“That would mean, then, that the blueprints must have been hidden somewhere in the string of offices which are next to the windows that open on the street?” Leith asked.
“Yes.”
Leith said, indicating the photograph with a sweeping gesture of his hand, “Somewhere in the area which is covered in this photograph.”
“That’s right.”
Leith tapped a spot on the photograph with the point of a lead pencil. “Who’s this?”
She frowned and said, “Let me see that glass. It’s a little hazy.”
Leith gave her the magnifying glass.
“Oh, yes. That’s Tarver Slade. He’s a man who showed up four or five days ago to go over our books.”
“An auditor?” Leith asked.
“Oh, no. Just one of those state tax men who come in at intervals for a checkup. No one pays very much attention to them. They’re terrible pests, want you to stop everything to explain little simple points. If we took them seriously, we’d never get any work done. Nowadays we just give them an office and let them alone.”
Lester Leith said, “This man seems to be putting on an overcoat.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that if the weather’s at all cold, he wears his overcoat whenever he goes out. I guess he has rheumatism. At times he walks with a pronounced limp, then again he seems all right.”
Lester Leith took out a notebook and made a cryptic entry. “Just jotting down the names of these people,” he explained. “Now, can you give me a few more names from the photographs?”
Taking Leith’s pencil, Bernice Lamen checked off the various persons w hose faces appeared in the window. Only some four or five whose heads were bent down, looking at the sidewalk, she couldn’t recognize.
Lester Leith slipped the enlarged photographs back into his briefcase. “Thank you very much, Miss Lamen. I think I have a swell angle for writing my article, ‘How It Feels to Throw a Fur Cape Out of the Window.’ ”
“Mr. Leith,” Millie Foster said, “please be frank with us. What are you after?”
“Why, I’m after a human-interest story.”
“Surely you don’t expect us to believe that a person would go to all this expense to get material for a story he wasn’t even sure of selling?”
Leith smiled.
Bernice Lamen said, “It’s a story that would interest me. I think the photos arc swell.”
“Aren’t they!” Leith said enthusiastically. “They should be. They cost seventy-five dollars.”
Millicent said, “Good night — should I say, Santa Claus?”
Leith paused with his hand on the knob. “You might look in your stocking,” he said, and quietly left the apartment.
Lester Leith opened the door of the penthouse apartment and said, “Right this way, men.”
The startled undercover man looked up to see half a dozen men who were probably taxi drivers carrying a miscellaneous assortment which included a desk, a swivel chair, a typewriter, a filing cabinet, a wastebasket, and a cabinet for holding stationery.
“Scuttle,” Lester Leith said, “kindly move the chair out of that corner. All right, boys, just put the stuff in there — the desk right in the corner, the typewriter on the desk, the wastebasket to the side of the desk, and the swivel chair, of course, right by the desk.”
The valet stared at the strange procession which trooped its way across the thick carpets of the penthouse apartment. When they had gone, he moved about, dusting the furniture.
“Are you employing a secretary?” he asked.
Lester Leith regarded him reproachfully. “Scuttle, I am going to work.”
“To work?”
“Yes. I am going to write stories which will interpret the hidden significance of things. I am going to fight my way to the top.”
“Yes, sir. A novel perhaps, sir?”
“Not fiction, Scuttle. I am going to dramatize incidents. For instance, Scuttle, how would it feel to throw three hundred and fifty dollars out of a window?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”
“But you’d be interested in finding out, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sir — ahem — of course, if you say so, sir. Yes. sir.”
“That’s exactly it,” Leith said. “Today a woman threw a three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fur cape out of the window. How did it feel? What were her sensations? She has told me her innermost thoughts. I’ll write them out at fever heat, Scuttle. Words will pour from my fingertips onto the paper. The incident will live, will be perpetuated through posterity.”
Lester Leith whipped off his coat and handed it to the valet. “Hang it up, Scuttle.”
Leith jerked out the chair, sat down at the typewriter, and fed a piece of paper into the roller.
“May I ask why the delivery by taxicab?” the spy asked in a last desperate effort to get information.
Leith said, without looking up, “Don’t interrupt me. Scuttle. I’m concentrating — delivery by taxicab? — why, of course, I had to buy these things at a secondhand place in the cheaper district because the other stores were closed. Those little places don’t make deliveries. I had six taxicabs — quite a procession, Scuttle. Now let’s see, how would we start this? I’ll want it in the first person. Ah, yes! I have a title: ‘Throwing Money Away,’ by Winnie Gail as told to Lester Leith.”
Lester Leith laboriously tapped out the title and by-line on the typewriter, then pushed back his chair to stare at the blank sheet of paper. “Now, I’ll need a beginning. Let’s see — I tossed the fur cape out of the window. No, that doesn’t sound right. I want something more dramatic. Let’s see now — I tried on the fur cape the salesgirl handed me. It was a perfect fit. I teas pleased with the soft luxury of the glossy fur. And I pitched it out of the window.”
Lester Leith cocked his head on one side and studied the valet’s expression. “How does that sound, Scuttle?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Your face doesn’t show it, Scuttle. There’s a complete lack of enthusiasm.”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll permit me to say so, it sounds like the devil, sir.”
“Yes,” Lester Leith admitted, “it should be done more subtly.”
He pushed back his chair, shoved his thumbs through the armholes of his vest, stared at the keyboard of the typewriter for several minutes, then got up and started pacing the floor. “Scuttle, how do writers get their inspiration?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“The thing sounded so easy when I thought about it in general terms, but getting it down specifically... I simply can’t say, I threw it out of the window. Yet I don’t know what else to say Well, Scuttle, I’ll make a start. It seems to me I’ve read somewhere that successful authors don’t simply sit down and dash off a story, but have to labor over it, making many revisions, choosing their words with the greatest of care.”
“Yes. sir.”
“And,” Lester Leith went on, “I’ll try to get some new angle.”
Leith sat down at the typewriter once more and doggedly began tapping out the words. The spy hovered obsequiously in the background.
“You needn’t wait up, Scuttle. I’ll probably be all hours.”
“Can’t I get you something, some Scotch and soda or—”
“No, Scuttle, I’m working.”
“Very good, sir. If you don’t mind. I thought I’d step out for a moment for a breath of air.”
“Quite all right, Scuttle. Go ahead,” Leith said, without looking up from the typewriter.
The spy walked down to the corner drugstore, called police headquarters, and got Sergeant Ackley on the line.
“Beaver,” Ackley demanded, “what was the meaning of that procession of taxicabs driving up to the place?”