“She counted on no questions ever being asked, on the fact that everyone assumed that Steiner was a man or more than one man, and on her marriage to Helpman. That was one more good step of cover for her. I can see why she grabbed it in Italy. I’ll bet a year’s income that when you check back you’ll hit a dead end at that American Hospital in Italy in nineteen forty-four.”
Masters still looked amazed.
“How did you figure it was her, though? I mean, you knew it was Steiner, but why her?”
Shayne laughed. “I didn’t know it was her. I figured it had to be her, or Helpman, or Macadam. Finch was too involved in all of it to be Steiner, Laura was too young, and Berger had stolen that formula. Steiner would never have stolen so obvious a thing. I just used Berger to help smoke her out. I admit she caught me by surprise, and that drawbridge trick was good. She was thinking all the time.
“Of course, the scar did it. I should have guessed a woman like her, though. She is big enough, and has a deep enough voice, to pass as a man. That’s what made her such a good agent. She had that get-away planned like a military operation. After all, she was a colonel.”
“She won’t get far,” Masters growled. “The Coast Guard’s out now.”
Shayne shook his head, “She’s had it planned too long, Masters. They won’t get her that easily.”
By morning they had not found Sally Helpman, alias Colonel Steiner. Just after dawn the State Police found her boat less than a mile down the coast. There were helicopter tire marks near it. Master’s notified Washington, and Shayne caught the jet back to Miami.
Seven months later Shayne was in his office when Lucy Hamilton brought in the newspaper. There was a small item on a back page. It said that a woman known as Sally Helpman had been found dead in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It said she was a famous German agent known only as Steiner.
Two days later Shayne got a letter from Masters. It told him that the FBI had finally tracked the woman to Tulsa. She had been working as a clerk in a bank, disguised as a man. No one knew who she was, and everyone had liked her. When the FBI carefully closed in, they found her sitting alone in her room smiling at them. She had taken poison and died in ten minutes.
“They traced her back to that hospital and no farther,” Shayne said to Lucy. “They never did find out her real name.”
“No name at all,” Lucy said. “She was a horrible woman, but at least she should have a name.”
“Just Steiner,” Shayne said. “Colonel Steiner. I think that’s the way she would have wanted it. She thought of herself as a soldier, I suppose. But she was just a killer, Lucy — just a paid killer.”
Shayne read the letter again and turned back to his quiet, routine cases.
Partners of the Dark
by Alson J. Smith
1.
The phone rang in the office of Captain Mike Casey of the Criminal Investigation Detail, Baltimore Police Department. The Detail had been set up a year earlier to answer newspaper criticism that the Department was soft on crime-syndicate hoodlums. The smartest, toughest cops in town had been pulled into it and Captain Mike Casey, 57, a grizzled, hard-boiled ex-pavement pounder had been called downtown from the North Avenue Station to head it up.
Casey picked up the phone. “Yeah?” he barked. Then, “Oh, hello, Commissioner,” in a more subdued tone.
For a full three minutes he listened, participating in the conversation only to the extent of a guarded “yes” or “no” now and then. Finally he sighed and said: “Well, we’ll do our best, Commissioner.”
As he hung up, Casey said, “Damn!” to nobody in particular.
He paced the floor for a few minutes, rubbing his chin with his big paw, looking broodingly out at the traffic on Fayette Street. Finally he buzzed his secretary on the intercom. “Alice,” he said, “tell Phil Egan to step in, will you?”
A few seconds later Lieutenant Phil Egan stuck his head in the door. He grinned. “Hi, Mike. What’s the good word?”
“Come in and close the door,” rumbled Casey. “And the word isn’t good. It just came down from the Commissioner, and it couldn’t be worse!”
Phil Egan was a thirty-nine-year-old career cop who had graduated from the University of Maryland with an A.B. in Social Science. He had spent a year studying criminal law at Georgetown Law School and was considered a comer in the Department. He stood 5-11, weighed 180, and was a black-belt man in judo. He had a square, highcheekboned, tanned face with clear light blue eyes. His black hair was beginning to gray at the temples. He had been brought into the C.I.D. from the Detective Division because he was considered smart, tough, and resourceful.
Egan lit a cigarette. “Don’t tell me they want us to bring in Johnny Unitas and Weeb Eubank just because the Colts blew one to the Steelers Sunday.”
Casey snorted. “It’s no joke, Phil. It’s those goddam jewelry heists. The Commissioner has decided they’re syndicate jobs, so he’s taking them away from Burglary and dropping them in our laps.”
Egan whistled. “That is the dirty end of the stick. How come?”
“He figures that nine successful heists in as many months means syndicate. Either that or the heisters are old pros who are cutting The Mob in for a big percentage. Major-league thieves couldn’t work here for nine months without syndicate okay.”
Egan took a long drag on his cigarette. “That’s for sure. Nine heists? I thought it was eight.”
Mike Casey picked up a piece of paper from his desk. “Nine. Forty minutes ago a New York jewelry salesman by the name of Norman Feldman was slugged while getting his sample case out of the trunk of his car in front of the Hearn Jewelry Store on West Saratoga Street. The case had fifteen thousand dollars worth of ice in it. Feldman is in Johns Hopkins Hospital with a concussion.”
“Any clues?”
Casey shook his head. “Nobody in the store or on the street saw it, or at least we haven’t located anybody yet who will admit he saw it, and the guy is still unconscious.”
“Sure puts us on the spot. I’ll bet Burglary is throwing a party over losing this one.”
Casey dead-panned: “The Commissioner put me on the spot, so I’m putting you on it. These jewelry heists are all yours, Phil. Good hunting.”
2.
Back in his own office, the first thing Phil Egan did was to stick pins in a map of the city — one red pin for each of the nine jewelry robberies. None of them, he noted with interest, had been in the downtown Howard Street area. All had taken place in neighborhood shopping districts around the city. The pins formed an irregular circle the center of which was, roughly, the area around North Charles and Mount Royal, near the Pennsylvania Railroad Station.
As for the M.O., the last heist — the slugging of the jewelry salesman — was the only one involving violence. In all of the others, entrance — to seven jewelry stores and one hotel room — had been gained by simply unlocking doors, walking in at two or three A.M. and either opening safes by clever manipulation of the tumblers or cutting out the locks with a blowtorch and acetylene gas. Two of the former, five of the latter.
In the hotel room job, the thieves had let themselves into the room of a Broadway and Hollywood starlet who was playing a tryout week in Baltimore and had made off with $20,000 worth of gems with which she had been gifted — as she was able to prove — by various gentlemen.
Whatever else they were, one of the gang had to be an expert locksmith, and another a first rate boxman. And, Phil Egan would bet his last shamrock, they were holed up in the slightly run-down, semi-bohemian area around North Charles and Mount Royal. There were plenty of third rate hotels there — and a couple of good ones — plus rooming houses, bars, jazz joints. And there were several coffee houses where folk singers twanged guitars or bearded poets read their latest effusions to short-haired girls in toreador pants and dark glasses.