The first mistake in my military campaign was a disastrous one. I neglected to scout the ground in advance, breezed into the Lido Club Hotel quite openly, and found Dudley Wolff there in the lobby as big as life and twice as snappish, a welcoming committee of one. He saw me before I could take cover. His greeting was nor exactly the ticker-tape, key-to-the-city kind.
He scowled like a hungry shark and came toward me with the same sort of headlong dive. I couldn’t do anything but stand pat and take it, though I did manage to get in the opening shot.
“You don’t look well,” I said. “What is it? Gout?”
His scowl grew still blacker.
I knew the value of appeasement policies and decided to stick to shock tactics. “Careful!” I warned. “Rigor mortis might set in. Or has it? That scowl of yours always seems to be the same.”
“Young man!” he growled. “If you’re here because you think—”
“My presence,” I cut in, “is your own fault. If you hadn’t fired me, I’d have had to stay in New York on the job.”
That thrust penetrated his hide, but it was far from being fatal. It only made him roar louder.
“You’re wasting your time! You can take the next train back because you are not going to see—”
“Don’t tell me you’ve bought a controlling interest in Florida too?” I was enjoying myself now, and feeling more certain than ever that it was not Kay who had sent that wire. If those sentiments were hers, Dudley would hardly need to protest so strenuously.
“Besides,” I added, “I just came down for a swim and some fishing. But I didn’t expect to catch a crab so soon, and in the Lido lobby! Boy!” I beckoned a bellhop and jerked a thumb at Old Faithful. “Send this down to a taxidermist. Get it stuffed and mounted. With its mouth open — like this.”
I demonstrated, then turned and walked out before Wolff could put in a call for a house dick and have me thrown out. Getting through to Kathryn after this was going to take some doing. Wolff would have all the barricades manned. My direct frontal attack had been intercepted too soon, its surprise element lost. I would have to lay out a new and much better planned campaign.
I returned to my own hotel, a smaller one where the uniformed help didn’t wear so much gold braid and the rates were not computed in astronomical units, picked up my bathing trunks, and headed oceanward. I swam out to the farthest float, climbed aboard, and stretched out in the sun to do some concentrated, and highly involved thinking.
Wolff, being the tyrant that he was and disliking me as heartily as he seemed to, was quite capable of keeping his daughter in her room — locked in, if necessary — until I should give up and wheel away my siege guns. I could almost imagine him shipping her off to the nearest nunnery if there should be a nice impregnable one handy. It was going to be difficult.
Of course, if this were light fiction or a Grade B movie, I’d simply disguise myself as Room Service and go in carrying her breakfast tray. But, in real life, that somehow didn’t seem so simple. And, in the Lido, the necessary fix money might very well run to more than I could afford. False whiskers were not in my line either. And, if Dunning was half as experienced as Phillips, which was likely, any act I might put on by phone would be expertly nipped in the bud. Besides, it was still just possible that Kay had sent that wire after all. I much preferred to see her in person.
I surveyed the problem from a dozen angles without being able to crack it to my satisfaction. Finally, I went back to my hotel for dinner still trying to evolve some sort of definite plan. Then, thinking that perhaps the bribe a bellhop would demand for a little fifth-column activity might be within my means, I returned to the Lido Club. I approached more warily this time, watching to see if Wolff had thrown out any advance patrols. None being evident, I picked a likely-looking boy, crossed his palm with some folding money, and showed him my press card.
“I want you to find out if Miss Kathryn Wolff is in. And, if not, see if you can find out where she might have gone.”
He looked at the bill I had given him with interest, but not much enthusiasm. “Why don’t you ask the desk clerk?” he said.
“Because I suspect he’s been told not to give out information to anyone answering my description. But my city editor won’t take that for an answer.” I gave him another bill. “Is that enough?”
He estimated my probable Dun & Bradstreet rating with one shrewd look and decided correctly that, enough or not, it was all he was going to get. “It’ll do,” he said. “Wait here.”
He gave full measure for moneys received, even though the answers weren’t at all what I wanted. His first one was a distinct shock.
“There’s no Miss Kathryn Wolff registered,” he said.
I didn’t believe it. This, I thought, is another sample of Dudley’s genius for organization.
“I see,” I said. “No Kathryn Wolff. What about a Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Wolff? And a man named Dunning? Don’t tell me the desk clerk never heard of them. I know better.”
“They’re not registered either,” he said calmly. “They were, up until about an hour ago. But they checked out. Funny too. Their suite was reserved for another two weeks.” He gave me a suspicious look.
I gave him one in return that Dudley Wolff couldn’t have bettered, said, “Damn!” and then turned and legged it for the nearest phone, muttering other expletives not nearly as printable. I was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that I had been outsmarted in a big way. I realized suddenly that, except for that telegram whose antecedents were doubtful, I had never had any good evidence that Kay had ever left New York at all. It was quite possible that Wolff, discovering I thought she was with them, had done what he could to further the impression. It would suit him only too well if I spent my time chasing after her a thousand miles in the wrong direction.
I called the airport. “Miami News,” I said. “What planes checked out in the last hour?”
“The Chicago plane left at nine.”
“Were there any seats reserved in the name of Dudley T. Wolff?”
The clerk hesitated. “Did you say this was the News?”
I put a city editor’s growl in my voice. “I did. Hurry it, will you?”
“Well,” he said doubtfully. “Just a moment.”
I waited, dithering. Finally his voice came back. “No, not for Chicago, but he has seats on the New York plane. It’s just leaving now.”
I heard it in the phone behind his voice — the low, distant roar of a plane taking off.
“Through tickets?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“When’s the next one leave?”
“Ten-thirty.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, knowing that the fare was going to give my financial rating a disastrous body blow, “I’ll be out. Save me a seat.”
This game of transcontinental hop-skip-and-jump was proving too much for me. I decided that the next time I fell in love it would be with an orphan.
I returned to the hotel, checked out, and took a taxi to the 36th-Street Airport. I am apparently allergic to sleep in both Pullman and plane berths. As a matter of fact, for the past week my sleep had not been of the best quality in my own bed. Consequently, when I landed in New York the next morning, the picture I presented of a man who has just had a relaxing restful swim in sunny Florida waters would have been a distinct shock to the Miami Chamber of Commerce.