How disgusting! she fretted, when the tightly crammed column revealed nothing suitable in a moderate price range. If only I had left work early last Friday. Just an hour sooner and I would have had first crack at the houseboat.
Then she was forced to smile. The situation wasn't quite that desperate yet. And, she reminded herself, Whit intended to make very good use of the Albatross. In any case, she would have found it difficult to cope with the bewildering assortment of persons who continued to demonstrate their interest in the houseboat-even to the point of illegal entry.
"I'd like to know if that awful Mr. Smith was our burglar of last night," Barbara mused aloud.
She considered it quite likely that the stocky foreigner was the culprit. But then again, it might also have been the man with the Southern drawl.
"If Whit was right and the man he saw in the car was Buck Younger, what connection might he have with the Albatross?" she asked herself.
The mention of the brawling Texan reminded her of the abruptly terminated conversation of the night before. What sort of military secret could possibly have involved a rough and tumble sailor like Buck Younger? Again, she struggled to retrieve the dim memory that had teased her brain, but whatever it was had firmly entrenched itself in her subconscious, and no amount of puzzling could coax it out.
Well, anyway, I'll bet the mystery has something to do with Lance Shelby, Barbara thought, abandoning side issues like Buck Younger. Think of the secrets a famous newspaperman might uncover!
Perhaps Lance Shelby had obtained documents which incriminated a gang of racketeers. These criminals would certainly attempt to recover such evidence before the police learned of the newspaperman's discovery. But why such concentration on the houseboat? Why not search his desk at the Courier office-or his apartment?
How do I know they haven't? Barbara thought suddenly. With reporters and cameramen bustling in and out of the newspaper building at all hours of the day and night, it would be almost impossible for anyone to ransack his desk. To desperate men, though, Lance Shelby's apartment would be easily accessible.
She deposited the papers in the nearest trash can, at the same time trying to remember the address that Ted Rigney had mentioned. She had boarded a bus and was on her way downtown before she paused to wonder how she might gain entry to the ace reporter's penthouse.
"I'm hunting for an apartment, and his is vacant. What better excuse do I need?" she decided.
Despite the simplicity of her plan, Barbara felt some trepidation as a uniformed doorman bowed her into a lavishly decorated foyer. Everything in the apartment building had an aura of wealth surrounding it. Everything, she amended, but herself. Supposing the manager refused to admit her?
"There's only one way to find out," she told herself. Taking a deep breath, she readied her sunniest smile and pressed the button beneath the card labeled "Superintendent."
Barbara heard the gong reverberate loudly behind the closed door, but no footsteps responded in answer to the summons. After a minute or two, she pressed the buzzer again. The bell had just echoed a second time when feet shuffled down the polished expanse of corridor and an elderly man in work clothes appeared.
"Mr. Post is gone. He'sa come back two or two-thirty," the old man said.
"Oh, dear, that's too bad." Barbara started to turn away, but the janitor's Italian accent had evoked a memory. "Why, Mr. Orsini!" she exclaimed, recognizing the former custodian of the high school. "How nice to see you again."
He smiled widely, pleased at being remembered. "You want to see Mr. Post?"
"Not really. I came to look at the vacant apartment," Barbara explained. "I'm working here in town now, and I need a place to live."
The janitor shook his head. "You don't need this one. It'sa too expensive. But come on. I show you." He drew a jingling ring of keys from his pocket and stepped into a self-service elevator.
"I understand the man who leased the apartment has recently died," Barbara said as the elevator ascended. "Are his things still here?"
Mr. Orsini nodded. "Maria, my wife, she clean the apartment Friday. Mr. Post say pretty soon relatives come, take everything away. Might as well have the place looking nice."
But, Barbara thought as the door swung open and she stepped onto the thick, rich pile of the carpet, Maria's work had all been in vain. The penthouse most decidedly did not look nice.
Behind her, Mr. Orsini gasped and began gesturing frantically. "Somebody wreck everything!" he moaned, clapping his hands to his head. "Mr. Post will be plenty mad!"
Appalled as she was by the wanton destruction, Barbara felt no shock of surprise. She had almost expected to find the penthouse in a state of chaos similar to that which the midnight prowler had left behind on the Albatross.
Barbara was now convinced that it was the sullen "Mr. Smith" who was responsible for the rifling of Lance Shelby's possessions, since the man with the Southern drawl had apparently not arrived in Santa Teresa until Friday evening. On Thursday morning, he had been in a phone booth in Port Dixon. By late the next afternoon, he had still not made an appearance at the dock, but had resorted to another telephone call in the hope of persuading Mr. Dodson to refrain from selling the Albatross until he arrived.
I wonder why it took him so long? she pondered. Greg and Whit made the drive from Port Dixon in a couple of hours. It seems to me if the Southerner wanted the houseboat so badly, he would have broken every traffic law in the book to get it first.
"You don't want the apartment, eh?"
Barbara realized that Mr. Orsini was waiting for her to leave the elevator. "No, I don't think so," she said. "Thank you for showing the apartment to me, but I'm afraid it would cost a great deal more than I can afford."
"You'd be better off with a nice cheap place bandits don't break into," he said morosely, pausing at the superintendent's office.
Barbara left the building and resumed the train of thought he had interrupted. If Mr. Smith's motives were difficult to figure out, the Southerner was a real enigma. Unless-Her eyes widened. Unless the Southerner was Buck Younger!
He wouldn't dare break any traffic laws, she thought. I'll bet he detoured miles out of his way every time he saw a policeman. With the Shore Patrol after him for desertion, he couldn't risk being recognized.
When Whit had first suggested that the Southern voice on the phone might have belonged to Buck Younger, Greg had argued that the Texan would have no reason to linger in California. Barbara could still think of no motive why he should do so, but nevertheless, she strongly believed that Whit's hunch had been correct. Buck Younger, as well as Mr. Smith, was interested in that houseboat-or in something that he suspected was concealed on it.
Barbara took a few more steps, then halted, oblivious of the curious stares she was drawing from her fellow pedestrians. "There might be a way to find out what the mysterious something is," she murmured. "If Lance Shelby was working on a hot story just before he flew to the Orient, someone at the Courier might know about it."
A brisk ten-minute walk brought her to the newspaper building. A cameraman, she decided, would have been Shelby's most likely confidant, since the reporter might have needed pictures to accompany his story. She rode up to the third floor, but found the photographic department deserted. Undaunted, she hiked up another flight of stairs. The photographers quite often spent time in the City Room when not working on a specific assignment.
To her disappointment, however, most of the rooms on this floor were also empty. Not until she had reached her own department did she encounter anyone, and then it was Melinda Foster. The Society Editor sat pecking halfheartedly away at a batch of items in her column.