Choosing an avenue, Bart walked northward. After several blocks he began to look upward across the street. He was in a district of towering hotels, huge structures that rose many stories above the thoroughfare.
One, in particular, interested Bart as he approached it. In any city other than New York, this hostelry would have been a civic pride, for it reared twenty stories skyward, not counting a small tower that added a few floors more above the roof.
In Manhattan, however, the building was dwarfed by surrounding edifices. A nearer hotel was bulkier and thirty floors in height. One across the street had forty stories. Further along, Bart viewed a mighty shaft that boasted fifty lines of horizontal windows.
Bart’s goal was the twenty-story building. A flashing electric sign gleamed the name “Hotel Moselle” in vertical lights of white. At top and bottom were short, horizontal words in red. These lights, unblinking, read:
ROOF CAFE
BART entered the lobby of the Moselle. He joined a small throng in an elevator. The car sped upward to the twentieth floor. Bart alighted, walked through a space that served as upstairs lobby and chose a short, thronged passage that led to an outdoor roof.
There the private dick chose a table. He ordered a drink and waited methodically until he saw a tall, dark-visaged man in evening dress, who was conducting a group of guests to a table by the parapet.
THIS was Prexy Storlick, the proprietor of the Moselle Roof Cafe. The cafe itself was a concession that Prexy had taken from the hotel management. Shrewd in business, genial in personality, Prexy had been making the place pay.
Prexy’s past was a well-covered one. His geniality was a smooth mask, actually he had been guilty of cutthroat practices. Prexy had been the silent partner behind a chain of notorious speakeasies, each of which had boasted a dummy proprietor.
With the end of the speakeasy period, Prexy had seen a chance to step out into legitimate business. All his old “fixing” had been completely covered. The men who had served as “fronts” were in wrong with the law; but Prexy was not.
Bulging with cash, Prexy had bluffed the Hotel Moselle management into thinking that he was a legitimate restauranteur. Sole governor of the Roof Cafe, he had made the place into a bright spot that had attracted multitudes of patrons.
Turning from the new customers, Prexy caught a glance from Bart. In gracious fashion, the proprietor stepped over to speak to the heavy-faced patron, just as he might to any regular customer. But the words which Prexy uttered were out of the ordinary.
“All right, Bart,” announced the tall man quietly, “you can go up. Rook told me to send you as soon as you came in.”
Prexy walked away. Bart finished his drink. Then he arose and strolled back into the corridor that led to the elevators. Halfway along this corridor was a short passage. At the entrance was a table on which rested a telephone.
Beyond that, the passage terminated with the door of a little-used service elevator. But halfway along was another door in the side wall. This was the one that Bart chose. Hunching against the door, that passers-by in the corridor might not see him, he thrust a key into the lock.
Opening the door, Bart stepped directly to a stairway. He latched the door behind him and went upward through a gloom that was tempered only by a light from the top of the stairs. He came to a landing one flight up; there a closed door indicated an old storeroom. Bart continued to the second floor. He reached a little anteroom and knocked cautiously at a barrier.
The door opened. Bart Koplin was face to face with Rook Hollister.
THE big shot motioned Bart into the living room of an oddly arranged apartment. These quarters, twenty-two stories above the street, constituted Rook’s hideout.
This floor was like a cap stone that topped the Hotel Moselle. The tower itself was not central in the building. It reared from the south wall. A two-story structure, the first or storeroom floor was a solid hulk. This apartment, a sort of penthouse, was of smaller dimensions than the storeroom below it. Hence it was surrounded on all sides by a porchlike walk, edged with a cement rail.
The windows of the living room were shuttered; straight across, at the south side of the room, was a grilled double door that afforded access to the promenade that flanked all four sides of the penthouse.
Prexy Storlick, when he had rented the concession from the Hotel Moselle, had taken the roof and the two floors above it. This penthouse was his reputed residence; that fact was a perfect blind that protected Rook Hollister.
It was plain that Rook had been anxiously awaiting Bart’s arrival. The big shot wanted to know what Bart had learned. As they sat down, the dick lost no time in slipping the news.
“I have fixed Buzz Dongarth,” he declared. “It worked out just the way you said it would. What’s more, Buzz handed me a piece of info that’s going to knock you for a loop!”
“Bad news?” inquired Rook anxiously.
“No, no,” assured Bart, “it’s all right; but before I come to it let me give you the layout from headquarters. I breezed in on Joe Cardona. Pulled a stall about that movie contest of Waylock’s. I heard Cardona talking to some reporters.
“First off Cardona muffed his chance just like you thought he would. One look at Manthell’s mug made him sure the guy was you. He knew Trip Burley, so he shipped his body to the morgue along with Manthell’s.
“We hadn’t figured on him finding two corpses. So I don’t blame you for being worried by those afternoon newspapers. But it’s all right. Cardona muffed; and I guess his identification of Trip helped instead of hurting.”
“But who got Trip?” queried Rook. “Did Manthell find that rod of mine that I left in the dressing room?”
“No,” replied Bart. “He had an automatic on him, but it wasn’t yours. It was a .45 — and what a cannon it was! Cardona was showing it to some newshounds.”
“How do you explain that?” demanded Rook.
“I’m getting to it,” affirmed Bart. “First off, Cardona has heard that a bloke named Lingo Queed is to be the new big shot.”
“LINGO QUEED?” quizzed Rook savagely. “Why he’s nothin’ but a go-between! A smart guy, right enough, who knows a lot; but he hasn’t even got a rep as a first-class torpedo.”
“He’s got one now,” assured Bart, “and Buzz Dongarth told me the answer. Lingo Queed was in on that plot down in Chinatown, wasn’t he?”
“Sure. Trip told me that Lingo was the mug who arranged the meeting place. He knows the chinks and their talkee-talkee.”
“Well, Buzz says Lingo took credit for bumping you; but only those on the inside know it. Even the grapevine hasn’t got it.”
“You mean Lingo found out about that secret elevator of mine?”
“That’s it, Rook. I don’t know how he did it, though.”
“I do” — Rook was musing — “because I remember Lingo talking to that Jap who used to work for me.”
“Did the Jap know about the elevator?”
“Of course. It was the Jap who fixed it for me. But I didn’t suspect nothing wrong when Lingo talked to him in Japanese.”
Bart chuckled.
“It’s plain enough,” asserted Rook. “When Trip sprang that gag at the meeting, he gave Lingo a break that we didn’t know about. Lingo must have beaten Trip getting up to my place. He rubbed out Manthell and then plugged Trip.”
“It don’t fit, Rook,” declared Bart with a solemn shake of his head. “No it don’t fit.”
“Why not?” questioned Rook.