“Well,” he said, “it took you long enough to get—” He broke off to stare in surprise at a messenger in the conventional uniform of the Western Union Telegraph Co.
“Telegram for Io Wahine at this address,” the messenger said. “She here?”
The Hawaiian dancer swung from the couch with the smooth, easy rhythm of a trout gliding through the depths of a cool mountain pool. She took the telegram as well as the pencil which the messenger held out, signed for the telegram, tore it open, and then laughed with the sheer enjoyment of life.
“What is it?” Wolganheimer asked, instantly jealous.
She smiled her thanks at the messenger, closed the door, and handed Wolganheimer the oblong of yellow paper.
Wolganheimer read:
“HAWAIIAN-AMERICAN AESTHETIC ART COMMITTEE AFTER MAKING UNANNOUNCED COMPARATIVE TESTS OF ALL THE CURRENT HULA DANCERS HAVE AWARDED YOU FIRST PRIZE FOR MOST INTERPRETATIVE PERFORMANCE OF ISLAND DANCING STOP NOTIFIED YOU BY MAIL TWO DAYS AGO THAT PRIZE WOULD BE DISTRIBUTED FIVE O’CLOCK THIS AFTERNOON STOP HAVE RECEIVED NO ANSWER STOP PRIZE WILL BE AWARDED ROOM SIX-THIRTEEN MORONIA BUILDING STOP UNLESS YOU ARE PRESENT AT FIVE O’CLOCK AWARD WILL BE CANCELED AND FIRST PRIZE DISTRIBUTED NANO KAPIOLANI WHO STANDS SECOND ON LIST”
Job Wolganheimer, his narrow-set, nervous eyes peering greedily down his bony nose at the telegram, reacted commercially. “Why the hell don’t they say what the first prize is?” he asked.
Io Wahine, slipping down the zipper of her short house dress as she walked toward the closet, said:
“I don’t care if it’s nothing but a box of matches. It’s a recognition of merit. And think of the publicity value.”
“But look here. We can’t walk out on Bonneguard. We have to wait for him.”
“You wait,” Io Wahine called from the closet where she was dressing. “I’ve waited twenty minutes already, and that’s enough to wait for any man.”
“Well, you’re not going up there alone,” Wolganheimer protested. “How the devil do I know this isn’t another trick to ditch me so you can have a date with that Hawaiian boy friend?”
Io Wahine was always short-tempered when she tried to imprison her legs in stockings, her feet in shoes. She said: “Come if you want to, or stay if you want to. I’m going, and you’ve got five minutes to make up your mind. Leave a note for your friend and let him follow us.”
The telephone rang.
With an exclamation, Wolganheimer jerked the receiver from its cradle to hear a masculine voice say:
“Don’t forget, sweetheart, five o’clock.”
“Hello, hello!” Wolganheimer shouted into the telephone. “What the devil—”
He heard the soft click at the other end of the line as the party who had burst into such extemporaneous conversation gently, almost surreptitiously, hung up his telephone.
His face twisted with rage, Wolganheimer slammed the receiver back on the hook so violently that it almost pulled the telephone loose from the wall.
“You’re damn right, I’m going!” he shouted at Io Wahine.
Chapter VI.
The Peculiar Tire.
Between four o’clock and five thirty, there was a “No Parking” ordinance covering the entire district near the Moronia Building. Immediately adjacent to the Moronia Building, however, was a parking lot at the end of which a sign announced: “15 cents for one hour, 25 cents for three hours.” By five o’clock, a large percentage of the cars had left this parking lot. It was too late for shoppers, and the professional men in the Moronia Building usually managed to get away between four thirty and quarter to five so as to beat the rush of traffic.
Job Wolganheimer, driving a 1936 Ford, drove into the parking space. The attendant took his car, gave him a numbered pasteboard, slipped a square containing the corresponding number in under the windshield wiper, and backed the car into a stall.
Across the street, Harry Lanten, driving a 1936 Ford, with Nano Kapiolani at his side, glided in close to the curb and stopped. Directly behind him, Lester Leith, driving a 1938 Buick, came to a stop and slid from behind the wheel.
“O. K., Harry,” he said. “You two take this car, and park it in the next block as I told you.”
Lester Leith walked forward to the Ford, eased in the clutch, and turned into the parking place. The attendant was still busy with Wolganheimer’s car, and Lester Leith obligingly parked the car himself, selecting the stall next to that occupied by the Wolganheimer car.
The attendant glanced curiously at Lester Leith’s cowboy regalia, gave Leith a ticket, inserted a numbered pasteboard beneath the windshield wiper, then hurried toward the front of the lot as a third 1936 Ford, driven by Edward H. Beaver, came nosing up over the sidewalk.
Lester Leith slid out from behind the wheel, started toward the front of the lot, then turned back.
On the far side of the street, Captain Carmichael said to the driver of the police car: “He’ll spot us if we wait here. We can drive down the block and make a U turn. How did it happen Beaver met him here?”
“I don’t know,” Sergeant Ackley said. “He hasn’t had a chance to make a report.”
“Where did he get those 1936 Fords?”
“Bought them,” Sergeant Ackley said shortly. “Remember I told you he was buying secondhand cars?”
“What does he want with them?”
“Heaven knows,” Ackley said. “He’s building up a smoke screen of some sort. Don’t let it fool you. While you’re watching the smoke, he’ll suddenly reach in, grab the piece he wants, and leave the rest of it in a grand snarl. You can go crazy trying to unscramble that snarl.”
“I feel like I’m going crazy now,” Captain Carmichael said. “This is the damnedest thing I ever heard.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Sergeant Ackley said. “Wait until the blowoff. Then things start moving so fast, it dazes you.”
“How about it, sergeant? Think we’d better have a couple more of the boys come out?”
Sergeant Ackley snorted. “They’d laugh me off the force,” he said. “I’ve been giving the boys the devil because two of them can’t keep track of Lester Leith’s activities. That’s the reason I took this job over myself. If the two of us aren’t sufficient to outsmart that crook with an undercover man on the job and a police chauffeur driving the car, we’d better quit.”
Captain Carmichael said musingly: “I don’t know, sergeant. After all, in our work, the thing to do is to get the criminal, not try to show off.”
“I’m not trying to show off,” Sergeant Ackley said sullenly. “I just yanked the detectives off the job because they hadn’t been giving results.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Captain Carmichael said thoughtfully, “but I don’t like the looks of this. You know, sergeant, most crooks play the police game. We know what they’re doing; it’s only a question of catching up with them. But as I see this chap Leith, he manipulates things so that we’re always playing his game, and I don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry,” Sergeant Ackley said grimly. “You watch. Before this case gets really hot, Emil Bradercrust will enter the picture, and when he does, then you’re going to see some action; and we’re going to get Leith.”
“What’s he doing over there?” Captain Carmichael asked, turning to get a last glimpse of Leith through the rear window in the car.
As the driver went to the block and made a U turn, a traffic officer at the corner, raising his whistle in indignant protest at the flagrant violation of the traffic rules, delayed matters somewhat while Sergeant Ackley identified himself.
Sergeant Ackley answered Captain Carmichael’s question as the traffic officer turned back toward his station. “Oh, Leith just forgot something and went back to his car to get it.”