“With a capital C.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell you what was in the bag?”
“She didn’t know. She isn’t Muriel Comley.”
“Then what was she doing in Muriel Comley’s apartment?”
“I don’t know. Seemed like she was visiting, from what the clerk said.”
“Seems like we’d ought to do something about this,” Gabby said, and winked.
“That’s the way I felt.”
“Maybe Muriel’s good-looking,” Gabby suggested.
“Could be.”
“What,” Gabby asked, “are we waiting for?”
“You.”
Gabby grinned, struggled into his coat, and said, “Let’s go.”
At the apartment-house entrance I rang the bell of 218 and we stood there waiting, tingling with that feeling of excitement which comes from doing something interesting and not being quite certain what is going to happen next. After a few seconds I pressed the button again. When there was still no answer I said to Gabby, “Perhaps she’s been expecting this and decided nothing doing.”
“Perhaps she’s gone to bed.”
I said, “Oh, well then, we wouldn’t want to get her up. Oh, no! We’ll go right on back to the hotel.”
Gabby laughed.
I moved over to the front door, pressed my face against the glass, looked inside, holding my hands up at the side of my face to shut out the reflection of the street lights. There was no one at the desk. The lobby looked deserted.
“Anything doing?” Gabby asked.
“No. Evidently the clerk’s gone to bed and this outer door is kept locked at night.”
I pressed a couple of other buttons. On my second try the buzzer on the door whirred, and Gabby, pushing against the door, stumbled in as the door opened. We walked up the one flight of stairs.
Just as I raised my hand to knock on the door of 218, Gabby caught my wrist. Then I saw that the door lacked about a sixteenth of an inch of being closed. The apartment was dark behind it and from where I was standing, the door looked to be securely closed. Standing over at Gabby’s angle, you could see it wasn’t.
We stood there for a second or two in silence, looking at the door. Then Gabby pushed the door open.
I went in. We found the light switch, snapped on the lights, and Gabby heeled the door shut behind us.
The apartment was just as I had last seen it. Nothing seemed to have been touched or moved.
Gabby tried a door which led to a kitchenette. While Gabby was prowling around in there, I opened the other door.
“Gabby!” I yelled.
Gabby’s heels pounded the floor, and his fingers dug into my shoulder as we stood looking at what lay there on the bed.
The body was sprawled in that peculiarly awkward position which is the sign of death. By the weird, unreal light cast by a violet globe in the bed lamp I could see his features. I had the feeling I’d seen him before, and recently too. Then I remembered. “It’s the clerk at the desk downstairs,” I said.
Gabby gave a low whistle, moved around the end of the bed, paused, looking down at the floor.
“Don’t touch it,” I warned as I saw him bend over. I moved around and joined him, looking down at the thing on the floor lying near the side of the bed.
It was a club some two feet long, square at one end, round at the other, and covered with sinister stains which showed black in the violet light. There were three rings cut in the billet, up near the round end, and, between these rings were crosses; first a cross like a sign of addition, then a conventional cross with the horizontal arm two-thirds of the way up the perpendicular, then another cross of addition.
We searched the rest of the place. No one was there.
“I think,” I said, “someone’s putting in too many chips for us to sit in the game.”
“Looks like it to me,” Gabby admitted.
We left the door slightly ajar, just as we had found it. We couldn’t be bothered with the elevator, but went tiptoeing down the corridor at a constantly accelerating rate. I wanted to get out of the place.
Suddenly down at the far end of the corridor a dog barked twice. Those two short barks made me jump half out of my clothes and sent a chill up my spine. Gabby moved right along. I doubt if he even heard them...
We didn’t say any more all the way to the hotel. We went up to our room. Gabby sat down in the big chair by the window and lit a cigarette. I pulled up my bag and started scooping up the stuff on the bed and cramming it in. When I had my clean clothes packed, I spread out my soiled shirt so I could wrap clothes in it for the laundry. A slip of paper fluttered to the floor.
“What’s that?” Gabby asked.
I picked it up. “That’s the piece of paper that was in the purse. I put stuff from the purse out on the bed, and I’d also dumped my bag—”
“Let’s see it.”
I handed it over.
Gabby frowned. “ ‘Puzzle No. 2 a little after midnight.’ That mean anything, Jay?”
“Not to me.”
Gabby’s eyes were cold and hard. “Never heard of a switch list — or a puzzle switch?”
“No.” I knew then, just from the way Gabby was looking at me, that we were in for something.
“You see, Jay, there’s just a chance this is a trap we’re being invited to walk into.”
“Sort of will-you-walk-into-my-parlor-asked-the-spider-of-the-fly?” I inquired inanely.
“Exactly.”
“So what do we do?”
Gabby’s lips were a thin line. “We walk in. Come on, Jay. We’re going to the freight yards. I have to see a man down there anyway, and this is as good a time as any.”
We got across the yards in a series of jerks and dashes to a big wooden building. Gabby led me up a flight of stairs, down a long corridor lined with offices, and pushed open a door.
A man who had been writing down figures on the page of a book glanced up. An expression of annoyance gave way to astonishment. Then the swivel chair went swirling back on its casters as he jumped to his feet.
“You old son of a gun!” the man exclaimed.
Gabby gave that slow grin of his and said, “Fred, this is Jay Burr,” and to me, jerking his head toward the man in the green eyeshade, “Fred Sanmore.”
Just then a train came rumbling through and it sounded as though the building was within a half mile or so of a heavy bombardment. Everything shook and trembled. The roar of sound filled the room so there was no chance to talk. We simply sat there and waited.
When the train had passed, Sanmore went back of the desk, took off his eyeshade, and said to Gabby, “You old so and so, you want something.”
“How did you know?” Gabby asked.
“Because I know you. You’re here on furlough. This is your first night in town. You’ve been here for a couple of hours. By this time you’d be buying drinks for a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead — if you didn’t want something. What is it?”
Gabby pulled the strip of paper out of his pocket. “List of cars going past the puzzle switch?” he asked.
“Probably coming on a switch from over the hump.”
“What,” I asked, “is a hump?”
Sanmore started to answer me, then turned to Gabby instead. “Why do you want to know, Gabby?”
“Just checking up.”
Sanmore sighed and turned back to me. “Sorry, Burr. A hump is the high point on a two-way incline. You push cars up to the hump, then cut ’em loose, and gravity takes ’em down across the yards. It saves a lot of wear and tear, a lot of steam, releases a lot of rolling stock, and handles a cut a lot faster than you can any other way.”
“And a cut?” I asked.
He grinned. “Any number of freight cars taken from a train and switched around yards. Even if it’s a whole train. The minute a switch engine gets hold of it, it’s a cut.”
Gabby said, “Any idea whose figures these are?”