Quinn laughed. “Sure am, son. And I’ll be lucky if there isn’t a troop of F.B.I. boys there to meet me, too.”
The pilot looked around, startled. He had no idea who his passenger was.
Tony smiled. “Relax, son. I haven’t any Fort Knox gold in that suitcase.”
The gaudily uniformed doorman at the Koppner House quickened his pace as he saw the maroon convertible glide in to the curb. He rested one hand on the door, bending low.
“Yes, sir! Reservation, sir?”
Quinn shot him a surly look, stepped out of the car, walked around to the rear, jingling his keys.
“Here.” He took a long alligator billfold out of his inside coat pocket, extracted a fifty, held it out casually. “I’ll bet this you can find my reservation. Frank Osterman. Hartford, Connecticut. Suite, high up. And bring the registration card out here. I have some stuff to look after here. Save time. Catch?”
The doorman beamed. “Yes, sir. Be right back for your bags.” He goggled at the bill in his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Osterman.”
Quinn disdained replying. He unlocked the rear compartment, took out a pigskin attaché case. He was busy with a topcoat and a hatbox when the doorman hurried back.
“Everything set, Mr. Osterman. Some misunderstanding about your reservation, and the house is full. But I arranged for you to have the governor’s suite on the eleventh — if that’ll be all right, sir?” He held out a pen with the white card.
Tony scrawled “Frank L. Osterman, Hartford,” without appearing to notice the typed rate of $27.50 per diem. “Get someone to run this bus in the garage, hah?”
“I’ll call them right away, yes, sir.” The doorman lifted out the expensive suitcase, noting the case of imported brandy stowed away in the luggage compartment.
Tony shut the trunk lid, locked it. “Tell ’em to make it snappy. I don’t want this bus standing here all night.”
“No, sir. I’ll take care of it, sir.”
In the lobby, a bellman was waiting to seize the suitcase. “Carry the brief-case, sir?”
Tony said coldly, “You handle the suitcase. I’ll take care of this.”
His eyes searched the lobby swiftly, picking out at once a gray-haired man with a stolid, dead-pan face. He stood — mouth clamped over a thin Pittsburgh stogie — by the bank of house phones beside the cashier’s desk, and he was watching Tony intently.
Like all house dicks, Tony thought, you stand out like a black eye on a preacher.
The bellman hustled the suitcase into an elevator. “Nice evening for driving, sir.”
“Humph.” Tony was curt. “Traffic was lousy.”
“That’s right. Friday night’s a bad time for traffic.” The bellman led the way down the eleventh floor corridor. “Going to be with us for a few days. Mr. Osterman?”
“What’s there in this town to keep me!” Tony followed the bellman into the luxurious living room, set the attaché case on the mantel.
“I guess you can find pretty near anything you want in this town, sir.” The bellman hustled about, switching on lights, checking windows. “Shows, fights, women, a little game if you care for it.”
Tony shrugged, disinterested. “Here, buy yourself a good time.” He dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table.
“Thank you, sir! Were you expecting any mail or telegrams, Mr. Osterman?”
“No.” He was short.
“If there’s any little thing I can do for you, sir?”
“Oke. Night.”
The bellman left.
Tony opened the suitcases, tossed silver-backed military brushes on the bureau, toothpaste and shaving gear in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
Give ’em time to get the grapevine working, he told himself. By the looks of that house dick, he’s so thickheaded it’ll take him a while to check on that Wanted bulletin his locals must have passed on to him.
It was ten minutes before the phone rang. The hotel operator said, “I have a long-distance call for you, sir.”
“Oke.”
Butch came on. “Lissen, Freddy—”
Tony snapped, “You clunkhead! How many times do I have to tell you I’m not Freddy.”
Butch sounded hurt. “Yeah, yeah, Frank. I just forgot.”
“Well, don’t.”
Quinn prayed that the hotel operator had left her key open. He thought it likely she’d already have heard about the generous gent in 1124–1126 who handed out such lordly largesse. Sometimes even phone girls got tipped by free-and-easy spenders.
Butch went on, “About that ring-around-a-rosie we set up for Akron, Frank.”
“What about it?”
“We got to be careful about that, Frank. I might even need a wad of fix dough — just for insurance, you know. Somebody might get hep you were operating out in this part of the country, and gum the works.”
“Well damn it to hell, then fix it. Don’t be calling up about it. I don’t like to talk business over the telephone, catch?”
“Yeah, yeah, Frank. But—”
“Square it! You hear! I’ll see you tomorrow.” He banged up the receiver, smiling. Butch had made a real production number out of it. It ought to be good enough to fox a house dick anyhow.
He sprinkled a little cigarette ash on the mantel, set the attaché case on it, blew the rest away. Then he pulled the jaunty snap-brim down a bit lower over his eyes, went out and down the lobby.
He shot one purposely furtive glance in the direction of the dead-panned individual, stalked briskly to the street. There he refused to let the doorman call a cab for him. The convertible was no longer at the curb.
By now, theoretically, every policeman in the city should be on the lookout for one Freddy Ommlee. Description, as much like Tony Quinn as was possible. Car, a new convertible with New York pads. Wanted for armed robbery, grand larceny, etcetera.
It wouldn’t do for him to be picked up by some alert plainclothesman. That would monkeywrench the machinery for fair. He drifted into a grind movie, watched a cops-and-robber melodrama in which a desperate gunman and killer was suddenly reformed by the influence of a sweet young thing. It was pure entertainment; he’d never known anything like it to happen, off the screen.
At one-thirty A.M. he left the theatre, had scrambled eggs and milk, and went back to the Koppner House.
The gaudy doorman was off duty. The bellman who had been so helpfully suggestive had been replaced by another, older employee. The poker-faced house dick wasn’t in evidence.
Tony unlocked the door of his suite, sniffed. Cigar smoke! He snorted scornfully. Think of the guy’s being stupid enough to smoke his stinkadora while he came in to make a surreptitious search!
Apparently the attaché case hadn’t been touched. But when he lifted it, the cigarette ashes had been smudged all along the lower edge of the pigskin!
He unlocked the case, wondering how much trouble it had been for the intruder to pick the lock.
The decks of cards hadn’t been unsealed. The expensive silk muffler was still wrapped around the heavy automatic just as he’d left it. There was nothing to indicate that the little cardboard box with its tissue-wrapped contents had been tampered with.
He lifted the lid, slit the tissue carefully with his penknife. The crystal cubes were nestled there, almost as he’d arranged them. But instead of three pairs with the fours showing — two with the three dots uppermost and one set with a five and one — there were now four dots with their “three” sides on top.
He smiled grimly, spoke aloud.
“The rats have smelled the cheese, all right.”
He left a room call for eight, but at six he was up, dressed and calling for a bellman.
When the elderly one arrived, Tony was at the door with suitcase and attaché case. “Ring up the garage. Tell ’em to zip my bus around here fast. Get it? Pronto!”