“Then this morning we received a second message. This one was made up of letters and words cut out of what seems to be a newspaper, pasted on a sheet of paper. Our laboratory believes the letters were all cut from the same paper. And they think the paper the words were pasted on was the same paper as the letters and words were printed on.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the envelope, handling it gingerly. He eased the note from the envelope, unfolded it, and laid it on the desk. Maxwell leaned over and studied it closely. His nose wrinkled at the message.
“I assume the 2 A.M. is tomorrow morning?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.” Maxwell leaned back in his chair, studying the sheet from a distance, and then sat erect. “You know, Lieutenant,” he said slowly, “newspapers also operate in the manner of a detective bureau at times. Take those two lads from the Washington Post, in the Watergate case. They certainly did a better job than the police in that city; or than the FBI, for that matter, even assuming the bureau was trying.” He pointed toward the note. “Now, I think it’s quite possible one or two of our old compositors might be able to read more into this note than the police can — or than I can, frankly. I’ll need your permission to call one of them in and ask him.” He paused. “Or maybe you’d feel better if I cut the message into separate words and moved them around to change the meaning?”
Reardon sat up. “No! You can have one of your people look at it — in fact I’d appreciate it — but let’s leave the note intact. It may well be evidence in a murder trial someday.”
“Of course.” Maxwell shrugged. “Oh, well, if I know the man I want to show this to, he won’t even read it. He’ll just look at the type and the paper.” He leaned over and flipped the communicator switch. “Miss Tenefly? Get McDougal up here, will you? On the double.” He clicked off the set and leaned back. “Well, let’s see what the Scots Wizard has to say.”
They waited in silence, Maxwell tapping his tented fingers together, Reardon staring from the window, wondering if he was right in being here at all. There really had been no need to give Maxwell the information he had; all that any other police officer would have done would have been to show his shield and ask the questions he wanted answers to. If any word leaked out as a result of his needless disclosure, anything that resulted in harm to either Pop Holland or Dondero, he swore he’d come back to the Express and feed a few people here through one of their noisy presses, starting with the publisher! Although, to be honest, if anything unfortunate did occur, the fault would be his alone, as was the fix Dondero was in.
There was an abrupt rap on the door and it was opened without the visitor waiting for permission. The man who entered did so in stumping manner, as if his legs had been bound at the knees. He was an elderly man, stocky, with work clothes that had seen countless washings, and an ink-stained apron across his waist that he wore like a guerdon for services rendered in many a publishing battle. A neatly folded cap of newsprint hid his graying hair, a tribute to the origami talents of American pressmen; his huge gray mustache hid all but red-veined cheeks. Tiny blue eyes peered out cautiously from beneath bushy eyebrows of indeterminate color. A huge curved pipe, unlit, hung from the corner of his mouth, touching his chin. He nodded to Maxwell as if the two of them were alone in the room.
“Y’wanted to see me, Mr. Maxwill?”
“Yes, Mac.” Maxwell made no attempt to introduce Reardon, but pointed to the pasted-up note on his desk. “What do you think of this?”
Maxwell leaned over the thing, making no attempt to straighten it out. “It’s a piss-poor paste-up job,” he said, mostly under his breath. “Me grandson would have done better.”
“Forget the paste-up job,” Maxwell said impatiently. “I want your opinion on the printing, and the type. And the paper. Can you — I mean, do you have any idea of those?”
McDougal looked around shrewdly at the stranger, and then back to Maxwell. “Can I touch the thing?”
“You can touch it,” Reardon said. McDougal’s eyes remained fixed on Maxwell. “You can touch it, Mac,” the publisher said, and smiled at Reardon. Reardon shrugged. He had a feeling he should have let Roy Gentry handle the entire investigation of the note. Time was passing and they were getting nowhere.
McDougal picked it up, studied the printing closely, his one hand pinching the paper the letters were pasted on. He looked up. “What d’you want to know?”
“Everything,” Reardon said without much hope of a useful answer. “Can you identify the type? Or the paper?”
“Oh, aye,” McDougal said. Reardon sat more erect. Maybe his visit wasn’t going to be such a waste as he had feared. “It’s from a shopping broadsheet; anyone can see that.”
“Shopping broadsheet?” Reardon had come to his feet and was standing beside the stocky printer. McDougal cocked an eye at the interloper and then shrugged. If Maxwell didn’t mind the stranger butting in constantly, why should he?
“That’s right,” he said, and took his pipe from his mouth to point with the stem. “Those numbers are probably the price of cheese, or eggs, or something. The job was set up with phototype, probably on aluminum plates, judging from the tone of definition. Printed on a web press, probably. And the paper.” He rustled it again between his fingers. “Twenty-eight pound circular stock, cheapest stuff around. Even cheaper than the newsprint we use, which is thirty-pound.”
Reardon felt a sudden stir of excitement.
“Assuming it was printed in the San Francisco area,” he said, “how many shops would you say are equipped with presses capable of doing work of that nature?”
“Plenty. Too many.” McDougal shrugged and shoved his pipe back somewhere beneath his mustache. “Including those around the other side of the bay, I’d guess at fifteen. Maybe more.”
“And just in the city proper?”
“Oh, maybe eight.”
“And is there a list of them anywhere? Who would know who they are?”
Maxwell broke in. “They’re in the phone book, I imagine, but McDougal would probably know as well as anyone. He’s worked about every shop in the area, haven’t you, Mac?”
McDougal nodded; he seemed to be pleased to be labeled a rolling stone.
“Oh, aye. I’ve worked plenty of them, but I know them all. I’ve been president of the union three times, and treasurer twice. I’ve seen them come up and seen them go broke.” He looked at Maxwell calmly. “Newspapers, too...”
Reardon mentally crossed his fingers and asked his final question.
“Mr. McDougal, do you know of any shop, the kind of shop that might have produced that” — he pointed to the note still in McDougal’s hand — “where there is someone working, in a supervisory position, I imagine, or more likely the owner himself, who has a beard, and smokes cigars, and has a small accomp — I mean, a small person — working with him closely, a person who is maybe five-foot-four?”
McDougal frowned at him. Up until the moment he had tolerated the stranger and his questions, but it seemed to him that now the man was getting damnably nosey. “And who might you be?”
“It’s all right,” Maxwell said. “He’s the police.” He was sitting up eagerly, his deep blue eyes sparkling with excitement. “Well? Would you know?”
“Oh, aye,” McDougal said, and laid the note down on the desk again. “That’d be George Morrison, who owns the Neighborhood Print Works, over on Galvez. Mob money in the place, if you ask me. Bunch of goons working there. It’s a scab shop We’ve had our troubles with Morrison, the sweet-talking thug!” He looked around for a place to spit, found none, and swallowed. “The little guy’s probably Harry Wittwer. He drives for Morrison. Big George doesn’t like to drive.”