The guy in the sedan was not the strangler, as I soon learned. On Twenty-seventh Street there was space smack in front of Number 814 and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t use it. The sedan went to the curb right behind me. After locking my car I stood on the sidewalk a moment, but my chaperon just sat tight, so I kept to the instructions, mounted the steps to the stoop of the run-down old brownstone, entered the vestibule, and knocked five times on the door. Through the glass panel the dimly lit hall looked empty. As I peered in, thinking I would either have to knock a lot louder or ignore instructions and ring the bell, I heard footsteps behind and turned. It was my chaperon.
“Well, we got here,” I said cheerfully.
“You damn near lost me at one light,” he said accusingly. “Give me them notes.”
I handed them to him — all the evidence I had. As he unfolded them for a look I took him in. He was around my age and height, skinny but with muscles, with outstanding ears and a purple mole on his right jaw. If it was him I had a date with I sure had been diddled. “They look like it,” he said, and stuffed the notes in a pocket. From another pocket he produced a key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. “Follow me.”
I did so, to the stairs and up. As we ascended two flights, with him in front, it would have been a cinch for me to reach and take a gun off his hip if there had been one there, but there wasn’t. He may have preferred a shoulder holster like me. The stair steps were bare worn wood, the walls had needed plaster since at least Pearl Harbor, and the smell was a mixture I wouldn’t want to analyze. On the second landing he went down the hall to a door at the rear, opened it, and signaled me through with a jerk of his head.
There was another man there, but still it wasn’t my date — anyway I hoped not. It would be an overstatement to say the room was furnished, but I admit there was a table, a bed, and three chairs, one of them upholstered. The man, who was lying on the bed, pushed himself up as we entered, and as he swung around to sit, his feet barely reached the floor. He had shoulders and a torso like a heavyweight wrestler, and legs like an underweight jockey. His puffed eyes blinked in the light from the unshaded bulb as if he had been asleep.
“That him?” he demanded and yawned.
Skinny said it was. The wrestler-jockey, W-J for short, got up and went to the table, picked up a ball of thick cord, approached me and spoke. “Take off your hat and coat and sit there.” He pointed to one of the straight chairs.
“Hold it,” Skinny commanded him. “I haven’t explained yet.” He faced me. “The idea is simple. This man that’s coming to see you don’t want any trouble. He just wants to talk. So we tie you in that chair and leave you, and he comes and you have a talk, and after he leaves we come back and cut you loose and out you go. Is that plain enough?”
I grinned at him. “It sure is, brother. It’s too damn plain. What if I won’t sit down? What if I wiggle when you start to tie me?”
“Then he don’t come and you don’t have a talk.”
“What if I walk out now?”
“Go ahead. We get paid anyhow. If you want to see this guy, there’s only one way: we tie you in the chair.”
“We get more if we tie him,” W-J objected. “Let me persuade him.”
“Lay off,” Skinny commanded him.
“I don’t want any trouble either,” I stated. “How about this? I sit in the chair and you fix the cord to look right but so I’m free to move in case of fire. There’s a hundred bucks in the wallet in my breast pocket. Before you leave you help yourselves.”
“A lousy C?” W-J sneered. “For Chrissake shut up and sit down.”
“He has his choice,” Skinny said reprovingly.
I did indeed. It was a swell illustration of how much good it does to try to consider contingencies in advance. In all our discussions that day none of us had put the question, what to do if a pair of smooks offered me my pick of being tied in a chair or going home to bed. As far as I could see, standing there looking them over, that was all there was to it, and it was too early to go home to bed.
Thinking it would help to know whether they really were smooks or merely a couple of rummies on the payroll of some fly-specked agency, I decided to try something. Not letting my eyes know what my hand was about to do, I suddenly reached inside my coat to the holster, and then they had something more interesting than my face to look at: Saul’s clean shiny automatic.
The wrestler-jockey put his hands up high and froze. Skinny looked irritated.
“For why?” he demanded.
“I thought we might all go for a walk down to my car. Then to the Fourteenth Precinct, which is the closest.”
“What do we do then?”
There he had me.
“You either want to see this guy or you don’t,” Skinny explained patiently. “Seeing how you got that gun out, I guess he must know you. I don’t blame him wanting your hands arranged for.” He turned his palms up. “Make up your mind.”
I put the gun back in the holster, took off my hat and raincoat and hung them on a hook on the wall, moved one of the straight chairs so the light wouldn’t glare in my eyes, and sat.
“Okay,” I told them, “but by God don’t overdo it. I know my way around and I can find you if I care enough, don’t think I can’t.”
They unrolled the cord, cutting pieces off, and went to work. W-J tied my left wrist to the rear left leg of the chair while Skinny did the right. They were both thorough, but to my surprise Skinny was rougher. I insisted it was too tight, and he gave a stingy thirty-second of an inch. They wanted to do my ankles the same way, to the bottoms of the front legs of the chair, but I claimed I would get cramps sitting like that, and I was already fastened to the chair, and it would be just as good to tie my ankles together. They discussed it, and I had my way. Skinny made a final inspection of the knots and then went over me. He took the gun from my shoulder holster and tossed it on the bed, made sure I didn’t have another one, and left the room.
W-J picked up the gun and scowled at it. “These goddam things,” he muttered. “They make more trouble.” He went to the table and put the gun down on it, tenderly, as if it were something that might break. Then he crossed to the bed and stretched out on it.
“How long do we have to wait?” I asked.
“Not long. I wasn’t to bed last night.” He closed his eyes.
He got no nap. His barrel chest couldn’t have gone up and down more than a dozen times before the door opened and Skinny came in. With him was a man in a gray pin-stripe suit and a dark gray Homburg, with a gray topcoat over his arm. He had gloves on. W-J got off the bed and onto his toothpick legs. Skinny stood by the open door. The man put his hat and coat on the bed, came and took a look at my fastenings, and told Skinny, “All right, I’ll come for you.” The two rummies departed, shutting the door. The man stood facing me, looking down at me, and I looked back.
He smiled. “Would you have known me?”
“Not from Adam,” I said, both to humor him and because it was true.
IX
I wouldn’t want to exaggerate how brave I am. It wasn’t that I was too damn fearless to be impressed by the fact that I was thoroughly tied up and the strangler was standing there smiling at me: I was simply astounded. It was an amazing disguise. The two main changes were the eyebrows and eyelashes; these eyes had bushy brows and long thick lashes, whereas yesterday’s guest hadn’t had much of either one. The real change was from the inside. I had seen no smile on the face of yesterday’s guest, but if I had it wouldn’t have been like this one. The hair made a difference too, of course, parted on the side and slicked down.