“There have been hints that sometimes you’re too circumspect. Some even go so far as to say that you’re stingy in passing along information: that it could get to be a case of the left and right hands each not knowing what the other is doing.”
“That is a danger,” Huntley admitted. “But we have to be careful. The FBI sometimes acts--ahh—-precipitately.
“Like how?” Archie was relaxing with Huntley and lapsing from the polite and cultured English he’d turned on for J. P.’s associates into the patois he preferred. “For instance, do you mean that if you were hip to a Commie cat making the spy bit in this country, you wouldn't ring in the Hoovers?”
“We might not. Let me explain it this way. I’ll give you a hypothetical case. Say we traced a Russian agent from Iran to New York. Say we knew he was a spy, but part of a much larger ring we were trying to uncover and smash. Now, if we told the FBI he was in New York, they’d pick him up immediately and score one more big case for the Hoover record. But, if we don’t tell them, then we may accomplish much more important results. Suppose this spy has wangled his way into the Brookhaven Laboratories and that he’s smuggling microfilmed data out to the Russians. Knowing this, he can be much more valuable to us if he’s let alone than if the FBI nails him. For one thing, we can screen the information he gets. The Russians only learn what we want them to learn. Also, we're building them up for the kind of phony data which might detour certain of their research projects for years. More important, we’ve got a lead into their larger espionage operations. If this man was picked up, he’d only be replaced. And it might be some time before we were able to get a line on his replacement.”
“Is that really a hypothetical case?” Archie had asked.
“That’s for you to guess about.” Strom Huntley had laughed and gone to refill his martini then.
Now, sitting across the room from the corpse of Professor Beaumarchais and thinking about calling the police, the conversation with Strom Huntley flashed through Archie’s mind. If he called the police, Archie projected, one of the first things they would undoubtedly do would be to send out an all-points alarm for the two girls, Helen and Dixie. Archie's guess was that this would drive the girls into a mighty deep hole, and that they’d probably pull the hole in after them. He was the only one who could identify the duo by sight. But if the cops scared them off, it was unlikely that he’d ever get the chance.
Also, if Communists were behind the crime, the cops -- or even the FBI if they called them in, which they surely would once they discovered Beaumarchais’ importance—might just grab off the killer and in so doing let the Beaumarchais papers slip through their fingers and snap the connection with the larger espionage operation by apprehending the small fry. This was no simple homicide. There were vast international complications.
Having thought it through, Archie picked up the phone. He didn’t call the police. Instead, he called J. P. Jones and asked him for Strom Huntley's phone number.
“What do you want it for? ” Jones asked curiously.
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain when I see you, J. P.”
“All right.” J. P. was used to his stepson’s often zany behavior. He gave him the number.
Huntley’s voice was sleepy when he answered the phone. It unfogged quickly as he listened to what Archie had to say. “Damn it!” he exclaimed when Archie was finished. “I kept telling them they should let us put a couple of men on Beaumarchais, that what he had was too important to take any chances. But no! They didn’t want him to be conspicuous. They just wanted him to slide in and out of the country with nobody being the wiser. Damn!”
“Then you knew he was here and why,” Archie surmised.
“Yes. It’s my business to know. But now we’ve got a helluva situation on our hands. You see, it isn’t just the French and U. S. governments who knew about Beaumarchais’ work. The French government consulted with certain of their own top industrialists as to its importance economically before they decided to get together with the U. S. Actually, it was these men who persuaded the De Gaulle government that the U. S. had to be brought into it because of our redeeming our currency abroad with gold. But now, if these same men find out there’s a chance that other powers have gotten the data, they may panic. It could bring on a worldwide stock market crash. We have to take precautions to see that Beaumarchais’ death is made to look as far removed from his work as possible.”
“What do you want me to do?" Archie asked.
“First, close the safe. Second, steal his wallet, his money, his papers, and anything else you can carry. It won't throw the cops off for long, but we may gain a day or two if they start out thinking it’s a simple case of theft and murder. Third, try to get out of the building without being seen.”
“The doorman already saw me when I came in with the professor,” Archie pointed out.
“I know. But there’s no point in supplying him with any firmer identification. If you just vanish, that will give the cops some other false theories to consider. They’ll have to weigh the idea that Beaumarchais may have been queer, that he picked up some young fruit who robbed and murdered him. So use the stairs, not the elevator, and go all the way to the basement. There must be an exit there. Try to use it without being spotted.”
"Should I come to see you then?” Archie asked.
“No. Any foreign agent worth his salt knows I’m CIA. Just go home and sit tight until morning. I’ll contact you and arrange a meeting. We’ll want your help in locating those two girls.”
“All right.” Archie agreed and hung up. He went back into the other bedroom and finished getting dressed. Then he made the bed and tried to remove all traces of the room’s having been used. He flushed the blonde’s lip-sticked cigarette butts down the toilet. He opened the window for a few minutes to get rid of the aroma of her perfume. He knew that the two girls must have been spotted coming into the building, but there was always the chance that it would take the cops a while to get around to eliciting this information from the doorman.
After he closed the window, Archie went back into the bedroom where the corpse was. He pocketed the money and other effects as Strom Huntley had suggested. He also took the professor’s watch and stickpin and a gold cigarette box he found in the living room. Then he surveyed the hall through the peephole in the front door, edged the door open a crack, stuck his head out, determined that it was empty, and dashed across to the stairwell.
A few moments later, Archie emerged from the basement entrance. He timed his exit by the traffic light and darted straight across the street and into the shadowy cover of Central Park. He followed a path through the park to the Fifth Avenue side. Then he found a bench in the shadows and sat down to think.
He was only a few blocks from the Jones’ Park Avenue residence. The simplest thing would be to follow Huntley’s instructions and go home and to bed. But Archie was caught up by the sudden adventure in which he found himself involved. The deductive mind which had so impressed people throughout his childhood was now embarked on the thrill of playing the dangerous game of espionage, or counter-espionage, or whatever what he’d become involved in was rightly called.
His mind kept going back to the two girls, Helen and Dixie. They were the only lead to what had befallen the professor. Dixie in particular was a key suspect in the murder. And only he, Archimedes Jones, could identify her; only he, Archimedes Jones, held the one clue which might lead to her whereabouts.
The clue was the little black address book Archie had taken from the bedroom. Now he took it out and went over it page by page. Squinting in the dim light, he jotted down some notes on the back of one of the professor’s blank checks. When he’d finished, he had a list of five names and addresses with phone numbers. The names were as follows: