Minutes dragged. Nace killed time by looking for the name of Canadan in the telephone directory. Canadan, of course, had been the name of the tall man with the enormous gray moustache. There was no Canadan listed.
The phone rang.
Nace swept up the instrument. “Shoot, baby!”
“My, oh my!” Julia said sarcastically. “By chance, you weren’t camped there by phone pining away for my dulcet voice—”
“Cut it out!”
“Go ahead! Bite me!”
“I’ll tear your arms and legs off if you don’t start telling things! This is big! That Canadan was on the point of—”
“That the tall one who hides behind the gray cookie duster?”
“Sure. He was just opening up when that orange-stand girl pulled her act.”
Julia’s voice became businesslike. “I trailed that girl from the orange-drink stand. She took this Canadan along. He didn’t seem to want to come. I think she put a gun in his back.”
“What’d you learn?”
“Not much, except that they like to ride the taxicabs. They went up and down Lincoln Park. They stopped once and got out. They went over to where a little crowd stood, then came back and got in their hack.”
“What was the crowd?”
“A bunch rubbering at the spot where that meteor fell last night. The thing melted a big hole in the ground where it hit.”
“That wasn’t any meteor.”
“Well, I’ve guessed as much. But do you know of a better name to call it?”
“I’m not sure what the dang thing is,” Nace admitted.
“They’re in the Idyll House, now,” Julia continued. “It’s a little hotel in the loop.” She gave an address.
“That’s only half a dozen blocks from here,” Nace told her. “What’re they doing?”
“Sitting here in the lobby talking. They’ve been talking every time they left the Century of Progress grounds.”
“Then she isn’t holding a gun on him now?”
“Nope. They seem to have come to an agreement. At least, they’re mighty sociable.”
“Have they seen you?”
“Just here in the hotel. I had to show myself. There was no other phone near. The girl has looked me over two or three times, but I don’t think she smells anything.”
“Can she see your lips?”
“Sure.”
Nace groaned deeply. “Turn around so she can’t see your face! She’s a lip reader. She must be! At that orange-drink stand, she wasn’t close enough to hear what I was saying to Canadan, but she knew I had him on the point of talking. A lip-reader is the only way to explain it.”
“For the love of mud!” Julia said sharply.
“What now?”
“You were right, Lee! She’s wise! She’s up on her feet and coming over here!”
“See what you can get out of her!” Nace rapped.
“Can you tell me something, so I can make a play that I know more than I do?”
“You know as much about it as I do — except that two plugs named Shack and Tubby tried to sashay me. And the diamond exhibit out at the Century grounds must be a part of it.”
“A lot of help you are!” Julia’s voice changed — evidently she was addressing the girl from the orange-drink stand. “I say now, honey — are you an old friend or something? The way you’re staring—”
There was a short, sharp racket. Scuffling! The phone went dead.
Nace jammed his pipe stem between his teeth, strained his ears. The receiver at the other end must have been hung up. There was no sound. The pipe stem made crunching sounds as his teeth worried it.
He ran out of the room, paced circles in the elevator cage as it lowered him, and dived into his car. He headed toward the Idyll House.
THE Idyll House proved to be a wedge of brick between department stores which were closed at this hour.
Nace saw two running policeman before he saw the hostelry. The officers were headed for the hotel. Angling his car in to the curb, Nace sauntered in behind them.
The two cops were getting the story from the desk clerk. Voices were loud. Nace heard what was said without appearing to show interest in proceedings.
“A man and a woman grabbed another woman out of a telephone booth and made off with her,” announced the clerk.
“Which way’d they go?”
“South. They got in a taxicab.”
One cop dashed out to spread an alarm.
“Who were they?” the other officer asked the clerk.
“I didn’t know any of them. The woman they grabbed was red-headed — a peach of a looker. The other woman wore an orange-colored dress and one orange-colored earring. She wasn’t so hard to look at, either. I don’t know the man’s name, but I’ve seen him before.”
“Seen him when?”
“Oh, he came in a time or two with one of our guests, a Mister Osterfelt.”
“Osterfelt here now?” demanded the officer.
“No. He didn’t come in last night. Hasn’t been in all day.”
“Why didn’t you notify the police he was missing?”
The clerk shrugged. “We don’t usually rush into things like that. He might have put up with a friend for the night.”
Unnoticed, Nace glided over to the desk. Instead of the old-fashioned registration book, this hostelry used a card index system. He opened the card drawer surreptitiously and thumbed through it.
Mel. G. Osterfelt, from Berlin, Germany, had registered for 1103.
Without attracting attention, Nace went to the bank of pigeon holes which held keys. Then he rode the elevator up.
The door of 1103 was locked. The key he had taken from the pigeon hole downstairs fitted. He let himself in.
The room was plain, like most of the other hotel rooms Nace had seen. A big traveling bag, plastered with steamship stickers, stood near the bed. Osterfelt must have traveled a lot. There were stickers from most of the big steamship lines.
Nace opened the bag. It was empty. There was clothing in the closet, neat business suits. Osterfelt had evidently unpacked for a stay.
Measuring the suits against his own gaunt height, Nace concluded Osterfelt had been a stocky man, very fat. He had been a dresser; there was silk underwear in the dresser drawers.
The dresser had two half-drawers at the top. One of these held a brief case. It was stuffed. Nace dumped the contents.
Papers showed Mel. G. Osterfelt to be a research chemist for a Berlin firm specializing in the manufacture of welding equipment.
There was a black bag, leather-padded, perhaps two inches square. Nace opened it. It was a ring box, empty.
The padded satin of the lid carried the indentation made by the setting of a ring which must have been placed there often. Nace calculated. The impression was about the size and shape of the diamond which had been found in the alleged meteor.
Nace replaced the box. It had about convinced him that the man who died — murdered, probably — in the hellish blaze which many had thought was a meteor, was Osterfelt. At least, the victim had been wearing Osterfelt’s ring.
Pushing his search, Nace found one more item of interest. It was a receipt for the shipment of a package from New York by serial express.
Nace left the room, locking the door. The policeman and the clerk were just entering an elevator, enroute up to Osterfelt’s room, no doubt, when he reached the lobby.
He entered a booth which was one of a bank. From one of these, Julia must have been dragged.
Nace thumbed through a directory, found the number of the local office at which aerial express arrived. He described the package designated in the receipt and asked if it was being held.
“It was called for yesterday,” he was told.
“How many men came after it?” he queried.