“She’s okey. We’re spending the night, or what’s left of it. You got a spare?”
“Yeah, sure. C’mon in.”
We trooped in. It was significant of the character of The Cracker and the way he fitted into things that he didn’t offer to take the suitcase Norma was carrying, but let her lug it up the stairs.
We all filed into the living-room. Norma dropped the suitcase with a bang. The Cracker was still dressed. He looked from one to the other of us.
I sank into a chair.
“So you figured out who I was?” I asked.
His eyes flickered away from tame for a split fraction of a second.
“Why, you’re a detective, just like you said.”
I grinned at him.
“You know better than that, Cracker. I’m Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook, and you tried to two-time me.”
His knees buckled and he dropped into a chair.
“No, no, no. Honest to Gawd, I—”
I got up and walked over to him.
“Get up,” I said.
“No, no! Honest I didn’t know. I thought... ”
“Get up!”
He grasped the arms of the chair, pulled himself slowly up. He couldn’t face me.
“You’re crazy,” he mumbled.
I laughed, and the laugh didn’t have much pleasantry in it.
“Listen,” I told him. “You wanted to frame me with possession of the jewelry from Mrs. Wright. Then you knew that’d throw me into the mess with Norma Gay. So you thought up a slick scheme, you and the man that’s backing you.
“You picked an apartment, had a deal all planned. That apartment didn’t belong to any Mabel Morgan any more than it did to me. There was some woman in there who was a fair housekeeper, but you had her called out of town by some fake message, and then planted the scene so I’d bite.
“The woman was called away in a hurry, probably had some confederate of yours visiting her, that would account for the mess in the bedroom. That would account, also, for the curtain being pulled out of the square window over the sink. When the kitchen light went on and off, and on and off again that would be the signal that you’d ‘planted’ the stones with me.
“You had them with you all the time. They never were in the apartment. You planted them in the cushions of the davenport when we first went in there. Then, when I told you how absurd it would be for the stones to be hidden there, you figured you’d let me ‘discover’ them some place else.
“You didn’t have them when you were in the bedroom, or you’d have ‘found’ ’em under the carpet. You wished you’d had ’em then, because I indicated I thought that was a likely place. But you wanted me to be the one who actually made the find.
“So when I said the flour or the sugar might be nice places, you figured on planting ’em there. You had to go back to the davenport to get them, and you did it on the theory that you hadn’t made a complete search. Then, when you got the chance, when my back was turned in the kitchen, you stuck ’em in the sugar, knowing I was going to search there.
“The thing proves itself because I walked all over the kitchen floor when I went in the first time, and there wasn’t any trace of gritty sugar underfoot. But there was sugar that stuck to your hand and in your fingernails when you plunged your hand down into the sugar pail, and then when you slipped back to the cupboard and the spices, you dropped this sugar on the floor, scattered it all around so that we could hear it when we walked.
“So I ran along and played your little game, just to see what it was. And you played the signal nicely on the light. That brought the police whistle into play, which was blown by a confederate of yours who had been watching the kitchen window for the signal.
“Then you made your ‘escape,’ keeping me with you. You planned that so I wouldn’t leave the ring and the bracelet in the sugar. And you had your confederate all primed to call the bulls for a rush raid just as soon as I reached your flat.
“Think of how nice and pretty you’d have been sitting with Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook, caught, and, in his pocket at the exact moment of his capture, the jewelry that had been taken in the robbery that led to the murder!
“And you might have done it, if it hadn’t been for the grit of that sugar underfoot. But that tipped me. So I walked into your little trap, only to walk right on through and out again.
“Now, by—! you’ll tell me who that confederate is, or I’ll have you frying on the electric chair like an egg in a hot skillet! You’re mixed in this thing deep enough so you can’t explain unless you cave in.
“Now cave. You’ve got until I count three.”
I could see Norma Gay’s face. The eyes were wide with astonishment. And The Cracker’s face was a study, Hatred, bewilderment, chagrin and fear, all struggling at once.
“Listen, you’ve got me wrong. I swear that I was... ”
“One!” I started.
His voice took on a sharper, almost hysterical note.
“No, no! Now listen. I don’t know a thing about that police whistle. If there was any—”
“Two!”
He braced himself.
“Well, if you feel that way about it—”
“Three!” I said.
He clamped his jaw, started his fist.
I had been waiting for that. My right took him square in the stomach, a short arm jab that had the weight of my body behind it. My left slammed him on the jaw as he started to wilt.
He dropped into the chair — out.
“Okey, Norma. The bureau drawers,” I said.
“What about ’em?”
“Your things,” I told her. “Let’s make it a homelike party.”
I ran to the bedroom, ripped out the bureau drawers, jammed the things from two drawers into one, unpacked Norma’s suitcases and put the things in the bureau drawer I’d emptied.
“The taxi driver will squeal,” she said.
“He won’t have to,” I told her, jamming things from suitcase to drawers. “I played a little joke on The Cracker. When I went through here the first time, he’d left his gun on the dresser. I knew it’d be lousy with his fingerprints, so I took it along to plant on a job.
“It happened that you furnished me with just the opportunity I wanted, and I dropped the gun and holster there by the Merchant Patrol. He’ll find it when he goes to look for clues. They’ll develop latents on it, and check over the men that might be in on it. They’ve got The Cracker’s fingerprints in the identification bureau, and they’ll have the job tied on him inside of ten minutes after the prints come in for classification, particularly in view of the lead they’ll have on the place from the cab drivers.
“Come on, we’re going out the back way!”
She was a baby who had been trained in a hard school, which was a good thing for me. There were none of the gasps or hysterics. She blinked her eyes once or twice to keep her mind concentrated, nodded once, gulped and grinned.
“Let’s go,” she said.
We went.
“What’s next?” she asked as we slid down the fence into the alley.
“Make certain the bulls come,” I told her. “We’ll wait. After that we’ve got to act quickly.”
We slid around to the Avenue, and waited.
The bulls were slow. It was ten full minutes before they came. They came in numbers.
I grinned at Norma.
“Okey. Now we start.”
“For what?”
“For the girl that’s about the only witness that’s worth a hang, the chorus girl who gave me the out, the one who said she’d know the two men who were with you if she saw them again.”
“You mean Gertrude Brown?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’ll she do?”
“She may have a chance to do some good identifying.”
Norma shrugged her shoulders.