Obstinately, Constanopolus shook his head. “I not get the number, see, for why the hell I remember numbers? Just the name, Jefferson. I spell it, uh? Chay-ee-eff-eff-ee—”
“Aw,” growled the sergeant. He opened the car door. “Come on, Nick. Get going. Maybe it was Washington, maybe not. He don’t know what it’s all about.”
“Jefferson!” Basilio Constanopolus howled after them, as the Packard crunched over the gravel and turned back toward the city again.
First-class Patrolman Glennan tried to go home and rest, but it was no go. Ordinarily he would have been sound asleep long before this hour. The hands of the little electric clock in his kitchenette crawled past noon, and he merely played with the scallops which Alice had baked for him. Finally he put on his blouse and belt and cap, snatched a kiss from the prettiest face this side of County Cork, and went down to headquarters.
“Beautiful man,” he said to the mutt-faced Sergeant Beasley, “we did have a colored chart that showed all the auto license plates in the United States. What went with it?”
“You’ll find it tacked beside the Museum in the other room,” said Beasley, “and you ain’t so good-looking yourself, punk. I may be within seven months of my pension, but I bet I could still plug a gas tank in a car if I had a full gun to do it with.”
Nick’s ears were purple. For want of any retort he went into the next room and looked at the chart of auto license plates. He leaned upon a cabinet full of rusty revolvers and dusty blackjacks and perforated stars, and studied the little colored oblongs... Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin... Most certainly there was no State of Jefferson in the United States.
Suddenly he bent closer to the chart. His ears grew pale and purple once more. From the outer room Sergeant Beasley watched him, sniffing.
Glennan came out. His eyes were very bright, and a slight flush still clung around the roots of his hair.
“Get me the Bureau, will you?” he asked of the man at the switchboard.
“Guests will use the house phones around the corner,” mocked the switchboard.
Nick glared. He went around the corner to the single instrument in its dim nook.
“Is Dave Glennan out with his squad?”
The dim voice of the Bureau said: “No. He’s in with the Lieutenant. Who’s calling?”
“This is Officer Glennan, his brother. Can I talk—”
“Sure. I’ll get him for yuh.”
Connections buzzed and stuttered... Dave’s voice. “Yeh.”
Nick said: “Tell me this, Dave. Do they still think those guys left town?”
“Left town? Say, what do—”
“With airplanes and state troopers and all, tailing them all over hell. What do you think?”
Dave gulped once or twice. “Why — what makes you think they’d lie around here? Sure, it’s been done before, but—”
“At night they could make it. We know they went north under that railroad viaduct from the prairies, and there’s two good streets, not much traveled, leading back to town. Take a small hotel — an outlying one, you see. With garages near by, and—”
“For God’s sake,” yapped Sergeant Glennan, “have you gone nuts, or what?”
“I’ll be coming to the Bureau as fast as a cab can get me there,” snarled the ex-sparrow cop, “and you be going in with me to talk to Inspector Bourse. I’m going to tell you upholstered cushion-bellies what kind of a car to look for!”
It was at the end of the fifth-floor-west-corridor of the Hotel De Soto. Two adjoining rooms, 524 and 526. The occupants were listed as the Hot-Cha Orchestra from Louisville. Their names were Morgan, Fry, Adams, and Johnson...
“The nerve, the brazen nerve of them!” gritted Inspector Bourse. “Using the name of a man they just killed—”
He stood beside a bed in room 508, with a throng of officers blocking the open door beyond. The operator connected him with room 524, and a coarse voice yelped nervously at him.
“This is Inspector Bourse,” said the old man with the gold badge. “I want to tell you sniveling hyenas that you’re washed up. No, hold on — I’ll do the talking! Every room around you — on all sides, above and below — has been vacated. There are officers at the top and bottom of the fire escapes, and in opposite windows commanding your rooms. We’ve got machine guns trained on your doors, and tear gas all ready to let go. You can come out, with your hands up, or you can stay there and take it!” There was a long, heart-breaking silence. Then the rasping voice began, to stammer—
“Break?” echoed the old Inspector. “Yeh, you gave our men a break this morning. Pie-eyed, hopped-up bums: you chopped the whole carload down! Only one of you got a shot in the arm for his pains. Auto accident, you told the chambermaid when she saw the bloody bandages! Remember this: you can only get life in this state — so think it over, and think fast—”
Down the hall there was the sudden blam of an automatic. Old Bourse dropped the phone upon the bed. “So that’s the answer, eh?” he whooped. “Let ’em have it, boys! The taxpayers’ll foot the bill for damage—”
Five machine guns began to pound.
They carried them away in four neat, body-length baskets of brown wicker. Two officers had been wounded, neither seriously. Up in his temporary headquarters in room 508, old Inspector Bourse patted Nick Glennan’s arm as that embarrassed young man slid his gun into its holster.
“Smoke up!” he said to the Glennan boys. “Here — twenty-five centers, and never say the old man is a tightwad. Boys, I knew your grandfather — I was just a little kid when he got killed in the anarchists’ riot, but I do remember him — and I want to say that the old fellow must be very, very proud of you tonight.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing, Inspector,” growled Dave. “It was all the doings of my kid brother.”
“And him still with a stiff arm and unsteady shoulder from that affray last March,” nodded the Inspector. “It’s quite like a Glennan not to whine around and alibi because he wasn’t shooting so good, and all of a sudden. Well, Nick — and I hope to see you a sergeant like your brother before you’re many months older — I must say that your deduction on those license plates was a slick piece of work. It was aisy enough for us to run the car down, once you gave us the tip. The boys got it in the thirteenth garage they went to, and the rest was aisy, too.”
Nick’s ears were red again. “I just played a hunch, sir, about them not having run out of town.”
“But what good would the hunch have done if you hadn’t lined up the car? Sure, it isn’t every cop could spot a car on the evidence you had and lead us right to the killers.”
First-class Patrolman Glennan wriggled, but his weary face was grinning. “The Greek had a word for it, sir! Jefferson, he said, and of course we thought he was crazy. But I went down to headquarters and had a look at the chart of license plates. Just by chance I noticed that Kentucky — you see how it was, Inspector. The Kentucky license was number 345–328 — a hot car, no doubt — but it had the letters K-Y, very small in one corner, and the number 33 very small in the other. And all the way across the bottom was the name of the county: Jefferson. It’s an odd way they must have in Kentucky, putting the names of their counties on the license plates.”
“From Kentucky,” said Sergeant Dave Glennan, “come fast horses and beautiful women. From the Glennan family comes cops. If you wouldn’t object, Inspector, I’d like to offer us all a little drink — just for luck. I’m mighty proud of my ugly relative, and
Inspector Bourse thrust out his jaw. “Of course I object, Sergeant! It’s contrary to law and regulations and the best traditions of our department... Ring immediately for ice and ginger ale!”