Condon was patting her hand and saying, “There, there, Myra…nothing to worry about.”
“I thought you were Myra,” I whispered to my reluctant hostess.
“That’s my mother,” she said, blandly. “I was named after her.”
“Oh,” I said.
She sat on the couch next to her parents and crossed her nice legs but made sure I didn’t see much.
“Good afternoon, Detective,” Condon said, hollowly.
“Good afternoon, Professor,” I said. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
Condon uncharacteristically skipped the formalities. “Mrs. Condon had a phone call earlier today.”
I pulled up a chair; it looked like something Marie Antoinette might have sat on, eating cake. “Tell me about it, please,” I said to Mrs. Condon.
“Someone called on the telephone for my husband,” she said, in a warm alto, the faintest vibrato of nervousness coloring it, “around noon.”
“Man or woman?” I asked.
“It was a man. I told him that my husband was giving a lecture and would be home between six and seven. He said he would call again about seven this evening.” She looked at the professor, who had a sick-cow expression. “He said you were to stay in and wait for his call, dear.”
Condon’s expression turned shrewd and he said, “And what was his name?”
“Why, dear,” she said, “he didn’t give it.”
No shit.
“That ‘money is ready’ ad of yours appeared in the morning edition,” I said. “That’s pretty quick action.”
Condon’s eyes tightened in attempted thought. “You think this phone call, then, was a message from the kidnapper in response to the ad?”
I sighed. “Gee, Professor. It just might be.”
Any irony I allowed to show in my voice was lost on Dr. and Mrs. Condon, but Myra the Younger smirked at me mirthlessly.
“Dad,” the daughter said, sitting forward, “I’d like to see that baby returned as much as anybody. But don’t you think you should withdraw, graciously, and just let somebody else take your place as intermediary?”
He raised his chin. Where was Dempsey when you needed him. “I’ve sworn to see this thing through to the bitter end.”
“But, Dad-you’re not a young man. This is dangerous for you…”
“We can’t think of that,” he said. “When the time comes that a respectable man cannot walk out of the door of his own home merely because he is attempting to assist one of the greatest heroes of all time, well, then…then I do not care to live a day longer.”
Was he trying to cheer me up?
“Are you all right, Mrs. Condon?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you. I didn’t get your name, young man…?”
“My name’s Nathan Heller. I’m a police officer from Chicago. I appreciate your hospitality.”
“Actually,” she said, a hand to her generous chest, “I’ve been a bit shaken up. Luckily Myra stayed over, and fixed a nice supper. Plenty for everyone.”
I turned to Myra. “You don’t live here?”
“No,” she said, and smiled at me tightly, the sort of smile that contradicts itself.
“It is typical of little Myra,” Condon said, “that though she thoroughly opposes my determination to enter this case, she made arrangements to be here with me, in the Bronx, to absorb some of my routine duties.”
“Such as?” I asked her.
“Father received several hundred letters today,” she said, “in response to that letter to the editor he wrote to the News. It’s been like that every day since it appeared.”
“You should save those letters,” I said, “and give them to the cops.”
“Colonel Schwarzkopf, you mean?” Condon asked.
“That would be better than nothing,” I said. “But this is New York. You got cops in this state, too, you know.”
There was a knock at the door; Condon’s daughter rose languidly to answer it, and moments later she was ushering Colonel Breckinridge into the living room.
I filled him in, quickly, about the telephone call Mrs. Condon had received earlier.
“It’s almost six-thirty now,” Breckinridge said. “No call yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Why don’t we eat?”
“Sir!” Condon said, sitting up straight. “How can you think of food, when a child’s life hangs in the balance?”
“Well, if we eat,” I said, “it won’t tip the scale, one way or the other. Or, we can all sit around jumpy as cats in a rainstorm.”
We ate. The dining room was behind the living room, and Myra-a sour hostess but a sweet cook-served up a pot roast with oven-browned potatoes, carrots and onions.
“Colonel,” Condon said, working on his second helping of everything, baby in the balance or not, “as you may recall, I mentioned that the distinctive red-and-blue-circle signature of the kidnappers reminded me of a Sicilian Mafia sign.”
“Yes,” Breckinridge said tentatively. He was picking at his food.
“Well, I replicated the symbol and began showing it around Fordham today.”
“You what?” I said.
He sipped his drink-a big wholesome glass of milk-and repeated his sentence word for word.
I just shook my head. His daughter Myra glared at me.
Proud of himself, a forkful of food poised in midair, Condon said, “Mind you, I’ve said nothing to anyone of my trip to Hopewell the other night. But I’ve been determined to learn, if possible, the meaning of that mysterious symbol.”
“Professor,” Breckinridge said, his face whiter than Condon’s cow juice, “that really may not have been wise.”
Condon didn’t seem to hear; his eyes and smile were glazed and inwardly directed. “I sketched it on a piece of paper, that symbol, and carried it with me these last two days. I’ve been showing it to everyone I meet, asking them about it.”
“Swell idea,” I said.
“Finally,” he said, raising a significant forefinger, “this afternoon I found someone who recognized it-a Sicilian friend of mine.”
Breckinridge touched a napkin to his lips and pushed his plate of mostly uneaten food away.
“As a result,” Condon said, “I’m convinced our kidnappers are of Italian origin. My Sicilian friend confirmed my suspicion, explaining that the symbol was that of a secret criminal organization in the old country-the symbol is the trilgamba, or ‘three legs.’”
“Three legs?” Breckinridge asked.
“My Sicilian friend explained that two legs were fine, but ‘when a third leg walks, beware.’”
“Let me write that down,” I said.
“Its symbolic meaning,” Condon continued, “is that if a third leg, a stranger, enters into the province of the secret society, the Mafia, that intruder can expect a stiletto through the heart.”
His daughter Myra, cutting her meat, dropped her own knife clatteringly. “Daddy,” she said. “Please don’t do this. Please withdraw from this silly dangerous escapade.”
Colonel Breckinridge looked at the young woman with mournful eyes. “Please don’t ask that, miss. Your father may be the only honest person on earth actually in contact with the kidnappers.”
“Excuse me,” Myra said stiffly, “I think I’ll pass on dessert,” and hurled her napkin to the table and got up and went out through the front parlor; her footsteps on the hall stairs, several rooms away, conveyed her annoyance.
After apple pie, Breckinridge stepped out onto the porch for a smoke-the professor allowed no tobacco of any kind in his “domicile”-leaving Mr. and Mrs. Condon to keep watch by Mr. Bell’s invention, which was on a stand in the hallway outside the living room.
“Can you believe that man?” Breckinridge said bitterly, puffing greedily on a cigarette. “Showing that signature around the Bronx! To some ‘Sicilian friend’!”
“He’s a dunce, all right,” I said. “Unless he’s very clever.”
“Clever?”
I nodded, tapped my temple with one finger. “Something clicked in this hat rack I call a head, while he was babbling about that Mafia sign. When I first talked to him on the phone, back at Hopewell, Condon told me that the letter to him was signed with ‘the mark of the Mafia.’”