Quade went straight to the cheap chest of drawers. Scattered among two or three shirts and some underwear were several letters, addressed to William Bond, Midtown Hotel, New York City.
Quade looked at the postmarks and found one dated only a few days previous. He slipped out the contents, a single sheet of notepaper, at the top of which was printed, apparently with a rubber stamp.
Bond’s Meat Market
Quality Meats and Sausages
Waverly, Iowa
The letter was in a scrawling hand and written in pencil. It read:
Dear Son:
Your year is up. Since your heart is so set on becoming a song writer, your mother wants I should let you stay another six months, but I do not see how I can afford it. Business is not very good in the shop and since I’ve had to hire a boy to take your place, in addition to sending you the $15.00 every week, we have been pinched ourselves.
If you insist on staying in New York I cannot continue to send you the money. You will have to support yourself. I am sorry. I think it would be better if you came home and went to work in the meat market and forgot all about that song writing.
Your father,
Joseph Bond.
Quade refolded the pathetic little note and put it back in the envelope. “Poor guy,” he said soberly.
“What’s wrong with the meat business?” demanded Charlie Boston, remembering meals he had missed.
“I didn’t say anything about the butcher shop. I said it was tough about Billy. He finally clicked, just when his time was up and — bingo!”
“Bingo to you,” said a calm voice at the door.
Quade whirled. He had not heard the door open. Nor did he hear it close, now, as the man who had come into the room pushed it softly shut.
He was a rather slender man, slightly above medium height, and had a scar on his chin that looked very much like a figure 9. His eyes were slightly bulging — and vacant.
A draft of wind seemed to fan Quade’s spine. He said, “Hello, Soup.”
The intruder’s dull eyes fixed themselves on Quade’s face. “How d’you know my name?”
“Somebody mentioned it in the cocktail lounge downstairs, a while ago.”
Soup Spooner’s thin lips curled. “Maybe you’re the guy who mentioned it… Hold it, lug!”
The last was an admonition to Charlie Boston who had started to edge forward. Soup’s right hand came carelessly out of his coat pocket and there was a .32 caliber automatic in it.
“What the hell you snoopin’ in here for?” he demanded.
“Why, I was just — uh, trying to get this fellow’s home address. Notify his folks, you know?”
“Hand them over — the letters. Maybe I’ll notify the family myself. How about your families?”
“Hey!” exclaimed Charlie Boston, in alarm.
“Ha-ha,” Quade laughed mirthlessly. “I guess we better be going — minding our own business.”
He took a tentative step forward. Soup Spooner made no objections and Quade tried another step.
Then the door was flung violently open and Sergeant Vickers of the Homicide Squad stepped into the room. “What the hell?” he cried. “Soup, drop that rod!”
Soup reversed his automatic and held it by the muzzle. “I got a permit, Vickers.”
“Whoever gave you a permit?” Vickers demanded.
Soup shrugged. “Man I used to work for arranged it. The Swede.”
“The Swede, huh? Well, he’s pushing up daisies these days. And I’m going to see that your little permit is revoked, Soup. What’re you doing in here?” Vickers scowled at Quade. “And you, mister?”
“Believe it or not,” said Quade, “I was waiting for a stagecoach.”
“I was lookin’ for a pal,” Soup offered, “and I saw these guys friskin’ this room. That’s why I pulled the rod on them.”
“Yeah? Well, who’s this friend of yours?”
“Fella named Smith. Tom Smith.”
“What’s his room number?”
“Nine two seven.”
Vickers turned and stabbed a thumb at a detective standing by the door. “Step over and ask the party in room 927 if his name is Smith.”
Quade said, “This is the man who was in the cocktail lounge. I saw him coming up on the elevator and recognizing him, followed. Isn’t that so, Charlie?”
“Yeah, sure,” agreed Charlie Boston. “He’s the bird who’s doing the lying.”
“And what,” Vickers asked, pointedly, “are you doing with those letters?”
Quade said quickly, “They were lying on the bed here. I just picked them up.”
“You lie like hell!” said Soup Spooner.
The detective who had gone to Room 927 returned. “It’s a woman. Her name is Hoffnagel.”
Vickers bared his teeth. “Come again, Spooner.”
Soup blinked. “I musta made a mistake. This is the Keenan Hotel, isn’t it?”
“You know damn well it’s the Midwest!”
Soup passed a hand before his eyes, and when he removed it, his expression was more vacant than ever. “I–I get mixed up sometimes. Maybe it was Bill Jones I was going to see. Or Joe Coffee.”
“Or Captain Hitchcock at the station,” Vickers snapped. “Come along, Soup.”
He relieved Soup of the automatic and shoved him toward the door. Then he turned to Quade and Boston. “And you birds, I’m putting a watch on this room. Scram!”
Quade and Boston scrammed. Back to their own room where Quade attacked the copy of The Showman the bellboy had bought for him. After a few minutes intensive search, he exclaimed: “Here it is, Charlie. Listen: ‘Billy Bond’s song, Cottage by the Shore, has been accepted for publication, by the Murdock Publishing Company.’”
“So?” Charlie Boston asked. “We knew he had a song accepted. He was hollering it loud enough downstairs.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Quade. “But didn’t you notice something funny about his room?”
“There wasn’t anything wrong about it.”
Quade said wearily, “He was a song writer. He’s been trying to sell songs for a whole year. His father’s letter said so. But did you see one single song sheet around his room.”
Boston screwed up his face. “Maybe he’d just cleaned out his room.”
“Ah, hell! No song writer would ever chuck away his rejected songs. Not all of them. I knew a song writer in Dayton, Ohio, once whose whole house was full of manuscripts. They had them on the piano and in the kitchen. Even in the bathroom.”
“What’re you trying to make out, Ollie?”
“That someone had beat us to this Billy’s room. And cleaned it out.”
“They didn’t clean out his personal letters. You’d think—”
“No, I wouldn’t. There wasn’t any sense in trying to conceal his identity, because the hotel people would know him, anyway. But the songs….”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He scooped up the telephone directory and, finding a number, asked the operator to get it for him. A moment later he had the offices of The Showman.
“Say,” he said, “in this week’s department, ‘Words and Music’, you got a piece about Billy Bond getting a song accepted by the Murdock Publishing Company.”
A man’s voice said, wearily, “Who’s this, Murdock again?”
“No. I — uh, I’m speaking for Oliver Quade’s Band. The boss thought he might — well, plug the song and I’m just calling—”
“No soap,” said the representative of The Showman. “The item was in error. The Murdock Company denies it.”
“Yeah? Well, where’d you get the dope?”
“From Billy Bond himself. We were victimized. It happens every week. Somebody wants some free advertising and sends us some baloney. We can’t check on everything that comes in.”