Acting on an anonymous tip police late last night picked up Louis C. (Lou) Gandesi, proprietor of a well-known Spring Street tavern, and quizzed him intensively concerning the recent wave of dinnerparty hold-ups in an exclusive western section of this city, hold-ups during which, it is alleged, more than two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of valuable jewels have been torn at gun’s point from women guests in fashionable homes. Gandesi was released at a late hour and refused to make any statement to reporters. «I never kibitz the cops,» he said modestly. Captain William Norgaard, of the General Robbery Detail, announced himself as satisfied that Gandesi had no connection with the robberies, and that the tip was merely an act of personal spite.
I folded the paper and threw it on the bed.
«You win, ho,» Henry said, and handed me the bottle. I took a long drink and returned it to him. «Now what? Brace this Gandesi and take him through the hoops?»
«He may be a dangerous man, Henry. Do you think we are equal to it?»
Henry snorted contemptuously. «Yah, a Spring Street punk. Some fat slob with a phony ruby on his mitt. Lead me to him. We’ll turn the slob inside out and drain his liver. But we’re just about fresh out of liquor. All we got is maybe a pint.» He examined the bottle against the light.
«We have had enough for the moment, Henry.»
«We ain’t drunk, are we? I only had seven drinks since I got here, maybe nine.»
«Certainly we are not drunk, Henry, but you take very large drinks, and we have a difficult evening before us. I think we should now get shaved and dressed, and I further think that we should wear dinner clothes. I have an extra suit which will fit you admirably, as we are almost exactly the same size. It is certainly a remarkable omen that two such large men should be associated in the same enterprise. Evening clothes impress these low characters, Henry.»
«Swell,» Henry said. «They’ll think we’re mugs workin’ for some big shot. This Gandesi will be scared enough to swallow his necktie.»
We decided to do as I had suggested and I laid out clothes for Henry, and while he was bathing and shaving I telephoned to Ellen Macintosh.
«Oh, Walter, I am so glad you called up,» she cried. «Have you found anything?»
«Not yet, darling,» I said. «But we have an idea. Henry and I are just about to put it into execution.»
«Henry, Walter? Henry who?»
«Why, Henry Eichelberger, of course, darling. Have you forgotten him so soon? Henry and I are warm friends and we —»
She interrupted me coldly. «Are you drinking, Walter?» she demanded in a very distant voice.
«Certainly not, darling. Henry is a teetotaler.»
She sniffed sharply. I could hear the sound distinctly over the telephone. «But didn’t Henry take the pearls?» she asked, after quite a long pause.
«Henry, angel? Of course not. Henry left because he was in love with you.»
«Oh, Walter. That ape? I’m sure you’re drinking terribly. I don’t ever want to speak to you again. Goodbye.» And she hung the phone up very sharply so that a painful sensation made itself felt in my ear.
I sat down in a chair with a bottle of Old Plantation in my hand wondering what I had said that could be construed as offensive or indiscreet. As I was unable to think of anything, I consoled myself with the bottle until Henry came out of the bathroom looking extremely personable in one of my pleated shirts and a wing collar and black bow tie.
It was dark when we left the apartment and I, at least, was full of hope and confidence, although a little depressed by the way Ellen Macintosh had spoken to me over the telephone.
FOUR
Mr. Gandesi’s establishment was not difficult to find, inasmuch as the first taxicab driver Henry yelled at on Spring Street directed us to it. It was called the Blue Lagoon and its interior was bathed in an unpleasant blue light. Henry and I entered it steadily, since we had consumed a partly solid meal at Mandy’s Caribbean Grotto before starting out to find Mr. Gandesi. Henry looked almost handsome in my second-best dinner suit, with a fringed white scarf hanging over his shoulder, a lightweight black felt hat on the back of his head (which was only a little larger than mine), and a bottle of whiskey in each of the side pockets of the summer overcoat he was wearing.
The bar of the Blue Lagoon was crowded, but Henry and I went on back to the small dim dining room behind it. A man in a dirty dinner suit came up to us and Henry asked him for Gandesi, and he pointed out a fat man who sat alone at a small table in the far corner of the room. We went that way.
The man sat with a small glass of red wine in front of him and slowly twisted a large green stone on his finger. He did not look up. There were no other chairs at the table, so Henry leaned on it with both elbows.
«You Gandesi?» he said.
The man did not look up even then. He moved his thick black eyebrows together and said in an absent voice: «Si. Yes.»
«We got to talk to you in private,» Henry told him. «Where we won’t be disturbed.»
Gandesi looked up now and there was extreme boredom in his flat black almond-shaped eyes. «So?» he asked and shrugged. «Eet ees about what?»
«About some pearls,» Henry said. «Forty-nine on the string, matched and pink.»
«You sell — or you buy?» Gandesi inquired and his chin began to shake up and down as if with amusement.
«Buy,» Henry said.
The man at the table crooked his finger quietly and a very large waiter appeared at his side. «Ees dronk,» he said lifelessly. «Put dees men out.»
The waiter took hold of Henry’s shoulder. Henry reached up carelessly and took hold of the waiter’s hand and twisted it. The waiter’s face in that bluish light turned some color I could not describe, but which was not at all healthy. He let out a low moan. Henry dropped the hand and said to me: «Put a C-note on the table.»
I took my wallet out and extracted from it one of the two hundred-dollar bills I had taken the precaution to obtain from the cashier at the Chateau Moraine. Gandesi stared at the bill and made a gesture to the large waiter, who went away rubbing his hand and holding it tight against his chest.
«What for?» Gandesi asked.
«Five minutes of your time alone.»
«Ees very fonny. O.K., I bite.» Gandesi took the bill and folded it neatly and put it in his vest pocket. Then he put both hands on the table and pushed himself heavily to his feet. He started to waddle away without looking at us.
Henry and I followed him among the crowded tables to the far side of the dining room and through a door in the wainscoting and then down a narrow dim hallway. At the end of this Gandesi opened a door into a lighted room and stood holding it for us, with a grave smile on his olive face. I went in first.
As Henry passed in front of Gandesi into the room the latter, with surprising agility, took a small shiny black leather club from his clothes and hit Henry on the head with it very hard. Henry sprawled forward on his hands and knees. Gandesi shut the door of the room very quickly for a man of his build and leaned against it with the small club in his left hand. Now, very suddenly, in his right hand appeared a short but heavy black revolver.
«Ees very fonny,» he said politely, and chuckled to himself.
Exactly what happened then I did not see clearly. Henry was at one instant on his hands and knees with his back to Gandesi. In the next, or possibly even in the same instant, something swirled like a big fish in water and Gandesi grunted. I then saw that Henry’s hard blond head was buried in Gandesi’s stomach and that Henry’s large hands held both of Gandesi’s hairy wrists. Then Henry straightened his body to its full height and Gandesi was high up in the air balanced on top of Henry’s head, his mouth strained wide open and his face a dark purple color. Then Henry shook himself, as it seemed, quite lightly, and Gandesi landed on his back on the floor with a terrible thud and lay gasping. Then a key turned in the door and Henry stood with his back to it, holding both the club and the revolver in his left hand, and solicitously feeling the pockets which contained our supply of whiskey. All this happened with such rapidity that I leaned against the side wall and felt a little sick at my stomach.