“You’d better go listen,” said the girl.
“No,” Crowder told her, “I’ve got work to do, and it’s work of a kind that I don’t want you mixed in on. You go in and stay with her. If she starts making too much noise through that gag, throw a pillow over her face, but don’t get too hard with her.”
Trixie Monette laughed grimly.
“Getting hard with that baby is one of the things I’m the fondest of,” she remarked.
“All right,” said Crowder. “You go in and take care of her. But use a little judgment. I’m going to start some action. I’ll call you when I need your help. I’ll need it in about ten minutes, for about two minutes.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Lower this dummy out of the window,” he told her.
“Lower it out of the window?” she asked incredulously
“Yes,” he told her. “I’ve got some rope here.”
“But,” she pointed out, “someone will be almost certain to see you. There’ll be some late motorist coming along the street, or someone who will see you from an adjoining apartment house; somebody who isn’t sleeping, or who has come home late or is getting up early in the morning.”
“Yes,” he told her, “and in order to make certain that there is some witness to what is going to happen, I’ll spread it on good and thick.”
“You mean you want a witness?”
“I want lots of them,” he said.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked.
“Make the front page of the newspapers,” he told her, and grinned. “You go on in there and stay with your patient. Be certain that she keeps quiet and doesn’t get away.”
Trixie Monette slipped across the hall into the vacant apartment where they had placed their prisoner, and Bob Crowder, chuckling to himself, started setting the stage for that which was to follow.
He looped ropes about the shoulders, hips and knees of the wax dummy, then took a string of imitation pearls from his pocket and fastened them about the wax arm of the figure, tying them in such a way that anyone looking at the figure would see first that long string of dangling imitation pearls. When he had things ready to suit his taste, he stepped across the hall and spoke to Trixie.
“Can you leave your patient for a while?” he asked.
“I’ll say. I’ve made a good dog out of her. She thinks I’m going to put acid on her face if she makes any noise.”
“My gosh!” Crowder said. “What a little spitfire you are!”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” she told him. “What do you want me to do?”
“When I give you a signal,” said Crowder, “I want you to lower this dummy out of the window. Just lower away on the rope until I yell ‘All right.’ Then drop the rope and duck back to the apartment across the hall. Stick in there, no matter what happens, and don’t show your face.”
“Okay,” she said, “but make it snappy. Ethel might get restless, and you know what a sweet disposition she’s got.”
“All right,” Crowder told her. “I’ll make it snappy. But be sure and keep your face concealed. Keep your head down so that no one can see your face, do you understand?”
“Sure,” she told him. “Let’s go.”
Crowder ran down the stairs to the street. He parked his automobile, with the motor running, directly under the apartment window.
“Okay,” he shouted.
Trixie Monette started lowering the wax dummy out of the window.
“Hold it right there for a minute,” Crowder called.
He whipped his gun from its hoister and fired two shots.
“All right,” he said, “lower away.”
The shots from the automatic arose echoes up and down the quiet street, in the apartment house across the way lights came on, and here and there a figure was silhouetted against the oblongs of illumination. Somewhere a woman screamed.
“Make it snappy,” shouted Crowder. “She’s got the pearls!”
Trixie Monette continued to let the rope slide over the sill. The wax dummy swayed back and forth.
“Drop those pearls!” yelled Crowder, “or I’ll shoot.”
Across the way a window slammed open and a woman’s shrill voice shouted, “Police! Police! Police!! There’s a murder being committed.”
“Drop those pearls or I’ll shoot!” shouted Crowder.
The figure continued its slow downward descent, swaying slightly back and forth, the cheap imitation string of pearls dangling from the waxen wrist.
Crowder flung up his automatic, took deliberate aim and pulled the trigger.
The bullets “plumped” into the wax figure, which jerked spasmodically as each bullet struck it. The street echoed to half a dozen screams. The figure was then some ten or fifteen feet above the sidewalk.
“Drop her!” yelled Crowder. “She’s dead.”
Trixie Monette flung the rest of the rope over the windowsill. The figure dropped abruptly. The rope twisted and turned like some writhing snake.
Crowder caught the wax dummy in his arms. The rope came spiraling down from above and settled about his head and shoulders. He fought free of the rope, slammed the dummy into the car, jumped to the driver’s seat and flung in the clutch.
A police whistle blew somewhere in the side street. The woman who had been screaming for the police raised her voice to an even more shrill pitch and shouted invectives at him.
Crowder threw the car into a skid at the corner, so that the tires would leave black marks and send forth screaming protest.
Behind him, the street was in an uproar.
It was past daylight when Crowder tapped gently with his knuckles on the door of the apartment where Trixie Monette held Ethel Peters a prisoner.
There was no answer.
Twice more he rapped before the door opened a scant half-inch, and the eyes of the manicurist appraised him carefully before opening the door and allowing him to slip into the apartment.
“Well,” he asked, “everything all right?”
She indicated the bound form which lay on the bed.
“Everything’s all right except Ethel,” she said. “I’m certainly having my troubles with that girl.”
“Have to pillow her?” he asked.
“I’ll tell the world,” she said. “My, but that girl’s got a disposition.”
“What happened in the next apartment? Did the police come?”
“I’ll say they came. They went through the apartment and took a lot of photographs. The newspaper men came and shot flashlights. There were people tramping up and down the corridor until it sounded like a small army on the march. After a while they went away.”
“How long ago?”
“Just about half an hour.”
Crowder took a small gimlet from his pocket and bored a hole in the panel of the apartment door. Then he left the door open, stepped across the corridor and bored a similar hole in the door of Ethel Peter’s apartment.
“What’s the big idea?” asked Trivia Monette.
“I’m acting on the theory,” Crowder told her, “that Ethel had the necklace hid in that apartment; that she had it hid so cleverly we couldn’t find it, and the police couldn’t find it. But I think there’s someone who knows where the necklace was hidden. That man is the partner and accomplice of Gentleman Jim Halmer.”
“You mean Ed Conway?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I knew,” she said, “that Ed Conway was pretty close to Jim Halmer. I didn’t know exactly what it was all about.”
“Conway,” said Bob Crowder, “is the man who helps him pull most of his jobs. He was mixed in on this Belman necklace business somewhere.”
“Well,” she said, “what does all that mean when it’s translated into English?”