Mr. Engleman’s narrow mouth was still formed into a perfect circle as Gerald breezed out of the room, leaving the door wide open. Miss Goode, Mr. Engleman’s secretary, was leaning over the water cooler just outside as Gerald passed. He hesitated a moment and then playfully patted her.
“Go,” he said. “Go at once. He needs you. The master…”
He looked down into her indignant, startled eyes as she swung around and faced him and then smiled at her sweetly and shrugged his shoulders.
In another minute he was back in his own small cubbyhole of an office. His one-fifth secretary had finished whatever she had been doing at his desk and he slammed the door and fell into his hard, straight-backed chair. He reached for the telephone.
“Kitty,” he said, “bring me the telephone book.” He waited a moment and then spoke again. “All of them, my sweet,” he said. “All of them. Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, Queens, Kings and anything else you might lay your lovely little hands on. At once.”
He replaced the receiver, coughed and looked at the cigar in his hand then casually tossed it out of the opened window at his side.
“A poor thing at best,” he said.
The Commissioner finished reading the editorial, his face purple and his voice edged with scorn. Carefully he folded the newspaper and laid it down at the side of his desk and then he looked up at the group of men standing in front of the desk.
“Well, you all heard it,” he said. “I guess I don’t have to tell you what the reaction is going to be. Like the rest of you, I’m a career man myself; I guess some of you can remember back to the time I was wearing a patrolman’s uniform. I’m a career man, but I’m also a politician. Otherwise you can bet I wouldn’t be sitting here as Commissioner.”
He hesitated to let the words sink in, looking down at his wrist watch and noticing that it was just after ten o’clock. He still had fifteen minutes before he had to meet the county chairman and he’d have to make it short and snappy.
“I’m not blaming any of you,” he said, “but this sort of publicity, coming before a November election, certainly isn’t doing us any good. Two policemen murdered in cold blood, a quarter of a million in jewels taken from under our noses, and nothing being done about it. I don’t expect miracles, but if they are necessary, then miracles we will have. I want those jewels found. I want someone, someone who is still alive, for the district attorney.”
Lieutenant Hooper was pretty tired, having been up for more than forty hours without sleep, and his temper was anything but complacent.
“Who doesn’t?” he asked. “Who doesn’t? Nobody wants to crack this one more than I do-or any of the other boys downstairs.”
The Commissioner half turned and stared at him. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “That’s just why we are having this little meeting; why I want to find out what’s going on before I see the big boss this morning. And so far, it seems nothing is going on. Why, you’ve even managed to lose the one possible lead you had. I am referring, as you know, to the Dunne girl.”
“There was nothing we could hold her on,” Hopper said.
“You couldn’t hold her perhaps,” the Commissioner answered him, “but by God you could have at least kept track of her. I think we all agreed that there was a good chance she might lead us to something or another. And so what has happened? Well, she has disappeared. We haven’t the faintest idea where she is or why.”
“We know that she saw that Hanna fellow,” Hopper said. “We know that there is some sort of connection there. It was a case of the man tailing one or the other. He chose Hanna. Perhaps he guessed wrong, but there is no telling about that.”
The Commissioner shook his head.
“You boys are barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “I’ve gone over the reports. Gone over them very carefully. This man Hanna just doesn’t fit. Doesn’t fit at all.”
“If we brought him in and took him down to the basement for a workout, I’d make him fit. all right,” Finn said. “What he needs is a touch of the…”
The Commissioner raised his hand. “He’s not the sort of person you can take down to the basement-you know that, Finn. Not that sort of person at all.”
“We’re keeping a man on him twenty-four hours a day.” Lieutenant Hopper said. “We’re watching every move he makes. If he is involved, it’s a lot better letting him have his freedom and giving him enough rope to hang himself.”
“I quite agree,” the Commissioner said. “Well, that’s the story. The newspapers are on our backs and we have to do something about it. And damned soon. Those funerals are today and I get sick every time I think of the way the papers will bleed with sensationalism. So let’s get moving on this thing. I want to be able to issue a statement for the morning papers that we are definitely solving the thing-and I want to have something in back of that statement.”
He stood up, a gesture of dismissal.
“Lieutenant.” he said, addressing Hopper, “you look dead on your feet. I think you better get a little rest before you get back to it.”
“After the funeral,” Hopper said. “I have a cot down in my office and I’ll take a few hours out and get some sleep. But I want to be close by just in case anything should break. And we’ll turn up the Dunne girl all right, don’t worry about that. I’ve arranged to have her brother’s body released and she’s bound to show up and claim it.”
There were two Fred Slaughters listed in the Manhattan directory, none in Queens, or the other boroughs. One of the Manhattan Slaughters was listed as a CPA and Gerald passed his number up for the second one, whose address was up on Central Park West.
Dialing the number, Gerald thought; another one, another one-card draw to an inside straight. That would be what the odds were, one in a thousand or so. He smiled wryly. Things had certainly changed ail right. This business of taking outside chances, playing the long odds, was becoming a habit.
As the sound of the bell at the other end hit to his ear, his mind went back to the scene in Engleman’s office. Yes, he was certainly playing the long ones all right, only that hadn’t been any gamble. That was a straight and simple matter of burning his bridges behind himself. At the moment he felt fine about it, exhilarated and all keyed up. He wondered if and when the reaction would set in. It isn’t every day that a man callously and offhandedly ends a seven-year career as a mere gesture.
But then, of course, it wasn’t every day that a man decides to completely change the course of his life, change the very essential pattern of his thinking and planning and living. The job, after all, was a minor thing in comparison to the other factors involved.
The ringing ended suddenly as someone lifted a receiver in the apartment on Central Park West.
“Hello?”
“Is Mr. Slaughter in?”
“Who’s this?” It was a hard, uncompromising voice and Gerald detected a slightly Brooklynese accent.
“A business associate,” Gerald said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Slaughter. It is quite important!”
The voice at the other end didn’t hesitate.
“You got no name, you ain’t important,” it said.
“It’s important to Mr. Slaughter,” Gerald said. “Very important. Mr. Slaughter lost something, lost something very valuable last Friday night. If he is interested, and he should be, you’d better get him to the phone.”
There was a long pause and then finally, “Hang on.” Two minutes later the second man came on the wire.
“Hello, are you there?”
“I’m here,” Gerald said, feeling a sudden sense of excitement. There was an odd quality in that hard, gravelly voice, a quality which at once convinced him that he had the right person.