He hitched himself together under his overcoat and crossed the street below the entrance of Fifty-two, and stopped between two parked cars to scrutinize as much of the lighted interior lobby as he could see. When he had satisfied himself that it was not a service building, he took his first step from between the parked cars, then stopped as a cab pulled up to the entrance and double-parked. He watched as Dr. McDevitt alighted from the cab and hurried inside. Johnny speeded up and entered on his heels, catching up to the doctor at the mail-boxes, where he was adjusting his glasses preparatory to reading the names.
“Munson?” Johnny said from behind him, and put his thumb on the name. “Right there. Two-C.”
“Why-ah-yes,” Dr. McDevitt said in surprise, and turned. “Well, now, Killain. Are you a part of the mystery?” He waved his glasses gently to free them of the moisture created by the sudden change in temperature.
“There's a mystery, Doc?”
“Why, this telephone call. Peculiar sort of thing.” The doctor frowned slightly. “Munson's not an intimate of mine, yet he acted as though it were life and death that I get here. He sounded-sounded-”
“Hysterical?”
“Not hysterical.” The pink-cheeked man tapped his lips thoughtfully with the frame of his glasses. “Under pressure, rather. Almost-well, extreme-”
“I know what you mean,” Johnny agreed. “I had the same call.”
“Now isn't that remarkable?” Dr. McDevitt marveled. He looked toward the tiny self-service elevator. “What do you suppose can be taking place?”
“Let's find out,” Johnny said. He led the way onto the elevator and punched the “three” button. “Keep your voice down, Doc, and your heels off the floor.”
The doctor looked at him in surprise, then pointed at the button Johnny had pushed. “Isn't it the second floor we want?” he asked.
“Let's do this my way, Doc. Someone could be waitin' for us to get off this tin can at the second floor.” Johnny slithered out of his overcoat and dropped it on the floor of the cab. He cleaned out the contents of his pockets and dropped them on the coat-wallet, key ring, loose silver, money clip, tie clasp, nail clippers. “We'll go up a flight an' come down the stairs behind him an' kibitz the hand he's holdin'.”
“I don't understand,” Dr. McDevitt said crossly, looking at the little pile of things on the coat. “Do you expect me to believe that you know-”
“I don't know a thing, Doc,” Johnny interrupted him. “I feel.” He retrieved a handkerchief from the coat, wrapped it twice around his belt buckle and knotted it firmly. He removed his shoes as the elevator stopped and the doors opened silently. He listened carefully, but he couldn't hear a fragment of sound from below.
There was light in the hallway-not good light, but enough to study the position of the stairs in relation to the elevator. If there was a stake-out below, the logical place for it to be was under the stairs, with the elevator doors under scrutiny.
Johnny stooped and picked up his key ring with his left hand. He looked at the mingled emotions visible upon Dr. McDevitt's mild features and indicated with a thumb that the doctor was to remain on the elevator. In stockinged feet Johnny crept across to the head of the stairs leading down to the second floor, dropped to all fours and, on his stomach, wormed his way soundlessly down the inner side of the stairwell, tight to the wall. He eased around the corner at the midway landing and paused at a point eight feet above the second-floor hallway.
He listened again, and the silence was so complete that it was with some doubt that he tossed his key ring over the bannister in front of the elevator and heard it land with a loud clank. Johnny waited for seconds until he heard the faint scrape of shoe leather below; he lifted his head in time to see a shadow move out from beneath the staircase. When the shadow bent down to investigate the key ring, Johnny looked down into the face of a man he had last seen wielding a length of pipe upon Manuel Ybarra's prostrate body. Johnny rose silently to his feet, dived over the bannister and landed on the shadow's back.
The man grunted loudly and went limply floorward. Johnny pinwheeled over him and came up on hands and knees, his elbow numb from contact with the floor. He chopped a bladed palm fiercely to the neck juncture for insurance, and looked up at the patter of feet on the stairs as Dr. McDevitt trotted down.
On his feet again, Johnny tried the door of 2-C. It was locked, and he backed off to the opposite wall. “Here!” Dr. McDevitt protested as he sensed Johnny's purpose; with a running start Johnny burst the door open at the lock. It splintered inward in slow motion, disclosing a big, high-ceilinged room furnished with the elaborately heavy, ornate pieces of an earlier day. From the doorway Johnny could see Al Munson's gross body sprawled across a desk, the upturned face ghastly white. There was very little blood visible from the small black hole in the center of Al Munson's forehead.
Johnny unknotted the handkerchief, which he had used to keep his belt buckle from clicking on his wormlike progress down the stairs, padded his hand and reached for the phone on a circular marble table.
“Just a moment, Killain.”
Impatiently, Johnny looked over his shoulder. Dr. McDevitt stood four feet inside the shattered door, the small automatic in his hand trained directly upon Johnny.
“Where'd you find-” Johnny began, and swallowed. Dr. McDevitt's eyes and expression made a number of things belatedly clear. Without moving his hands at all Johnny surreptitiously began to change the position of his feet.
“I didn't find it, Killain. I had it,” the doctor said softly. “And now I must use it again.” He sounded properly regretful. “I never really believed that you could get past Armand, but your animal instinct served you well. It's well I took the precaution to be present.”
Johnny glanced at Al Munson's body. “Your signature, Doc?”
The pink-cheeked man nodded. “A mewling kitten,” he said disdainfully. “I posted Armand and went out to the street to await your arrival.”
“You're the gizmo behind the whole thing?” Johnny still found it a little hard to believe.
“These people abused my patience terribly,” Dr. McDevitt assured him earnestly. “Their greed destroyed my foolproof plan. I naturally had to take steps.”
Rocky, Johnny thought, and I got to find it out upwind from the barrel of that small-caliber belly gun. “Armand got Roketenetz at the Rollin' Stone,” he said tentatively, turning his body a fraction of an inch at a time to lessen the area in front of the gun barrel.
“Roketenetz,” the doctor agreed, “and Ybarra. I felt that Hendricks and Munson should be dealt with personally by me, inasmuch as they had so grossly abused my confidence.” His voice rose sharply. “In five years the group had earned a steady profit, with no one the wiser, all due to my initiative and planning. Wouldn't you have thought they'd be satisfied?” The tone was high-pitched and querulous.
“It's a shame Keith got away from you,” Johnny said solemnly.
“It is, indeed. I had not anticipated his-ah-withdrawal. I fear I shall never understand people.”
You and me both, Johnny thought. How in the hell am I gonna reach that little flipped-lid? His eyes ranged the room for something to throw, but there was nothing within reach. He didn't even have his shoes on. And then he heard the elevator. The self-service elevator was moving. The discovery of his overcoat and other items on it should produce some kind of an investigation.