“Just this,” he told her. “News travels fast through the underworld. Apparently, someone came to the apartment of Ethel Peters, with a scheme to kidnap her. She was being lowered out of the window. The pearls were dangling from her wrist. The man below ordered her to drop the pearls. When she didn’t, he shot her and took her body away in an automobile.”
“But,” she said, “that doesn’t make sense. In the first place, if she had the pearls on her, wouldn’t they have taken them from her before lowering her from the window? In the second place, if she was being lowered from the window, and the man was standing below her with a gun, why didn’t he wait until she had been lowered to the sidewalk, and then simply take the pearls?”
Crowder nodded.
“That’s the nice part of it,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. That’s why it will get around the underworld and cause all sorts of various conjectures and speculations. No one can figure it out.
“Ed Conway will hear about it and try to figure what the devil happened. There’ll be only one way for him to find out.”
“You mean,” she said, “to come to the apartment?”
He nodded.
“And then again,” he told her, “there’s another advantage in having it keep from making sense.”
“What?” she asked.
“When they get me on the carpet at police headquarters,” he told her.
“They’re going to do that?”
“Of course.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because they always do.”
“Do you pull this kind of stuff often?” she asked.
“Always,” he told her.
“You act on the theory that it takes a crook to catch a crook?”
“Partly,” he told her, “but partly on the theory that you have got to resort to unorthodox methods if you’re going to beat the police to the punch.”
“Well,” he said, “you know your business. I’m going to along and see what I can shake out of the christmas-tree.”
The bound figure on the bed suddenly burst into a volume of noise; inarticular sounds which came from behind the gag. She twisted and turned, fighting against the bonds which held her wrists and ankles.
Trixie Monette said wearily, “There she goes again staging another fit. I’ve got to go and put a pillow on her face and sit on the pillow.”
She picked up a pillow from a chair, moved over toward the bed. The bound woman saw her coming and suddenly became silent and motionless.
“Well,” Trixie said, “that’s that. She’s at least getting so she knows when to quit. After awhile I’ll get her educated so she knows enough not to start.”
Bob Crowder drew up a chair in front of the closed door of the apartment, lit a cigarette and applied his eye to the peephole he had gimleted in the door.
“Well,” he said, “let’s hope that Ed Conway has got a pretty good line out of police headquarters, so that he won’t have to wait until he reads about the abduction in the newspapers.”
Once more, the figure on the bed broke into incoherent noise, and Trixie Monette dove toward it with a pillow. There was a flurry of motion, the sound of struggle, the creaking of bed springs, then silence.
The blonde manicurist straightened with a sigh and grinned at Bob Crowder.
“Never had to do so much work for two thousand bucks in my life,” she said.
“And we haven’t even got the two thousand,” Crowder said with a grin.
“All well,” she told him, “it’s been a great experience anyway.”
Crowder finished his cigarette, lit another one. Trixie Monette propped a pillow against her back, closed her eyes and dropped into a half-doze.
Abruptly, Crowder’s figure stiffened to attention as he saw a shadowy shape moving in the corridor. There was the sound of a key clicking in the bolt.
Crowder got to his feet, tiptoed across to Trixie Monette, shook her shoulders gently and motioned toward the hallway. The manicurist raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry and Crowder nodded, placed his finger to his lips, and then pointed to the bound figure on the bed.
Trixie Monette nodded, picked up the pillow, and moved silently toward the bound figure of the girl who was now lying with her eyes closed, apparently sleeping. Crowder opened the door of the apartment and slipped into the hallway.
The door of apartment 48B was almost directly opposite him. It was closed. Crowder made sure that the hallway was empty, then dropped to his knees and peered through the peep-hole in the corner of the panel.
He could see into the apartment, could see a figure dragging a chair across the room to one of the windows. The figure was that of a man with powerful shoulders, thick neck, and a bullet head.
As Crowder watched, the man planted the chair in front of the window from which Ethel Peters had been lowered. He climbed to the chair, and Crowder saw that he was reaching for the roller shade at the top of the window. A moment later, and he had disengaged the shade from its fastenings and pulled it down.
As Crowder watched, the man swiftly unscrewed the fastenings on the end of the roller, and tilted the roller slightly, shaking it as he did so.
Crowder saw that the coil spring had been removed from the inside of the curtain roller, and that the place which it had occupied had been used as a receptacle for a long, round object which had been done up in soft cloth.
The man pulled this object from the interior of the roller shade. He slipped it in under his coat, then replaced the cap on the end of the roller shade, and dropped the shade back into position at the top of the window.
Crowder straightened and stood slightly to one side of the door. Three seconds later the bolt clicked softly back, and the shadowy figure stepped back into the hallway.
“Stick ’em up,” said Crowder.
The man gave an inarticulate bellow of rage, and swung his fist. Crowder dodged the blow, hesitated for a moment, then dropped the gun and slammed his right fist squarely into the man’s body, knocking him back into the apartment, and kicked the door shut. The heavy set man was fumbling with his right hand near his right hip pocket. Crowder managed to land a left, before the man could get the gun from his pocket.
The heavy-set man abandoned his effort to get the gun, lashed out with a vicious kick, then came in with his head down, his arms flailing about.
Crowder took a glancing blow on the head, dodged another, side-stepped, set himself, and whipped up a right upper cut. The uppercut struck squarely on the chin. The man’s head rocked back with a sudden jerk, as though a rope had been connected with the top of his head and suddenly pulled.
Chapter IV
Reward
Police Captain Stanwick glared across the desk at Bob Crowder, yet there was a hint of a twinkle in the glaring eyes.
“Crowder,” he said, “where the devil did you get that necklace?”
“I got it from Ed Conway,” said Crowder. “He was an accomplice of Gentleman Jim Halmer. I knew that they worked together...”
“Nix on that line of hooey,” said Stanwick. “What I want to know is how you got it.”
“Took it away from him,” said Crowder. “I stuck a gun in his ribs and told him to put his hands up, but he wouldn’t do it. He went for his gun. Of course, I could have pulled the trigger, but I knew that there would be embarrassing explanations. You see, a private detective can’t do the things that a regular detective can, and...”
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” said Captain Stanwick. “The report of the offices gives me all of that stuff. But what I’m particularly anxious to learn is how you happened to catch Conway in the apartment of Ethel Peters.”
“Well, you see,” said Crowder, “I knew that Ethel Peters had been going with Jim Halmer. She was his woman, although they’d kept the connection pretty secret. It wasn’t even whispered around the underworld. You see, Gentleman Jim was one of those cautious individuals who didn’t believe in letting his left hand know what his right hand was doing.”