, they discovered at once that of the twenty which had been laid out, three were missing; and those, according to the clerk, were the pick of the lot.

Ziegler spoke up now. “I sent him to get you, Inspector. And then I went to the open safe….” Ziegler moved toward it now and stood looking in at the objects that shone gold and crystal in the light. “All the rarest pieces have been taken,” he went on haltingly. “The Oviedo rock crystal cross which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Infanta Isabella; Charles VII's gold locket that bore his name and the Imperial crown on its face in diamonds; a XVI century reliquary of enameled gold containing a piece of the True Cross; the Jacopo de Farnese jade cup; the only perfectly matched string of black pearls in the world; a Gribelin watch; a set of six Jacobite wine glasses …”

Ziegler moved from the safe to a display cabinet nearby. “An Aldus choir book,” he added hopelessly, “and two holograph Keats letters.”

“They sound valuable,” Church said.

Ziegler groaned. “They were priceless!”

“This bird Gates. Maybe he took the stuff out under his coat.”

Ziegler shook his head wearily. “Impossible, Inspector. The jade cup was a foot high. The choir book weighed twenty pounds. The wine glasses.

“Who is Gates?”

“I … he was a new customer, Inspector. Gave his address as Seattle. Lumber millionaire. Said he had just recently become interested in collecting miniatures and he ordered one of those that I showed him.”

“Okay. Brophy, get someone started on a checkup. Find out if that's who he really is. Get the airport and—”

At that moment the clerk who had helped Mr. Gates to a taxi returned. Church pounced on him. “You didn't mention this man, Ziegler. Why has he been outside?”

“He carried Mr. Gates' bag to a taxi.”

“Mr. Gates' bag?”

“Yes. A large pigskin travelling case. He was on his way to catch a plane at LaGuardia Field. He—”

“Brophy!” Church broke in. “Get busy. Check the airport. And put someone to work on Gates. Find out if that's who he really is. That's where your stuff went, Mr. Ziegler. It went out in that pigskin bag! You!” He turned to the clerk, “What's your name?”

“B-Butterfield, sir,” the young man replied, stuttering nervously under the Inspector's accusing glare.

“What was the license number of that cab?”

“I … I d-didn't notice, s-sir.”

“Naturally. Nobody ever does, dammit! Did you by any chance happen to notice what direction it left in?”

“Yes, of c-course, sir. Downtown.”

Nathan Ziegler interrupted. “Inspector. The things could not have gone out in Gates' suitcase. That is impossible!”

“Why?” Church growled, turning on him.

“Simply because I was with Gates every moment of the time he was here. He had no opportunity, and everything was quite in order when he and I left this display room and went to look at the crowd in the street outside, just before eleven.”

“Well, so what? One of your clerks loaded the bag for him.”

Ziegler shook his head more decisively than ever. “They were both with us in the front room.”

Church glanced at the Invisible Man's card which he still held in his hand. His face grew darker than ever, even if a minute before that had not seemed possible.

“Robbins,” he growled, turning to another of his detectives. “Get this down to the lab and phone me a report.” The Inspector then took off his overcoat and got down to business.

He spent the next two hours going over the premises of Nathan Ziegler, Ltd., looking for clues and interrogating Ziegler and his two clerks. He accumulated nearly enough information about the private lives of all three men to have written three full-length biographies. But he didn't find any clues — nothing but a strange insistence on Ziegler's part that J.D. Belmont was the Invisible Man. He was sure it was Belmont because the financier had wanted to buy some of the very objects that had vanished.

Church didn't like the suggestion on two counts. “Belmont's got money to burn. He wouldn't need to steal them. Besides I've just talked to the D.A. on the phone. Belmont was in his office at eleven o'clock.”

If the Inspector, however, had been with Patricia Collins in her taxi his face wouldn't have been so long. She was having rather more success. The taxi she had followed had circled around until it headed, not toward LaGuardia Field, where the occupant had, in Butterfield's hearing originally told the driver to go, but in a diametrically opposite direction.

Once, the man she followed left his taxi, walked a block or two and then took another. He was doing that, Pat knew, so that if the cops should find the cabdriver who had picked up a fare at Fiftieth and Fifth they'd not discover anything concerning his real destination. A few minutes later, at a red light, Pat took the opportunity to make a change herself, from a yellow cab to a checker.

