“It’s out now,” said Quade. “How long do you suppose it’ll be before the cops tie up the deaths of Grimshaw and Lund? Remember, the dining-room waiter at the Lincoln Hotel saw Grimshaw give us money. And there’s our friends, the pugs, who tried to take Grimshaw’s letter away from us.”
The race-track bus dropped them in front of the Lincoln Hotel. Quade and Boston went into the lobby. The manager of the hotel was behind the desk with his clerk. He looked at Quade, then turned his eyes deliberately to a clock on the wall.
“Hello, Mr. Meyer,” Quade said cheerfully. “I have good news for you.”
Meyer’s face broke into a pleasant smile. “The rent?” he said, hopefully.
Quade nodded. “Yes. Well, not exactly all of it, but I expect to have the balance by six o’clock. You gave me until then, didn’t you?”
Meyer, the manager, frowned. “Yes. Uh, do you want to give me, now, the amount you have?”
“N-no, I think I’d rather wait and give it all to you at once. Let’s see, it’s three-thirty now. A friend is coming to my room in a little while to give me the balance.” He grinned and held out his hand.
Meyer hesitated, then turned and took a key out of a cubbyhole. He gave it to Quade. “Very well, at six o’clock then.”
As they walked to the elevators, Boston said out of the side of his mouth, “What do you mean, you raised part of the rent?”
“Sure,” Quade replied. “About one two-hundredth.”
They rode in the elevator to the eighth floor. They turned a corner and stopped before the door of Room 810. Quade unlocked the door and they entered their suite. It was a suite. There was nothing cheap about Quade. He’d reasoned that it would be just as difficult to raise the money for a single room as a suite.
Charlie Boston dropped into an easy chair. “Well, we’ve got two and a half hours.”
Knuckles rapped on the door they had just closed. Quade called, “Yes?”
A deep voice replied, “Mr. Quade?”
Charlie Boston leaped up from his chair. “What the hell!” he exclaimed. He caught up a straight-backed chair and stepped to the side of the door. There was a glint in his eye.
Quade walked to the door and opened it.
Mills, the fat man whose ticket Quade had returned at the track, stood in the doorway. His eyes widened when he recognized Quade. “Say, you’re the chap—”
“I am,” said Quade grimly. “I’m the lad who found your hundred-dollar ticket. Remember? You gave me a nice big reward.”
“Yes, of course. Say — I had no idea!”
Quade nodded to Boston and the latter brought his chair down. He almost slammed it on Mills’ feet. “Won’t you come in?” he snapped.
Mills nodded and came into the room. “This is really an awfully pleasant surprise,” he exclaimed. “I was afraid — what I mean, it’s always so hard to do business with strangers. And when I heard about you, why I—”
“Skip it,” said Quade. “You came to increase the reward?”
Mills looked blank. Then his thick lips made a huge O. “Oh, that! Why, yes, if that’s the way you want to do it, of course!”
“Fine!” said Quade. “I tore up a ten-dollar ticket of our own. Ninety-eight dollars. Give me ninety-six more and we’ll call it square.”
“And cheap at the price,” growled Charlie Boston.
Mills nodded thoughtfully. “Quite so. I’ll even make it an even hundred — if you’ll let me have the letter.”
Quade inhaled softly. “What letter?”
“Why, the letter Grimshaw gave you. To deliver to Martin Lund, you know.”
Charlie bared his teeth and growled deep in his throat.
Quade said quickly, “Oh, that letter. So sorry. But I didn’t deliver it. You see, a couple of thugs attacked us as we left the hotel.”
Mills gasped. “What?” Then his fat face tightened until his piggish eyes became mere slits. “But they didn’t take the letter from you.”
Quade’s nostrils flared. “No, they didn’t. And you wouldn’t know that unless you’d hired them! Hold on, Charlie, I’m first!”
He sunk his fist six inches into Mills’ flabby stomach, then crossed with a left that bounced off the fat man’s jaw. Charlie Boston’s fist swished over Quade’s shoulder and smacked against Mills’ left cheekbone.
Mills slipped away from in front of Quade, dropped to the floor. He landed on hands and knees and remained there, whimpering.
Quade stepped back. “All right, Mills, let’s hear some talk from you.”
“Let me hit him just once more,” Boston begged.
Quade motioned Boston back. “What about it, Mills?”
Mills remained on the floor, but raised his flabby face. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth down his chin. “I’ll call the police,” he said thickly.
“I don’t think you will,” Quade said.
Boston took a threatening step forward and Mills scrambled to the side. He climbed to his feet and looked longingly toward the door. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“Maybe not,” said Quade grimly. “But the lads you hired knocked me around. You didn’t get any more now than I got from them. Come on, spill it, before we give you another working over.”
“I didn’t hire anyone to take the letter from you. Grimshaw told me about you. I saw him at the track. He said a couple of tough-looking men had been following me around and when he heard the hotel manager threaten to dispossess you here, he thought—”
“Rats!” said Charlie Boston.
“It’s the truth,” insisted Mills. “Grimshaw was playing another customer against me. Fellow named Paley.”
“Who’s he?” Quade asked.
“An autograph collector. Lund’s customer.”
“Lund was an autograph dealer?”
Mills bobbed his head. Then he jerked it up, suddenly. “Was?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t know Lund was dead,” Quade said.
Creases appeared on the fat man’s broad forehead. “I — well, I suspected it. I went to Lund’s office from the track, but there was an ambulance and police car at the curb. That was as far as I went. In fact, I’d already suspected something was wrong. Because Grimshaw was so darned anxious to sell me the letter.”
“You’re lying,” said Quade. “If you bought the letter from Grimshaw, what do you want now?”
Mills’ piggish eyes popped open to a full eighth of an inch. “Don’t you know? The Custer letter. I thought you knew. That was the one Grimshaw was sending to Lund.”
A fist banged on the door. “Open up!” yelled an authoritative voice. Then without waiting, the man outside pushed open the door. It was Captain Roletti.
He looked around at the three occupants of the room. “Been havin’ a little fun, boys?” he snarled.
Quade looked at Mills. The fat man dabbed at his chin with a handkerchief. “Mr. Quade did me a favor today,” he said. “I came here to — to reward him.”
“Yeah,” said Captain Roletti. “I remember. He said something about finding the ticket you’d thrown away at the track.”
Charlie Boston brightened. “Mr. Mills was just going to slip us a reward. Thanks a lot, Mr. Mills.” He extended an open hand.
Mills looked at Boston’s hand, then at Captain Roletti. Reluctantly he reached into his pocket.
“Mr. Mills threw away a hundred-dollar ticket that paid nine-eighty,” Charlie Boston said. “Me and my pal found it.”
Mills pawed his thick roll of bills. Finally he held out two twenties and a ten. “Fifty be all right?”
Quade started to wave away the money, but Boston took the bills from Mills’ hand. “Thanks, Mr. Mills,” he said.
Captain Roletti watched the proceedings. “Cut it out!” he snapped, suddenly. “You’re not kidding anyone. This isn’t a lovefest. These bozos were knocking you around, weren’t they, Mills?”