“All right. So you’re smart. What do you want?”
“Well, listen, boss, do you remember that office you used to have in the Booth Building?”
“What do you mean — used to have?” Dodd demanded. “That’s where I have my office now.”
“No,” said Meekins. “Not now.”
“What?” Dodd shouted. “What are you saying?”
“Well, I pulled out of there about five minutes after you did. I got about a block down the street, and I heard a big boom. I thought maybe Hitler or Hirohito had dropped in to call, and I looked around quicklike, and I saw a lot of smoke and stuff coming out of a window, and it was the window of your office.”
“Go on, go on!” Dodd ordered tensely. “What was it? What happened?”
“Somebody chucked a bomb through the door, boss, and blew everything all to hell.”
“A bomb?” Dodd yelled. “A bomb! Are you crazy?”
“Not me. It wasn’t a very big bomb, they tell me, but it sure scrambled things around, and if we d have been in there it would have spread us out like strawberry jam. Dodd, do you know a tall, skinny dame with thick ankles who wears a wide-brimmed hat and a black veil and a moth-eaten fur coat?”
“No! Who’s she?”
“I wish I knew. She’s the one that chucked the bomb, I think. I snooted around and found out that the elevator guy carried such a party up to our floor, and she didn’t go to any other office on that floor or in the building, even. She was there about the right time, and she sort of disappeared about the time of the explosion. So what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Dodd said in a stunned voice. “I can’t figure... Where are you now?”
“I’ll tell you where I am. I’m in the locker room at police headquarters. There are about twenty cops here with me and more coming and going all the time, and this is right where I’m going to stay. I didn’t hire out to catch bombs, and I’m not going to do it.”
“Our files!” Dodd said in sudden agony. “Our confidential files! You didn’t go away and leave—”
“Oh, I took care of that. I had Hennessey send a couple of flatfeet over to watch the joint.”
“Cops!” Dodd shouted. “You want cops to read what’s in those files, you half-wit?”
“I thought of that, too. I had Hennessey send Broderick and Mason over there. They’ll steal any bric-a-brac like fountain pens and stamps and stuff that ain’t blown up, but they won’t bother the files, on account they can’t read.”
“Are you punch-drunk?” Dodd asked. “You can’t be a cop unless you can read. You have to take a written examination before you can be appointed.”
“Naw. Broderick and Mason hired substitutes to take the examination for ’em. They pay Hennessey ten bucks a week apiece to write out their reports for ’em. It’s a fact. Now look here, boss, that was a very dirty trick somebody played on you when they hooked you for Blinky’s phoney funeral, but heaving bombs around is something else again. People ain’t fooling when they do things like that. You better lay off, or they’ll be scraping you off the walls.”
“The hell with that,” said Dodd bitterly. “Blinky can’t pull this kind of a stunt on me and walk off laughing. Take me for seven hundred odd bucks and give me the bird and then blow up my office on top of it. Just wait until I find him. I’ll give him a funeral, but I’ll make damned sure he’s in the coffin this time!”
“What do you want to act like that for? You’ll just buy yourself a big bag of trouble.”
“Don’t be so dumb,” Dodd said savagely. “Blinky or whoever did this wants to be cute about it — like he was in that letter. I’m supposed to be halfway smart. What will I look like when the guy starts spreading this story around?”
“It’s better to be dumb than dead,” Meekins warned. “There’s something more behind this than just somebody’s sense of humor. That bomb wasn’t funny at all, and remember that there was someone in that coffin. Somebody already got his brains spattered. You wouldn’t want to be next on the list, would you?”
“Phooey!” said Dodd. He hung up the receiver and went back to the bar.
“Did you get some bad news?” the bartender asked hopefully.
Dodd drank his whiskey in eloquent silence, flipped a half-dollar on the bar, and went out.
The mousy little girl with the thick glasses was still behind the high counter when Dodd came back in the telegraph office. She looked him over in a critical way and then sniffed twice pointedly.
“It’s whiskey you smell,” Dodd informed her. “Bourbon whiskey. Not very good. Did I get an answer to my telegram?”
The girl nodded. “It came through very rapidly, indeed. The charge is one dollar and sixty-three cents.”
Dodd paid her, and she gave him the telegram reluctantly. It was addressed to Dodd in care of the telegraph company’s branch office, and it said:
It was signed Ramsey. Dodd stared at the telephone number, scratching his head.
“That number sounds awfully familiar,” he said absently to himself. His head jerked up suddenly. “That’s my number! That’s the number of my office!”
“I beg your pardon?” said the mousy girl, watching him suspiciously.
“Never mind,” Dodd said, scowling at the telegram.
A telephone buzzed softly, and the mousy girl looked toward the clerks busy at the machines in the back of the office and then reached down and took the instrument from its shelf under the desk.
“Postal Union,” she said. “What? Who?... Oh, yes. He’s right here.” She pushed the telephone across the desk with an annoyed gesture. “It’s for you.”
Dodd picked up the receiver. “What do you want now?” he demanded.
But it wasn’t Meekins this time. It was a softly guttural voice that spoke very slowly, making a pause between words, but it was so indistinct that Dodd could hardly understand what it was saying.
“Is this Mr. William Dodd?”
“What?” said Dodd. “Oh, yeah. I’m Dodd. Who is speaking?”
“I can not give you my name yet, Mr. Dodd. Not until I talk to you personally. I am in trouble with the authorities. I wish to surrender myself, but I wish to make arrangements for my bail before I do so.”
“O.K.,” said Dodd. “I’ll have my man at the police station whenever you say.”
“No, no! You! I must talk to you personally about our arrangement. I wish to talk to you now. I am calling from a store just across the street from you. If you will step closer to the window, you can see me.”
The telephone had a long cord on it, and Dodd stepped toward the big plate glass window carrying the instrument with him. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Come just a little closer to the window, Mr. Dodd.”
Dodd took another couple of steps. “I don’t see any store where you could be.”
“Just a little closer...”
Dodd dropped the telephone and fell flat on his face. “Get down!” he yelled at the mousy girl.
There was a series of light snaps, and the big piece of plate glass quivered and jumped and groaned in its frame. Bits of broken glass sang lethally through the air, and the flat, fluttering sound of revolver shots rattled faintly from the street outside. From the back of the office, a clerk yelled indignantly.
The silence seemed to stretch like a thin, taut thread. Finally Dodd turned over and looked up at the window. There were four ragged, starred holes through the thick glass, all in a line, just about on the level of Dodd’s chest, had he still been standing.