Brooke said nothing.
“Malloy found a dime-in-the-slot locker key in your room, in the soap. It fitted a locker in Grand Central. There was a Gladstone bag there containing Floyd’s clothes. You are George Sanders, Room 2213, Hotel McKinley. Half a dozen members of the night staff will identify you. You were seen leaving there with the Gladstone at 4:30 a. m. the morning Floyd died. You had moved his body down into Room 2113 via the fire escape. You wrote a letter on that typewriter downstairs, forged his name to it, and planted it on a train in Grand Central at 1:20 that afternoon. You covered all that with the motorboat no one knew you had, which you kept at the landing under the haunted house, and the pretense that you were working at the houseboat. Those blueprints and that model apparatus are phony props.”
Gavigan stopped just long enough to fill his lungs. “I can’t prove this yet, but I will. You stole those Hussar relics from a private museum on 98th Street. That was what Floyd was diving for. He was laying them down. Salting the East River! There’s also a charge of assault and battery. There are more damned cracked heads in this case than you can shake a stick at.”
That crack was delivered so unconsciously Gavigan didn’t get it himself. I was so interested in what he was saying, I didn’t catch it, either, until several hours later. Gavigan’s next statement was even more engrossing.
“You knocked out Ross Harte on 43rd Street last night—”
“Great Scott,” I thought, “was it only last night?”
Gavigan’s parade of offenses continued. “Ross had that suitcase of phony guineas you let get away from you in Grand Central. Your counterfeiter friend called you at dinner time last night and told you that the queer was ready and where the hell were you? He’d gone to the Hotel McKinley and almost walked right in on a room full of cops. You piled over there and got them. He couldn’t wait to get rid of them. The narrow escape he’d just had threw a scare into him. Am I making the details up all right as I go along? You met him in Grand Central; and then you ran smack into Detective Lester Haenigson, who was on station duty. He started across the waiting-room to pass the time of day with you — to put it delicately. With that case full of brass hanging on the end of your arm, you couldn’t get away fast enough. And you couldn’t drop it, and cut and run. That would have put the fat in the fire. But you used your head. You always have. It’s your stock in trade, isn’t it? Ira Brooke, submarine expert. That’s a new one, that is. Malloy, get me a glass of water.”
Merlini said, “There’s Scotch and soda right behind you. Have a couple — have all of it, but go on. That’s a lovely place to end an installment!”
“You and your card tricks!” Gavigan cracked. “You wouldn’t be puzzled, would you? Or baffled or anything like that?” Gavigan smiled, beginning to enjoy himself.
“No. Not any more,” Merlini said. “Brooke switched his suitcase for Harte’s, of course. And whether he or Detective Whats-his-name was the more surprised when they opened it, I would hate to guess. I don’t know why I didn’t remember to put in a couple of rabbits when I packed — or one of my new Little Wonder Talking Skulls.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Gavigan admitted. “He ducked around the corner by the newsstand, thinking like hell. And he saw Harte’s suitcase in front of the phone booth. He switched them just in time, took the next corner on two wheels, and then let Haenigson, who was running by now, catch up with him. He gave Les a gander at the suitcase, an earful of his customary smooth patter, and Haenigson didn’t have a halfway decent excuse to pull him in. Brooke got back to his own suitcase just in time to see Ross heading for a locker with it. He took a chance there, but it was cut and go. If he’d dropped the suitcase, it would have been connected with him. If he failed to get it back and the lug who found it turned it in — well, the contents of the suitcase Haenigson had seen would be evidence connecting him; but he’d be on his way by then. As it happened, he managed to get it back.”
“But what—” It was Gail this time. “What made the detective so interested in Ira — on sight?”
“Uh-huh,” Merlini muttered. “I said there was something queer about his name. Ira Brooke. Altogether too imitative — too similar to Simon Lake — who is a real submarine inventor. More aliases. Well, Inspector?”
“Yes. Haenigson knew him. And the remaining contents of his Gladstone cinched it. When Brooke cached Floyd’s clothes, he also removed from his room a notebook which contained a sucker list and a time schedule of appointments indicating that he has been working a racing swindle. May I introduce Glass Eye George, so damn smart he’s never seen a stir from inside — until starting now. Salting the East River is his very latest. Whose idea was that, Glass Eye?”
Brooke shrugged uninterestedly, “You know better than to expect answers to questions like that.” Brooke’s voice had suddenly become a good ten years younger! I began to suspect the legitimacy of the iron-gray hair.
Gail said, “This is too much, Inspector. Do you mean to tell us the technical information he rattled off about diving and submarine invention was all false?”
“Oh, no. It was straight enough. Know anything about conmen?”
“No. That’s one subject I’m not an authority on.”
“A good con-man won’t consider a touch under $10,000 simply because most good con-games require considerable outlay in props and confederates. What they actually do is stage a carefully rehearsed play, using a lot of Merlini’s brand of misdirection. He’s really a con-man himself, only you buy a ticket to see his swindle, and with the con-man you pay a steeper rate and you pay as you leave. By the way, Burt, is he the carnival acrobat who turned cat burglar?”
“Didn’t recognize him at first, but if he takes off those glasses—”
“You did an acrobatic act with a Colonel Barnes carnival in 1915, Brooke?”
“Of course not, Inspector.”
“That means you did. Cat burglary was too crude, and the pay was too low, I suppose. That when you started working your glass-eye gag?”
“How did he swindle the suckers with a glass eye, Inspector?” Gail asked. “He doesn’t have one, does he?”
“He made con-game history with that one. Used to hit the smaller towns, put up at the best hotel, wearing the best clothes and passing out Corona-Coronas. Big-shot-business-man act. Got people to talking about him a bit, then he’d begin. Stop in at a store, men’s haberdashery, for instance; make a big splash, order $10 shirts, $5 ties, maybe $50 worth to be sent to his hotel C.O.D. Then just as he started to leave Mr. Van Morgan would clap his hand to his eye and begin searching the floor. ‘I dropped my glass eye’ he yells, and the store owner and all his assistants promptly get down on hands and knees to help hunt. George gets more upset by the minute, big business deal on next morning; can’t possibly show up this way; the glass eye was specially made; couldn’t possibly get another in time that would match his good eye. Means thousands of dollars to him, if his deal falls through, etc. Why he’d pay $500 to get it back! And, of course, no glass eye can be found because he never dropped one. Finally he leaves, nearly prostrate with worry. Storekeeper keeps on hunting. Half hour later a stranger comes in, says, ‘Well, now, look at this,’ reaches down and picks up a glass eye from under the counter. Storekeeper makes a grab for it. Stranger gets suspicious. ‘Why, I’d bet the owner of this would pay a good deal to get it back.’ You know what happens then. When the stranger walks out, finally, the storekeeper has the glass eye and the stranger has a couple of hundred bucks, the amount depending on how well Glass Eye put over his wealthy-business-man part. The stranger goes down the street and stops in at store number two and picks up another glass eye. He’s got a pocketful. Next morning at the hotel half a dozen clerks are sitting in the hotel lobby, each with a glass eye carefully wrapped in cotton wool and all waiting for Mr. Van Morgan to show and pay out $500. Mr. Van Morgan and assistant are, of course, in the next town down the line doing another engagement of the same act.” Gavigan stopped and gulped another glass of the water Malloy had obtained.