Sergeant Vickers said softly, “You don’t seem very surprised?”
“I knew he was dead,” Quade replied evenly. “He fell against me and I got a whiff of the hydrocyanic acid.”
Vickers pounced on that. “How do you know it was hydrocyanic acid?”
“Because I’m a human encyclopedia. I know everything. Hydrocyanic has an odor very similar to bitter almonds. It is made by adding sodium gradually to sulphuric acid.”
Vickers’ lips parted slightly. “What the — You know a lot about poisons? You must have had a damn good reason—”
“Sure. I’ve got good reasons for knowing a lot of things. For example, that a proteus is a blind, water-breathing, tailed amphibian, inhabiting the limestone caves to the east of the Adriatic. You still refuse to believe that I’m what I told you, a human encyclopedia? Now, look, you’re sniffing around the wrong telephone pole. And while you’re at it, the real culprit has beat it. The one you want is the chap who changed the beer glasses.”
“Whoa! What’re you getting at?”
“Someone changed glasses with Billy Bond. I wasn’t paying too much attention to it at the time, because Bond was getting into an argument with the piano player and, anyway, I wasn’t attaching any significance to a little thing like that — then. After Bond was dead, the fellow was gone.”
“Yes?” said Sergeant Vickers, through bared teeth. “And just what did this beer-swapping gent look like?”
“He had a scar on his chin.”
“A scar, eh? Go on.” There was a jeering note in the sergeant’s voice.
“The scar was about the size of a dime. Rather odd design. It looked almost like a figure nine. That is the top part of it was almost a circle. And the circle had a tail—”
“Soup Spooner!” exclaimed Vickers.
“Eh?”
“Fella I know has a scar something like that. Was this fella tall or short?”
“About five feet, thin and he weighed around one sixty. There was something else that was peculiar about him. His eyes were kind of — vacant.”
Sergeant Vickers inhaled softly. “He looked a little goofy? That’s Soup Spooner. Hold it a minute.” He stepped briskly to the bar and crooked his finger at the bartender. “Paddy, was Soup Spooner in here?”
Paddy’s forehead washboarded. “Soup Spooner? Why, I don’t think….”
“Cut that,” Sergeant Vickers snarled. “You haven’t had this dump all these years without knowing Soup. The description he,” jabbing a finger at Quade, “gave, fits Soup. Now, was he here?”
Paddy still looked worried. “Well, Sergeant, as you can see, there were quite a few people here and I was pretty busy and—”
Sergeant Vickers cut him off, savagely. “Was Soup anywhere near this Bond fellow at the bar?”
The bartender shook his head. “To tell you the truth, Sergeant, I hardly ever look at the faces of customers.”
Vickers swore and turned back to Quade. “All right, it was Soup Spooner. It fits in with the rest of it. Soup knows about poisons and things.”
“He mixes a neat Mickey Finn?”
Vickers grunted. “He’s a chemist who went bad. He got his name from making soup for petermen. That’s how he got goofy, too. A batch of nitroglycerine exploded on him. Too bad. The guy was a genius with chemicals. If he’d gone straight you’d be reading about him in those encyclopedias of yours.”
“Well,” said Quade, “if you know him, I imagine you’ll have no trouble picking him up?”
“Naw. We’ve got his record down at Headquarters. We can round him up inside of two hours. Not that it’ll do us any good. Soup knows people. Lawyers and politicians. We can put him on the scene — and it doesn’t mean a thing.” He laughed shortly. “For that matter, we’ll have a helluva time proving murder anyway. This song writer might have got tired of it all, you know. Only I don’t think so. Not if there was poison in his beer and Soup was in the same building. But try and convince a jury of that.”
“Tough,” Quade sympathized. “O.K., then, if my pal and me scram?”
Vickers whipped out a notebook. “Where do you live?”
“Right here, at the Midtown. Room 707. One week’s rent paid in advance.”
“Well, stick around. You’ll be wanted for the inquest in a couple of days. I’ll let you know.”
Oliver Quade, followed by Charlie Boston, walked smartly out of the cocktail lounge. There was a worried look on Charlie’s face, but he said nothing until they had closed the door of their room. Then he exploded.
“Dammit, Ollie! Can’t we go anywhere without getting mixed up in trouble?”
“No trouble, Charlie. A little misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“All, hell!” Charlie said bitterly. “You think I didn’t see the look in your eyes? You’re going to play cop again and I’m going to get slapped around and we’re both going to wind up on the sidewalk, without our luggage and not a dime in our pockets. Just when we’re ahead of the game, for the first time in months!”
“Hush, Charlie!” Quade chided. “None of that’s going to happen. Not any more. I’m through with it. Billy Bond was a perfect stranger to me. I’m not interested. Only a little curious.”
Charlie Boston groaned. “Curious! Here we go again!”
Quade grinned crookedly. “What was he so sore about? You’d think if he’d just had a song published, he’d be happy about it. And poison in beer. Wow! That’s a new one. Ummm…”
He stepped between the twin beds and scooped up the telephone. “Give me Mr. Billy Bond’s room, please. Eight twelve, isn’t it?”
“No, nine one four. I’ll ring him.” She did. There was no response, of course. Quade said then: “Never mind. But look, would you have a bellboy bring me up a copy of The Showman, from the newsstand downstairs?”
As he hung up the receiver, Charlie Boston flung himself down on a bed and sulked. Quade chuckled. “What’s good in the fourth at Rockingham, tomorrow?”
Charlie Boston’s head jerked up. “The fourth. Daisy Q… Aw, hell!” He let his head fall back to the pillow.
“So I have to give up what little fun I get out of life to play stooge to your pet crime waves!”
“Right!” said Quade.
A few moments later there was a knock at the door and Oliver Quade let in a bellboy. He took the copy of The Showman and exhibited a quarter and a five dollar bill.
The bellboy, who was thirty-five and partially bald, riveted his eyes on the bill.
Quade said, “What would you do for this?”
“No,” said the bellboy. “I wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Very well. Bring me the key to Room 914 and the bill’s yours.”
“It’s a lie!” the bellboy cried. “I didn’t rob that room last week. You can’t pin it on me!”
Quade chuckled. “You dope, I’m not a cop. I’m a book salesman. I want to take a look into Room 914. I’m not going to take anything out of it, and I’m not trying to frame you for the robbery you didn’t commit last week. You can stand outside the door while I’m inside.”
“Gimme the fin,” said the bellboy. “If somebody walks by your room in a couple of minutes and accidentally drops a key, it wasn’t me, because I’m down in the basement chinning with the engineer.”
The bellboy departed with the bill and Quade shook his head in admiration. A couple of minutes later, he opened the door of his room and sure enough, there lay a key, with a tag on it which was the number 914.
“Coming along, Charlie?” Quade asked.
Charlie Boston got up from the bed. “If you’re set on going to jail, I might as well go along, so I can say, ‘I told you so.’”
They climbed the stairs to the ninth floor, and a moment later slipped into Room 914. It was a mere cubbyhole of a room, one of the nine-dollar-a-week affairs.