After I had him in the right frame of mind I suddenly threw open the door of the adjoining room.
“Now yuh can walk in here,” I told him in the same cracked voice, an’ be sure yuh have yore hands well away from yore gun when you come in.
Bill was in a quandary. They were desperate. C. W. Kinsington had to be killed, of course, but Bill wasn’t such a fool as to have the murder pulled off in the house at which he had called to see said Kinsington. That was too raw. He had called with the ten thousand dollars to see what his victim looked like, to arrange for a murder that couldn’t be traced. He didn’t propose to pay over the ten thousand dollars unless he had to, because that would complicate his problem, and he’d have to throw in a robbery as well. If he didn’t have to pay over the money, Kinsington could be killed within a day or two. If he had to fork over that ten thousand bucks it was a cinch Kinsington couldn’t be allowed to leave the house alive.
I was dolled up in a diguise that got by fine in the halflight of the dim globe in the hallway. A white beard hung down on my chest, a broad brimmed western sombrero was turned up over my eyes, riding boots and overalls completed the getup. On the whole I looked like a man who would be hard to monkey with but easy to outwit. I stood out there in the city like a sore thumb. There weren’t half a dozen men in the whole place who looked anything like me.
I could see relief come over Bill Peavey’s face when he saw how easy it was going to be to identify me. He could have even shot me from an aeroplane if he’d had to. There was no more chance of mistaking me in a city crowd than there would be of mistaking a butcher at a vegetarian cafeteria.
I handed it to him straight, toying with a big frontier model of a forty-five the while. I was Kinsington, supposed to be dead. Ogden Sly had got possession of my personal effects and had used the information therein contained to blackmail John Lambert. As far as I was personally concerned I resented it. I either wanted the money all given back and restored to Lambert or I wanted Ogden Sly arrested or both. I didn’t know which. I might be willing to let the blackmailer off without reporting the matter to the police if a complete restitution were made, but I wasn’t so blamed certain about it.
There was a lot more that I rambled on about, not giving Peavey a chance to do much of the talking, but impressing on him that I was hard-boiled, obstinate, and didn’t care who knew it. I was opposed to blackmailers and I was going to leave that very room and go directly to John Lambert and expose the whole affair, but first I wanted the ten thousand to return to him at the time of my talk.
After a while Bill Peavey got the idea. If he gave me the ten thousand would I wait until his principal, Mr. Sly, could call on me and “explain” the situation?
I nodded. With ten thousand paid as evidence of good faith I would.
Bill paid it over. He hated to do it, but he did.
“Now where can Sly see yuh for a friendly little chat?” he asked.
“How’d tomorrer mornin’ do?”
Bill shook his head, and I could see him begin to sweat. He didn’t want me running around with that ten thousand dollars. He wanted to get me to some nice, quiet place where he could pull off his robbery and murder.
All the time I was talking with Bill Peavey I was watching him, watching him as a cat watches a mouse. Bill Peavey was yellow, yellow through and through. If he was ever cornered he’d squeal.
“Nope, I won’t meet him tomorrer mornin’,” I said suddenly. “I’ll meet him right here in an hour, but first I’m goin’ down to a place I know where there’s a nice safe, an’ I’m goin’ to put this here money where it’ll be all right. I wouldn’t want to carry this much of John Lambert’s cash around loose in my pocket tonight. Tell him to be here in an hour and I’ll see him.”
Bill squirmed and pleaded. I was hampering his style to beat the band. He’d have to kill me before I left the house, and that left him a narrow margin of time for a limit. He’d have to find some way to get the ten thousand back… I could see his narrow, beady eyes gleam as he watched me, and knew that he was figuring over the chances of killing me right then and there and making his getaway. I fingered the heavy forty-five careless like, and that settled the matter. Peavey wasn’t exactly a fool. He might have taken the chance if he’d have found me sitting down in room nineteen when he came in and before he’d paid over the money, but things were different now. I’d fooled him when I turned out to be a hard-boiled western prospector with a big forty-five and when I’d had him walk into the adjoining room at my convenience instead of his.
He sighed, agreed to the appointment and walked out.
After he’d gone I took out a wax dummy I’d had brought there for me and transferred my disguise to it, and it looked pretty lifelike with the white beard down on its chest and all. By the time I’d finished, the Chink reported on Bill Peavey. He was cruising around with a high-powered car, curtains closed tight. Evidently he was waiting for me to take that money to the “nice, safe place.” If I was going to meet Sly in an hour I’d have to start on that trip to deposit the ten grand pretty soon, and that was going to be Bill’s opportunity.
The stage was all set, and I rang up Police Headquarters and got on the line with Allison, the detective who had charge of the investigation of the Caruthers case.
“Look here, Allison,” I said in a whiny, high-pitched voice, the sort of a voice that a stool pigeon usually uses, “do you want to get a straight tip on that Caruthers murder, one that’ll lay you right on the inside?”
He was suspicious. “Who is this, where are yuh speakin’ from, an’ what do yuh want?” he asked.
“Never mind who I am,” I told him, “I’m speakin’ from the Far East Roomin’ house an’ hotel, an’ I don’t want nothin’. This is a straight tip to pay off a grudge.”
“All right,” he barked. “Who killed Caruthers?”
“I don’t know,” I came back, whining like a stool pigeon always whines when he can’t deliver the goods, “but this much I do know. There’s an old gent with white whiskers stayin’ here at the place that does know, and the fellows that are on the inside are plannin’ to bump him off. You send a bunch of plainclothesmen and a couple of motorcycle cops down here, and just wait for somethin’ to happen.”
I could feel him hesitate at the other end of the line.
“What are yuh tryin’ to do? Make a monkey outa me?”
“You send the men down here quiet like,” I came back. “Get a couple of plainclothesmen on each corner to stop any speedin’ machine, and have the motorcycle cops come on down and stay where they can catch any car that gets away from the plainclothesmen, an’ do it all silent like. I’m lettin’ yuh in on the ground floor of a murder, an’ if yuh don’t grab this tip yuh’ll get panned by every newspaper in the city, because it’s straight.”
With that I hung up, without giving him a chance to discuss things any further.
Then I took my dummy figure and went downstairs.
Ten minutes passed, and then a Chink came shuffling in the door, intoned a Cantonese greeting and gargled a bunch of the lingo.
I can speak the stuff when I have to but this wasn’t one of those occasions when I had to, so I just looked blank and waited for Quon Jee to interpret.
“He say policeman come,” said Quon Jee.
I peeked out of the door through the specially constructed peephole that the Chinks have in all their places. There across the narrow street, motor running, was the car with curtains drawn, all ready.
I turned back to the boys and nodded.
We opened the door and shoved out the dummy, keeping well back in the shadows. For a second or two nothing happened, and I cursed softly beneath my breath. Not that it made any great difference. I didn’t have anything to lose. If I didn’t get them in this trap I’d get them in another. The reason I wanted this play to go through was because it would give things an artistic finish, and I like those artistic finishes.