The cab ahead, still going uptown, suddenly turned right, through the park. On Lexington it turned north again and Gates got out at the corner of 104th.

Pat passed him and waited at the next corner. Gates came toward her and she sat tight. He walked another block and turned left into 106th. Pat made the corner just as he ducked into a house halfway down the block. She paid off her driver, dashed for the phone in a nearby drugstore and dialed the number of the Manhattan Music Hall.

When she had been connected with Don Diavolo's dressing room and heard Chan's calm matter-of-fact voice over the wire, she spoke and tried hard to keep the hopeless feeling that hung heavily on her from showing in her voice.

“Pat speaking. Is Don there?”

“He just went on stage, Miss Pat. Where are you? We have been worried. Miss Mickey had to fill your spot and Don had to leave out The Great Transposition mys—”
¹⁷

“Chan,” Pat said hurriedly. “Listen. I want help. I'm on 106th Street. Drugstore, corner of Lexington. I—I think I've found Glenn!”

C
HAPTER
VII

Appointment With The Unseen

A
S
Don Diavolo came off stage into the wings and busied himself making a lightning change of costume, Chan popped up beside him.

“Miss Pat's on the phone,” he reported rapidly. “She was at the corner of Fifth and 50th where you had her stationed, when she saw a man she thinks was her brother in disguise get into a cab. He came from Ziegler's shop and he carried a large pigskin bag. She followed him.”

Don threw the red opera cape around his shoulders, his eyes gleaming. “That's a fine place to stop for breath, Chan. Get on with it.”

“She trailed him to a place on 106th Street. She's waiting there now. What do I do?”

As the music of the orchestra before the footlights rose in a crescendo, Don said, “Get the Horseshoe Kid and send him up to take over. And see if you can locate Larry Keeler and get him down here. Scram!”

Don Diavolo whirled and ran out onto the stage just barely making his cue.

The rest of that afternoon was hectic. Between appearances Don listened to Pat's story, conferred with Larry Keeler, and heard the Horseshoe Kid report several times at hourly intervals that Mr. Gates was still holed up.

A glum-faced Woody Haines stopped in once to report that Inspector Church was being as tight-mouthed as two clams, but that the best authenticated rumors had it that Nathan Ziegler was poorer to the tune of some two hundred grand.

Also, his informant in Church's office had given him a photostatic copy of the note that had been left in Ziegler's shop. The lab had found a thumbprint on this one too, though, unlike the first, this one bore no scar.

Once, between shows, Don made a hurried trip to 106th Street, looked the ground over and conferred with Horseshoe.

The latter had news. “We've hit a jackpot,” he reported. “I just saw St. Louis Louie go in the joint.”

“And who is St. Louis Louie?” Don Diavolo asked.

“A cheap gunman who used to play with the Blue Streak gang until it folded after Jake the Orphan got a twenty year jolt for getting in Hoover's way. Louie's a Chinese needle-worker who shoots first and thinks afterward — only he never thinks much.
¹⁸
If Pat's right about the guy being Glenn, I don't like the company he keeps.”

Don Diavolo frowned. “Looks like trouble ahead. You sit tight, Horseshoe, I want to know where Mr. Gates and friend Louis are tonight when the fireworks display goes off out at Belmont' place. We'll play those two cards close to our vest until then. Keep the phone line working.”

Diavolo returned to the Music Hall, did his eight o'clock show and then made arrangements to keep his $10,000 appointment with J.D. Belmont, Inspector Church, and the Invisible Man.

The financier's Oyster Bay estate on the shore of Long Island Sound was a tourists' landmark. But they never saw it except from a distance. High walls surrounded the entire estate, except on the water side and that was constantly patrolled by Belmont's private police department.

On a hill above the water, his turreted castle stood out against the sky like the stronghold of some medieval robber baron. Some people called him that as it was. In England, for instance, there was an association of antiquarians named the “Save Our National Relics from J.D. Belmont” Society.

Belmont was without question the world's ace collector. Money from his pyramided companies and interlocking corporations apparently poured in on him so fast that he needed four overworked secretaries to help him spend it.

At just ten-thirty Don Diavolo braked his long scarlet Packard before the towering medieval gate that had once, centuries ago, withstood the onslaught of the Barbarian hordes and which Belmont had had brought across the Atlantic piece by piece and reassembled.