“Marvelous, Scuttle!” Lester Leith said. “You’re doing splendidly.”
“Thank you, sir. And do you think that’s what happened?”
“Certainly not, but you’re improving, Scuttle.”
“You mean you don’t think that happened?”
“No, Scuttle.”
“But it’s an entirely logical explanation,” the valet insisted.
Leith yawned again. “That’s why I don’t think it happened, Scuttle, and now I think I’ll go to bed. Don’t call me before nine in the morning.”
Incandescent lights blazed down on the cigarette-charred desk of Sergeant Ackley. The air in the building held that peculiar stench which comes to jails, police headquarters, and other places which arc inhabited twenty-four hours a day. Beaver sat across the desk from Sergeant Ackley and said, “I just called on the off chance you hadn’t gone to bed.”
Ackley yawned, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “That’s all right, Beaver. I’d get up in the middle of the night to catch this crook. You say you need this information before nine o’clock in the morning?”
“That’s right.”
Ackley pressed a button and, when an officer appeared, said, “Find out what detective agency is in the Channing Commercial Building and get the guy in charge on the line.”
When the officer had left the room, Ackley rubbed his hand around the back of his neck, yawned, then fished in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar. “And you think it’s connected up with this goofy shoplifting stunt at the Gilbert place?”
“It seems to be,” Beaver said.
Sergeant Ackley lit his cigar, puffed thoughtfully for a few moments, then shook his head emphatically and said, “Nope, Beaver. That’s a blind. That business at the furrier company was a price-tag switch, just the way you doped it out. My guess is Gilbert will be squawking his head off tomorrow that someone walked out with a two-thousand-dollar mink coat by making the payoff for a seventy-five-dollar rabbit imitation.”
Beaver nodded his head. “That was what I thought. Leith thinks different.”
Sergeant Ackley said, “That’s just the line of hooey he’s giving you to keep you from knowing what he really has in mind.”
“He’s fallen for me this time, Sergeant. He’s really going to take me into his confidence.”
Sergeant Ackley rolled the cigar around to the other corner of his mouth. “Nope,” he said, “he’s playing you for a sucker, Beaver. That business about the silver fox cape is proof that he’s stringing you along. I’ll bet there wasn’t anything that happened over in the Instrument—”
He broke off as the phone rang. He scooped up the receiver and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Hello — Sergeant Ackley talking.”
There was a moment’s silence in the room, then Ackley pulled the cigar out of his mouth and said, in a voice suddenly crisp with authority, “Oh, this is the Planetary International Detective Service in the Channing Commercial Building, is it? And you’re in charge? Okay. This is Sergeant Ackley at headquarters. Now get this, and get it straight because I don’t want any fumbling. Have you got a client, the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company? Oh, you have, eh? I see. Now, what kind of work are you doing right now for that company? I don’t care whether it’s confidential or not! This is police headquarters. We’re working on a case, and we think that angle enters into it... Never mind how we knew about it. We’re asking for information... No, you aren’t going to stall along while you call up your client. I’m asking for information, and I want it. We let you guys get by with a lot of stuff, but right now... Well, that’s better. Okay, go ahead and shoot.”
There was almost three minutes of complete silence while Sergeant Ackley scowled at the telephone transmitter, listening to the voice which poured words through the receiver into his attentive left ear. Then he said, “How do you know this dame is the one?... I see... Where is she now?... All right, you guys should have reported that in the first place. That’s a crime. That’s burglary... Sure, they don’t want any notoriety, but they don’t need to have it. We can keep things under cover the same as anyone else. Do you eggs up there think you can do better work than the police department?... Well, that’s better. Tell him the truth. Tell him headquarters called up about it and demanded a report. Tell him we’re on our toes enough so we know about crimes even when the victims try to keep ’em secret, and you can tell him that Sergeant Ackley is working on the case personally. Tell him I’ve made substantial progress toward a solution. In the meantime, you eggs keep us posted, see?... That’s right, Sergeant Ackley.”
Ackley banged down the receiver and then grinned across the desk at the undercover man. “The chief’s gonna get a kick out of that,” he said. “They were trying to keep it secret. That bird up at the detective agency nearly fainted, wonderin’ how we knew about it.”
“How we knew about what?” Beaver asked.
Ackley said, “An inventor by the name of Nicholas Hodge worked out an improved submarine detector and locator. He made a rough model which seemed to do the work. He took it up with Washington and the thing got snowed under with red tape. Then he made a contact with one of the rear admirals who arranged for a definite test but insisted that a completely finished instrument be installed for the test, one that looked good enough to impress the big shots in the Navy. The Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company was picked for the job.
“Naturally, the thing was carried out in great secrecy. Jason Bellview, the president of the company, and his confidential secretary, a girl by the name of Bernice Lamen, were the only ones who knew what it was all about and where the master blueprints were kept. Those offices of the instrument company are just the designing offices — the factory is about a mile out of town. Bellview’s idea was that he’d split the thing up into parts, have workmen make the separate parts, and then, at the last minute, he, using a pair of trusted assistants, would assemble them himself.”
“And something happened to the blueprints?” Beaver asked. “Vanished into thin air.”
“This detective agency is working on it?”
“That’s right. They’re under contract to take care of all the Instrument Company’s business. Bellview called them as soon as he knew what had happened. They suspected Bernice Lamen, laid some sort of a trap for her, and she walked into it. They nabbed her and are giving her a third degree and getting no place with it.”
“So we take over?” Beaver grinned.
Sergeant Ackley grinned also. “We take over,” he said, “but not until old Jason Bellview comes crawling in on his belly and begs us to. He was afraid of the publicity. If it ever gets out that those blueprints aren’t in bis office, or if be can’t guarantee that while they were out of his possession no one made copies of them, the Precision Instrument Company is in one sweet mess.”
Abruptly the grin left Beaver’s face. He frowned thoughtfully.
“Well,” Ackley asked, “what is it?”
“How the devil did Lester Leith know all about this?”
Ackley’s eyes reflected the mental jolt this question gave him.
Beaver said, “It was something that had to do with pitching that silver fox cape out of that window.”
“Nonsense, Beaver. That’s just a blind he’s using.”
Beaver said suddenly, “Look here, Sergeant, the Instrument Company’s offices arc right across the street from the fur company. Do you suppose you could see into the—”
Sergeant Ackley shook his head authoritatively. “The Instrument Company is on the sixth floor. The furrier’s on the fourth.”