The place I was headed for was three blocks away, and I took blamed good care that I wasn’t shadowed on those three blocks. It took me half an hour to get there, but I was sure of myself.
It was in a little, blind office in the back of one of the older buildings that are rapidly coming out to make way for skyscrapers. Twenty years ago and the building was a source of civic pride. Today it’s an eyesore. There were wide staircases, gloomy halls, a small, wheezing elevator, great offices that rambled over the building, insufficiently lighted, covered with dust and grime. Here the cheaper tenants who desired downtown addresses, yet couldn’t afford large rents, held the offices on month-to-month leases, waiting until such time as the owners could finance a skyscraper, when they would have to move to some other, similar building.
There was a Japanese photographer, a small job-printing concern, a “school for secretaries,” and a suite of offices which had absolutely nothing on the doors. Not by the slightest vestige of a sign was any inkling given as to the identity of the business which was housed back of those blank doorways.
I picked the center door, knocked three times, then paused, knocked once, another pause, and then twice.
From within there was a peculiar shuffling sound, and soon there came the rasp of a key in the lock, the shooting of a bolt, and a skull cap thrust itself around the corner of the jamb. Beneath the black skull cap were two piercing eyes and a drooping mustache tacked on to a sallow, wrinkled skin.
“Ach! It is the Herr Jenkins. Come in at once, Herr Jenkins.”
I entered, and the German locked and bolted the door, and stood waiting. After his salutation there was not so much as a word of greeting, none of the handshaking palaver which the modem shopkeeper salves a sale over with. This bird was the best workman in the country, and he relied on his ability to get and hold trade.
“Bachmar,” I told him, “I want a crown, and I want it of genuine, heavy plate. I want it literally encrusted with gems, and I want enough color designs in the stones so that the general effect will be dazzling. Then I want some of the stock stuff, fake diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and the rest, but I want ’em stuck in great, plush-lined cases of the most exquisite workmanship. That crown must be in a dark-stained mahogany box without any plush lining whatever, and I want the box made so tight the crown will just fit in it.”
His hawklike eyes peered intently at me from beneath the black border of the skull cap.
“And you want him how soon?”
I grinned.
“Here’s where I shock you. I want ’em by tomorrow night.”
He shook his head.
“Come on, Bachmar,” I urged. “I know you can make ’em by tomorrow night. You’ve got all the stuff here, and it’s just a question of throwing ’em together.”
His face became fairly livid.
“Ach, you and your throw them together. Me, I can make them by tomorrow, yes, but what will they be? Herr Bachmar has never made a shoddy thing in his life, and here you come and offer to pay me double to throw away my pride in my work. Such are the times. An honest workman is insulted right and left by men who turn out anything to get the money. Bah! These men who work by the clock and for money and who have no pride in what they do! I could spit them in the face by the ten thousand.
“You, Herr Jenkins, you get your things by Friday afternoon or you get them not. Which is it to be? I am a busy man. Speak.”
I mollified the old man as best I could, agreed that he was to make delivery on Friday, and then began to give him more details as to what I wanted. At that his eyes sparkled and beamed, and a smile crinkled over the parchment skin.
“Ach, yes,” he said. “I know what you want. The treatment is to be Russian, yes? And you will want the workmanship of the crown to be similar to that famous crown which is reported to have been offered for sale in this country… Ach, I waste time with talk. Come with me and I show you a picture once — where is that pencil?”
Fifteen minutes later and I was headed down the back stairs of the ramshackle building. Wherever else I might be followed I could not be followed into that building. Nor had I said anything to Bachmar about keeping my visit confidential. That was not necessary. He was one of the old school, a workman who loved his work, took pride in his performance, and made his prices not on the basis of what he could get, but on what he figured was a fair value.
My next bet was to hole up and stay there, and I covered it to the best of my ability. The hotel I selected was one of the best, and the secondhand baggage I sent up had been purchased in a pawnshop, filled with a miscellaneous assortment of junk, and if there was anything to distinguish me to the average spectator, the clerk or the house detective as being other than a casual tourist, I couldn’t detect it, and I’m willing to bet that when I can’t, they can’t.
My room was in the rear of the corridor, near the freight elevator and the back stairs, and there was a fire escape two doors away. I had picked up some magazines and was all ready to settle down in comfort, eat, sleep and read.
And I soaked up rest like a blotter soaks up ink. I knew I was going to have need for all the rest I could cram into my system because there’d be a while when there wouldn’t be any such thing as sleep.
The morning papers were full of it, and I chuckled to myself. Walter Wallace had been his right name after all, and he had driven my car down into the alley back of Lip Sing’s. He kept my appointment, drove my car, and got what had been laid out for me. There was this difference: he had been suspicious, and he hadn’t been a lone crook with the hands of society turned against him. He had been a political henchman of the inside powers, and he could crook his fingers and have men rush to do his bidding. He’d threatened to have a cop on every corner, and he’d done that and more.
When he brought my car to a stop in the alley back of Lip Sing’s he collected enough lead to make a cork sink in molasses. He’d never known what had struck him, but had slumped against the wheel, riddled with bullets. Evidently old Icy-Eyes wasn’t taking any great chances with Ed Jenkins. I was to keep the appointment and be shot down before I had so much as a chance to unwind from behind the steering wheel.
The murderers had their car all parked, ready for the getaway, and after the shooting, while everything was confusion, they piled into their machine and dashed through the alley, out into the street, and into the arms of a squad of cops who had been posted near the alley and, attracted by the shots, where organized for just such a capture.
The names of the gunmen in that car read like a list of Who’s Who in the Underworld, and when they found that a reception committee was waiting for them they nearly fell off of the Christmas tree. One of ’em made the mistake of trying to shoot it out, and he was a good shot. The cop he’d got had been popular.
They’d pulled their alibi before they knew what it was all about — that Ed Jenkins, notorious crook, had opened fire on them without provocation, and that they’d returned the fire and sought to make their escape. Each and all of them swore they recognized me and that I had fired the first shots. When they led ’em back to the scene of the crime and showed ’em Walter Wallace pumped full of lead… oh, it was a great piece of reading, all right.
I lay in bed with my pot of coffee and my newspaper and chuckled until I slopped the coffee over the edge of the cup. I could imagine Icy-Eyes when he read that paper. They’d captured his strong-arm squad, and it was a hundred to one shot that at least one of those guns would squeal, blow the works. How much they knew was hard to tell. Certainly Icy-Eyes didn’t let any cheap thug have direct contact with him, but they unquestionably knew his lieutenants, and if they squealed on the lieutenants and the lieutenants should take a notion to get immunity by joining in the chorus… oh, Icy-Eyes was having a bad breakfast all right.