“Not at all,” Terry said. “By the way, Inspector, there’s a light delivery van parked downstairs, and whenever anyone leaves my apartment a man steps out of that delivery van, flashes a badge, and takes that person somewhere.”
Inspector Malloy’s brown eyes widened. “Is that so?” he asked. “Well, now, ain’t that something!”
“Have you any idea how long it’s going to continue?”
“Why, I couldn’t say a thing about it,” Malloy said. He walked to the window, moving his ponderous bulk on tiptoe, as a hunter stalking his quarry. His forefinger pointed down at the paneled delivery truck.
“Is that the one?” he asked in a hoarse whisper, as though the van might become alarmed and rush into flight.
“That’s the one.”
“Well,” Malloy said, “can you beat that!” His eyes radiated sympathy. “You say they nabbed everyone who’s been here to-day?”
“Everyone.”
“Well now,” Malloy said, “I’ll have to look into that. Don’t you do a thing about that, Mr. Clane. You just leave it to me and I’ll find out about it.”
He shook hands and left the apartment. After he had descended in the elevator, Terry moved to the window. Malloy emerged from the lobby, but studiously avoided the light delivery van which remained parked at the curb. Nor did any mysterious person emerge from it to accost him.
Terry summoned Yat T’oy.
“Yat T’oy,” he said, speaking in Chinese, “you will ride in a taxicab and perform an errand.”
“What is the errand the Master wishes?”
Terry scribbled an address on a piece of paper. “This,” he said, “is the address of George Levering, the man with sunburnt skin and pale eyes. Go to this address and ask Mr. Levering if it will be convenient for him to have dinner with your master.”
“And the Master does not wish to use the speak-listen wire?” asked Yat Toy, using the Chinese idiom for telephone.
“The Master does not wish to use the speak-listen wire. And if any men should be watching Levering’s apartment, or making a search of the room, you will report to me at once.”
Silently Yat T’oy turned and shuffled from the room. Terry Clane telephoned for a cab. When the cab arrived, he watched Yat T’oy leave the door of the apartment house and shuffle across the sidewalk. As the Chinese reached the cab door, a man jumped from the delivery van, stepped forward, pulled back the lapel of his coat, pushed Yat T’oy into the taxicab, climbed in beside him, and leaned forward to speak to the driver. The cab drove off.
“Well,” Terry mused, staring down at the sinister body of the covered van, “since you boys are acting so smart, I’ve given you a real tough nut to crack.”
Thoughtfully, Terry Clane divested himself of his clothes, took a cold shower and a brisk rub. He had just finished tying his necktie when the telephone rang. A young woman’s voice said crisply, “Mr. Clane? Just a moment. Hold the line, please, the district attorney wishes to speak with you.”
A second later, Clane heard a metallic click, then the voice of Parker Dixon saying, “I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr. Clane, but if you’ll come up here right away I think it will be well worth your while.”
Clane hesitated. “It’s hardly convenient,” he said, “to...”
“It’s most important,” Dixon interrupted. “I don’t wish to seem insistent, but I know you’re anxious to help us clear up this matter, and...” He paused, waiting significantly, and Clane said wearily, “Oh, very well, I’ll be up.”
“Right away?”
“Right away.”
Clane summoned a cab, went to the district attorney’s office. This time there was no waiting. Five seconds after he entered the outer door, he was being ushered into the district attorney’s private office.
Dixon, seated behind the desk, smiled. It was as though he had merely relaxed, and the muscles of his face had automatically turned on the smile. Inspector Jim Malloy, for all his big bulk, got to his feet with cat-like quickness, and, with hand outstretched in genial welcome, crossed the office.
“Well, well, Mr. Clane!” he exclaimed, grasping Terry’s hand and pumping it up and down. “This is an outrage — twice in one day. When the district attorney told me that we needed you, you know what the first thing I said was? I said, ‘Now that’s just too bad!’ But it’s one of those things. Come over and sit down... No, not that chair, this one here close to the desk. Sit down and be comfortable. I think perhaps we’ve got some good news for you. You know, the police department takes a lot of kicks, but sometimes we really do good work. Here it was, just an hour ago you were telling me about that sleeve gun being stolen, and now...”
“I’ll handle it, Jim,” Parker Dixon interrupted.
Abruptly, with no preliminaries, he shoved a bamboo tube across the desk to Terry Clane and asked:
“Is this your sleeve gun?”
And, with that question, the office suddenly became very silent. Terry sensed that the men were holding their breaths as they fastened their eyes upon him.
Slowly, Terry extended his hand to the sleeve gun.
Holding the sleeve gun in his hand, Terry strove to exclude his surroundings from his mind. Inspector Malloy, on one side, and District Attorney Dixon on the other, watching his every move, hoping that they might surprise some expression on his face which would incriminate him, were impediments to his concentration, and he strove to relegate them to his mental background while he focused his mind upon the problem of the sleeve gun.
He felt certain it was his sleeve gun.
Had it been found at the scene of the crime, they would have asked him to identify it on the occasion of his first visit to the office. Had it been discovered upon one of the suspects who had been taken to the office for questioning, they wouldn’t have been so keen upon getting an identification of the gun, unless it had perchance been found in the possession of Yat T’oy.
Giving this matter careful thought while he turned the sleeve gun over and over in his fingers as though looking for some mark of identification, Terry decided the probabilities were very much against such a major indiscretion on the part of Yat T’oy.
“Well,” the district attorney said, “I think you’ve looked at it from every angle, Mr. Clane.”
Terry raised his eyes and smiled. “I was hoping,” he said, “to find some mark of identification which I could remember, but I can’t do it.”
“You mean to say you can’t identify this gun!”
“Frankly, I can’t. I think it’s mine, but I wouldn’t want to say positively.”
“It looks like yours?”
“Yes.”
“And your best judgment is that it is yours?” Dixon asked, leaning slightly forward.
Terry shook his head. “Of course,” he said slowly, “you understand that these things are made by hand. Each one is individual. Observe, for instance, there’s a blemish in the wood here, a dark stain here, a little crack here, and the brass end is, as you’ll see, not perfectly round. These are all distinguishing marks which identify this gun. Yet I can’t remember them as having been on my gun.”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” Malloy said. “I was hoping we could turn it over to you. I’m sure it’s yours, and if you could just identify it, we could turn it over, and that’d be all there’d be to it.”