Art Depledge was an average of both the other two. Of medium height and stocky build, he had the round, pleasant face of a grocery clerk — the sort of face you would instinctively trust. That is, unless you knew he was one of the sharpest card and dice men in town, and had accumulated a fortune through having people instinctively trust him. I had always thought he gambled strictly on his own, and had heard nothing to tie him to the numerous professional games spotting the town. But seeing him in the company of the other two straw-bosses, it didn’t require genius to hazard the guess that he straw-bossed the dice and card games held at the local night clubs.
The trio entered the Rand Building together. At five minutes after five, a whole horde of office workers disgorged from the entrance, and in their center I spotted Gerald Ketterer. He was easy to spot, because he had a long, humorless face and wore his prematurely white hair long, like a Kentucky senator.
In the crowd on either side of him were Jimmy Goodrich and Art Depledge, and trailing immediately behind him was Dan Ironbaltz. Ketterer stepped to the curb to hail a cab just as little Jimmy Goodrich slapped him lightly on the back. When the Reform candidate for mayor turned toward him, Goodrich grasped his hand and wrung it warmly.
From across the street it seemed to me Ketterer showed no enthusiasm for the handshake. Almost immediately he withdrew his hand, and when big Dan Ironbaltz and Art Depledge each clapped him familiarly on the shoulder, he glanced both ways along the street, apparently to see if anyone was noticing. I hardly blamed him, for it would certainly have not won him many votes for mayor to be seen in that trio’s company.
At that moment a taxi pulled up, Ketterer entered it and drove off without even glancing back at the men who had bid him good-by so chummily.
The three gamblers managed to catch the next cab, and disappeared in the same direction taken by Ketterer.
Jackie Morgan had still not arrived at the drug store. Crossing the street, I pushed my way through the crowd still coming out of the building and entered one of the six elevators. It was an express piloted by a beautiful but expressionless blonde. Since everyone else was coming down, I had her to myself. But before I could work the conversation beyond the point of stating, “Twelfth floor, please,” the elevator went “Whoosh!” and there we were.
“Service stops at six o’clock, sir,” she said. Her voice was as expressionless as her face.
I said, “I’ll try to be through by then.”
The office of the reform candidate for mayor had Gerald Ketterer, Investment Broker printed on its stained glass door. I opened the door inward just in time to push it against a blonde not quite as pretty as the elevator operator, but with more expression. At the moment her expression was startled, for the door knocked her backward and she dropped her purse.
“Sorry,” I said, removing my hat and stooping to recover the purse. “Clumsy of me.”
She examined me thoroughly, starting with my face, estimating the breadth of my shoulders and moving her eyes slowly down to my feet. She couldn’t have been impressed by my face, so it must have been the shoulders that melted her.
“We’re closed,” she said in a soft voice suggesting she would have stayed open another hour had she known I was coming. “Did you want to see Mr. Ketterer?”
“Yes. I realize it’s after office hours, but I’ll only take a minute.”
“He’s gone home,” she said. “If you’ll tell me your business and leave your phone number and name, I’ll see if I can arrange an appointment and phone you tomorrow.” The way her full lips quirked at the corners, I got the impression that while we were on the subject of phone numbers, she would be glad to offer hers.
I held the door for her. “Never mind. I’ll ring him at home this evening. It wasn’t a business matter.”
As she passed through the door, my thumb pushed back the spring bolt at the same time my forefinger locked it open. Then I pulled the door shut and we were both in the hall.
It was wasted effort, for she didn’t depend on the night lock. Taking a key from her bag, she shot the main bolt home. We went down on the elevator together, neither speaking, but giving each other the eye and both liking what we saw. She was a cute enough kid to make me wish I had time to play, but unfortunately I had business to attend to. In front of the building we parted with mutual reluctance.
In the drug store at the corner of the Rand Building, I found that Jackie had finally arrived.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“Hadda pick this up first,” he said, hefting a leather briefcase. “I loaned it to a friend who’s still in the profession.”
In his neat gray suit and with his briefcase, the contents of which would have made a locksmith drool with envy, Jackie looked like a dried-up insurance salesman. We caught the same elevator I had taken up before, but excited no comment from the operator.
When she let us out at twelve, she said in the same expressionless voice she had used before, “Service stops at six, sir.”
Though the office door next to Ketterer’s was open, no one was in the hall as we approached the door marked Gerald Ketterer, Investment Broker. Using a piece of spring steel no thicker than a coarse hair, it took Jackie about as long to open the door as it would have taken me with a key. I set the night lock and closed it again from inside.
With daylight saving the sun was still high, and lights were unnecessary. The office consisted of two rooms, a reception room and Ketterer’s private office. I spent fifteen minutes on the reception room, finding nothing of interest.
The inner office contained a locked safe bearing a metal plate below the door inscribed, Guaranteed Burglar-proof... Margrove Business Equipment Co., Inc. I put Jackie to work on it while I went through the desk and file cabinet. Drawing a blank, I slammed the last drawer closed in disgust.
“Quiet!” Jackie said petulantly.
He had on a stethoscope and was slowly turning the safe’s combination dial. Although retired, Jackie still kept his fingers in practice, and modestly admitted to still being the best cracksman in the country. I wouldn’t know, because I wasn’t acquainted with any other cracksmen, but he was a pleasure to watch.
Jackie straightened with a frown, drew a piece of fine sand-paper from his briefcase and set my teeth on edge by running his fingertips over it to make them sensitive. Then he went back to work.
Ten minutes later the safe which was guaranteed burglar-proof swung open.
The safe contained four compartments, which I tackled one by one. The first held about two-hundred dollars in bills and seven checks totalling eight-thousand dollars, all clipped to a bank deposit slip dated the next day. The second compartment contained several hundred stock certificates and bonds, all of them declaring the owner to be Gerald Ketterer, and none of them negotiable. If they were worth anything, Ketterer seemed pretty well fixed financially.
The last two compartments contained file folders, which in turn contained private correspondence, confidential market reports, contracts with clients and other matters such as any business man might not wish to keep in an open file accessible to anyone who happened to be in the office.
Concealed behind the folders in the bottom compartment I found what I wanted.