This was the point at which Sir Henry Merrivale, very faintly seen, turned into the other path between the bushes and the bathing cabins. He heard the words, and hastened up.
That woman's in New York," Jean added. "If you want to know where..."
"I'm glad you said that, my dolly. Burn it all, the time's gettin' on! Is there any train to town I can get in a hurry?"
Jean drew back Cy's sleeve and consulted the luminous dial of his wrist watch.
"You could get the three minutes to ten if you hurry. But they go every half-hour. It doesn't matter."
"It does matter! You"—he tapped Cy's shoulder—"take the car and follow me with the two gals." Jean cried out in protest, but he went on. "I've got to do a bit of reconnoitering first. Bring Bob too, if you can find him. We'll arrange a meetin' place. —What's Irene Stanley's address, my dolly?"
Jean began to laugh. It was almost hysterical, until she recovered herself.
"Nobody on earth, except the police," Jean said, "would ever guess where she lives. She lives in Grand Central Station."
After a pause, Jean added with a wry smile, "Didn't I tell you when we first met, Sir Henry, that I knew a good deal about that station?"
14
In the main hall at Grand Central Station, the clock over the information desk in that cathedral said five minutes to midnight
In one of the arcades on the Vanderbilt Avenue side, many glass fronts were still open and lighted. One of these was a large room, lined with white tile and mirrors, over which hummed fans as big as the propellers of ocean liners. It dispensed such delicacies as frankfurters, hamburgers, and other foods which to one just arrived from England are as ambrosia of the gods.
Leaning against the marble counter, Sir Henry Merrivale had just polished off his fourth frankfurter and was considering the advisability of a further snack.
Aside from the paper napkin stuck into his collar, H.M. was decently and even properly dressed. On his head he wore a new loose-fitting Panama hat, bought on his arrival from Maralarch. In less than an hour and a half s time, he had accomplished much.
On his evil face there was still the look one who sees a long shot come home at sixty-to-one. But this did not predominate. Bafflement, hope deferred, even despair swelled his countenance into a look of malevolent suffering. The young man behind the counter, a square-headed youth whose name of Diedrich Brinker told of forebears in blameless Dutch graves, was concerned.
"Say, Pop," he inquired, "are you feeling all right?"
H.M., who would have got into conversation with a stuffed owl if there had been nothing else present, hastened to reassure him.
"It ain't the hot dogs," he said. "But I've got to get that 11:45 plane for Washington tomorrow morning!"
The other's face retreated. "No dough?" it asked coldly.
"Oh, I got plenty of dough," said H.M., producing a roll of bills which caused an electric start through other customers along the counter. "It’s a feller named Byles, Gil Byles.
"In the past hour and a half," pursued H.M., "I've had a long talk on the phone with a gal named Miss Engels, I've seen a gal named Irene Stanley and another named Flossie Peters..."
For his age, reflected the shocked Diedrich, this old boy was one heller with the dames.
"I’ve visited every chem—I mean drugstore— thaf s open. Oh, my eye! I know half of it! I've known half of it ever since I was in the wine cellar.
But the other half: I'm licked! If I could only…’
Here H.M. straightened up. He did see something. Reflected in the mirror opposite, from someone standing outside, was a vaguely familiar face. The man wore plain clothes, his pockets stuffed with newspapers; and then came recognition. It was the face of Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey.
"Now wait a minute!" urged Officer O'Casey, seeming to materialize at H.M.'s side in one bound. His tone was respectful and even reverent. "Will you listen to me, Sir Henry?"
(The inevitable term Pop, in addressing H.M., had disappeared from 0'Casey's vocabulary and even from his mind.)
"I'm not sore at you," O'Casey said earnestly. "I told Slats Ferris today, I said, I’m not even sore at him any longer. Because,' I said, 'he's not human.'"
"Well... now!" said the great man, considerably mollified. "Have a hot dog?" he invited.
"Thanks. One large frank and an orangeade!" yelled Officer O'Casey, and immediately lowered his voice, leaning conspiratorially with one elbow on the counter.
"Then I got to thinking again," he went on. "I don't go for this Yogi junk; see what I mean, Sir Henry? But I do go for brains. And I said to myself, 'Sir Henry Merrivale,' I said, 'knows more goddam tricks than any man alive.'"
The great man was still more gratified. "Hem!" he said modestly.
"'But,' I said to myself, 'there's one trick he hasn't guessed. And I have.'" Officer O'Casey now stopped quoting his thoughts. "I know how Mr. Manning got out of that pool."
"What's that, son?"
"I'm telling you," O'Casey assured him in a low voice. "And the secret is that water-polo ball."
H.M., as the other picked up the frankfurter roll and bit off a third of it, began to look still more bedevilled.
"Don't you remember there was a water-polo ball they were slapping around at first? What happened to it later?" demanded O'Casey, swallowing hard.
"Son, listen! I..."
"Mr. Manning's got the ball all prepared beforehand, see? So that nobody knows. He just dives in. He's got some contraption fixed up, see, so he can stick his head inside the ball and seal it up against water and breathe through the rubber. Then all he's got to do is tread water and look like a big ball."
H.M. gave Officer O'Casey a long, slow look.
"Uh-huh," he said. "But wouldn't it have been a bit embarrassin' if somebody smacked that ball while his face was inside? Or if we saw a water-polo ball climb up out of the pool and walk away on legs?"
"Cut the clowning," O'Casey said. "How long did you actually watch the pool?" "Hey?"
"For five minutes, maybe, before we got there.
The DA. asked you, and you said that. And for ten minutes after we got there, say. O.K.! So he's a gone goose, I admit, unless he's got protection."
"That's what I keep telling you, son!"
O'Casey shook his head.
"Look, Sir Henry." He tapped the counter after finishing his frankfurter. "There was one time, when you were sitting in that swing talking about Robert Brownfield and wet paper wads and pruning shears, that every single one of 'em crowded around you with their backs to the pool. Get it? That's the time when Mr. Manning crawls out of the pool in his headpiece and walks away."
"Listen, son. Will you stop addin' to my worries? You yourself dived in the pool and said he wasn't there!"
Officer O'Casey shook his head.
"Just remember, sir," he said, "I was swimming on the bottom of the pool. I was looking for a dead joe. If he'd kept his feet up, I wouldn't have noticed him."
And now O'Casey, to add mystery, bent forward and tapped H.M.'s shoulder.
"That's not all," he muttered. "How do you feel about the electric chair?"
Again Sir Henry Merrivale gave him a long, slow look.
"I feel," replied H.M., "that I don't want to sit in it Is there a general consensus of opinion that I ought to?"
"No, no! I mean the electric chair I found on the terrace at that house!" It was at this point that Cy Norton, who had heard every word of this conversation from outside, entered the hot-dog emporium.
Cy was just in time to see H.M., purple in the face, clutching with both hands at a wabbling hat.
"Gemme another hot dog," H.M. said weakly. "They're all scatty, but this feller's the scattiest. Oh, my eye! Electric chair!"