I went back to my apartment, removed my disguise, and waited. Something seemed to tell me that I was booked to be framed with a murder. A certain fat, icy-eyed crook and myself were going to have an accounting one of these days. In the meantime I would wait and see what developed. I knew too much to suit him, and he was perfectly willing that the law should silence my lips. No, that would hardly do. I might make a confession that would tally too closely with the known facts. Nevertheless, a murder was impending and I was to be removed. Putting two and two together again, what more plausible than that the murder should be committed and that I should be killed on the scene of the crime? Suppose I had walked into that apartment where R. C. Rupert had been killed, had walked in while the body was still warm, and suppose a hidden accomplice had killed me, shot me down from ambush, and then telephoned the police that he had seen me walk into Rupert’s flat, thought that I acted suspiciously, followed, saw me kill Rupert, had called upon me to surrender, and when I had resisted had shot at me. The police would have taken him into custody pending an investigation, have found out that the dead man who was charged with the murder was Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, and released the man who gave the information, with a vote of thanks. He would be a benefactor to society, one who had caught a notorious crook in the act of murder and killed him.
So I began to run over the whole plan in my mind, putting myself in the shoes of the others, wondering what I would do in their place. Almost I thought I would vanish from my apartment, and remain in concealment until the whole affair had been concluded, but there were those confounded Chadwick papers. I had to have them, and the only way I could keep in contact with the fat crook with the icy eyes was by continuing to play into his hand. The next time I established a point of contact with him he would not vanish into thin air and leave a squad of hired murderers to wait for me.
On the third day I received a letter. It was typewritten, unsigned.
“Ed: I knew you when you touched my shoulder. Thanks, I am being watched and can’t communicate with you. There is danger impending, but I can’t learn where or when. All I can do is to tell you there is a corridor connected with it somewhere. Whatever happens do not run down any dark corridors.”
I read the letter and grinned. It might be a genuine warning, and it might be a plant. I shouldn’t have touched the girl. Women are sensitive to a man’s touch, and my hand had more warmth and strength than would have been found in the hand of an aged Chinaman. I was sorry I had made that mistake, but it had shown me a weakness in my disguise.
If the letter was not a genuine warning, it was part of a plant. If the latter, I couldn’t see just how it would fit in, but I couldn’t forget the look in the eyes of the Weasel when he had warned me of the girl with the mole on her left hand. And then there had been the matter of those pistol shots, and the death of the Weasel. Was it because he had been followed to my apartment that he had been made the target of the pistols of that death car?
I shrugged my shoulders.
There is a limit to what a man can think out. To attempt to go beyond that limit involves the mind in a tiresome race around a circle. It is profitless and worse than useless, for then, when the time for action comes, the mind is weary. I prefer to think as far as I can see my way clearly, and then sit back, waiting for subsequent events to develop additional information. In that way my mind is always receptive, fresh, ready to act when the emergency comes.
Another three days passed, and then the morning paper told me of the death of Stanley Brundage. There was half a page of eulogy, of his life, his business activities. I didn’t stop to read it all. I knew I was going to need plenty of sleep, and I rolled in and slept soundly throughout the day.
Colby called on the telephone late that afternoon.
“I want to see you, Jenkins. Can you come to my office?”
I smiled at that. He had no office — not under the name of Colby, anyway.
“Maybe I’d better run up there, though,” he added quickly. “I can run right up, and it’s a matter of importance.”
“All right,” I said, and hung up the receiver.
Ten minutes later and he was at the door, nervous, excited, his eyes blinking and watering, his nose twitching, sniffing, his mouth working, the pale tongue continually flicking the lips.
“Jenkins, I am too rushed to explain here, but there were certain papers you were to have as reward for opening that safe, and I have just found out that you were double-crossed. I want you to come out to my house tonight and go over it with me. In a way I feel responsible since you were doing work at my request, and I want to get those papers for you. At any rate, I can give you some information that will be of value.”
I looked at him quickly, letting an expression of dumb surprise flicker over my face.
“Why, I thought they were all there,” I said, openmouthed, stupid.
He shook his head, adjusted his gaudy tie and patted his sleek, oily hair. Apparently he was well satisfied with himself. He was playing me for a mechanical dumbbell, one who was clever at safe-opening, but no good for anything else.
“No, they held out on you. Come to my place at nine tonight, and I’ll give you the lowdown on the whole thing.”
I took out a pencil and held it over my notebook.
“Your place is where?”
“3425 South Hampshird,” he said, and watched me like a hawk as he said it.
Innocently I wrote down the address. There was not so much as the suspicion of an expression on my face. The address was that of the house of L. A. Daniels. He was watching my face to see if, by any chance, I knew. The rat-nosed, water-eyed crook would have stood more chance reading expression on the sheet of my notebook than on my face just then. I wouldn’t have lived as long as I have if I’d been in the habit of letting my face tell my thoughts.
“Just ring the doorbell twice when you come, Jenkins,” he said, “and be sure that you get there at nine sharp. The events of the next hour will be of great interest to you.”
I nodded and pocketed the notebook.
“I’ll be there,” I said, and showed him to the door. His hair was scenting up the apartment and I wanted to be rid of the oily rat before I was tempted to choke him with that red necktie of his.
I couldn’t have much of a line on what was to come, but one thing I could be sure of. From the time when I rang that doorbell twice, things would move with the precision of clockwork, with the bewildering speed which marks the swift efficiency of an execution at San Quentin prison. They had had too long to think things over, to lay their plans. If I was to place any monkey wrenches in the wheels of their machinery it must be done before I rang that doorbell.
I got in my machine and swung out toward Hampshird Drive.
3425 sets well back from the street, a great pile of a house, surrounded by shrubbery, surmounted by strange turrets and architectural gingerbread. It was a relic of older times, times back in 1910 or 1911, when the district was just opening up, and was considered well out in the country; the subdivisions were in acres, and the houses were built as country places. Now the district was pretty well in the heart of the city as far as the apartment section was concerned. Most of the old houses had been taken down because they occupied too much ground space, and square apartment houses and flats had taken their places. This building was one of the older type.
I parked the car a block away and made a complete survey of the premises. There was no guard about that I could find, and I watched pretty carefully. At eight-thirty I picked one of the back windows and dropped in. The house seemed pretty well deserted. There was a light in one of the front rooms on the ground floor, and I gumshoed along the corridor, keeping well within the shadows, looking for a chance to get a line on the stuff that I wanted.