The Colonel, still watching us, twisted one of the dials slightly, an intent listening look on his face. I noticed a second wire issuing from the machine that ended in a round black microphone hanging against the wall above the desk.
“I was about to come and get you,” Watrous said, in a half whisper. “That’s Rappourt’s room.” He gestured toward the wall on which the mike hung. “Brooke’s in there with her and planning to take French leave. He’s going to blackjack the police launch man and cut for it.”
“Is this,” Merlini asked, “an eavesdropping machine?”
“Yes. Latest thing in detectors — doesn’t require a mike in the other room. You merely put it against an outside wall and it picks up the vibrations and amplifies them. It’ll record, too. Listen.” He lifted the sound arm, snapped a switch labeled Playback, and moved the sound arm an eighth of an inch back on the record. “I got this to keep tabs on Rappourt,” he added, “when I began to suspect she might be faking.” He fell silent as the soundbox point touched the disk. Ira’s voice came, in mid-sentence, somewhat indistinct and slurred, rising above a rumbling undercurrent of hollow sound:
“—too damned hot around here. I’m going to knock over that dick at the boat landing and take it on the lam now.”
“I couldn’t get any more after that,” Watrous said, reversing the playback switch. “They’re still talking but it’s too low to catch.” He moved one of the dials again, listening.
Merlini held out his hand for the earphones. “Get anything on Rappourt?”
“No. Nothing.” Watrous shook his head and passed over the headset. “Except — well, what’s Brooke running for? And what do we do? Face him with it or lie low and catch him in the act?”
Merlini held the phones against his ears, listened briefly, and then answered, “Neither, just yet.”
He returned the headset, went quickly to the door and out into the hall. We heard him knock sharply at Rappourt’s door. Watrous listened, one hand at his dials. I stepped to the hall quickly and heard Rappourt’s voice raised.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Merlini.” He pushed the door in without waiting for an invitation. “Looking for you, Brooke. The Inspector wants to see you.”
Ira didn’t answer immediately. Then he said smoothly. “Yes. Of course. Be down in just a moment.”
“He’s in a hurry, Brooke.” Merlini was insistent.
Behind me I heard Watrous jerk his mike from the wall, close the suitcase and slide it under the bed. He came to stand beside me in the doorway just as Brooke came out into the hall. Rappourt remained where she was. Merlini, Watrous, and I followed Brooke downstairs.
Malloy and Quinn were in the living-room questioning Miss Verrill. As our procession started through, Malloy said, “Just a minute. I want you two. Brooke and Watrous.”
“Keep him happy, Colonel,” Merlini said, herding Brooke on and out. And to Malloy, “The Inspector wants Brooke.”
Merlini led the way quickly toward the boathouse. Inspector Gavigan was there, waiting with Brady and Hunter. The skipper of the police launch was warming her up.
Gavigan looked at us, scowled at Brooke and said, “Not you. Captain Malloy wants—”
Merlini stepped close to him and whispered rapidly. Gradually the Inspector’s face brightened. Brooke was puzzled. The frown he directed at Merlini’s back was venomous. Then he caught me watching him. His face smoothed immediately into a blank disinterest.
Gavigan’s objections had evaporated. He indicated all of us. “Get aboard,” he commanded.
I could see the diver’s two assistants on the deck of the houseboat as we approached. Then, off to the left, I made out a cluster of bubbles breaking on the river’s surface and indicating Mr. Novak’s position. One of the assistants, a square-jawed, beefy man, wore a chest phone and headset. He talked into the mouthpiece and kept a careful watch on the pressure gauge attached to a hooked-up series of four compressed-air tanks that lay on the deck. The other man, at the rail, was paying out air hose and life line.
“Any more luck?” Gavigan inquired.
The man with the phone shook his head. “No. Not yet. Pretty dark down there. He’s feeling around for those boats.”
The single room in the houseboat cabin was fitted out as a combination workshop and drafting-room. A half-finished drawing on tracing linen was tacked on the drafting table, and blueprints hung along the walls. In the center of the room stood a water-filled glass aquarium. Floating on the water was a small, excellently constructed model of what was apparently Brooke’s Suction Salvage device. A jointed steel tube, capable of extension and retraction, descended from the underside of a dredgelike, flat-bottomed boat and terminated in a scooplike open maw that rested on the bottom.
The various pieces of a diving suit hung from hooks on the wall, and the round helmet with its great, goggling glass eyes stared at us from a corner. Merlini picked up one of the heavy, lead-weighted shoes and examined it closely. “They’ve been cleaned up,” he said, “But there are some traces of silt.”
“All right, Brooke,” Gavigan said flatly. “It’s time for you to start talking. There’s a whale of a lot you can add to your statement, and I know it. So begin.”
“I don’t understand. About what?” The innocently bewildered way he blinked at the Inspector from behind his glasses was expertly done.
“Floyd. We’ve found him. You might start with that.”
Brooke’s eyebrows rose together like twin elevators. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I know nothing about him. I haven’t seen him since night before last at dinner.”
Gavigan bore down. “That won’t do, Brooke, and you know it. Floyd’s told us a lot. He admits that, after leaving the island the other night, he came back here to the houseboat while the others were busy at a séance. He went down in that diving suit to look at the wreck. You stayed topside and took care of his air. You might as well admit it.”
There was a faintly greenish hue on Brooke’s face that grew as Gavigan talked. Then for a long moment he said nothing. Finally he made his decision. “All right. So what? He came back here. He dived. I took him into town again. He said he was coming back. He didn’t. Since you’ve talked to him, you know, I suppose. I don’t.”
“Who left the island in that boat last night?”
“I don’t know. Why should I? I wasn’t there.”
“You might be interested in knowing that the boat’s been found on the other side at 130th St. Who knew about that boat besides yourself and Floyd?”
“If Floyd says I know about that boat, he’s lying.”
“I see. How did Floyd get back to the island after Henderson took him in?”
“Water taxi. And it picked him up again afterward.”
Gavigan grinned. “There’s only one water taxi on this river, and it didn’t make any trips out here Thursday night.”
“The driver’s lying, too. Floyd tipped him not to talk.” Gavigan took a step toward him and stuck his chin out. Merlini said quickly, “And what did Floyd find on the bottom?”
Brooke turned, ignoring Gavigan. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“Perhaps. But we’d like to hear your answer. His story and yours don’t check too well so far. We thought we’d match them and try to cancel out the — er — the misstatements from each.”