The Cracker continued to study me.
“You’re a funny detective,” he drawled. “You act more like a high-class crook.”
I didn’t know what he had in mind, but if he had thought that statement would have got a rise out of me, he had another guess coming. I yawned and reached for a cigarette.
“Maybe,” I said. “My methods are my own.”
He continued to watch me. I wondered then if the man had more brains than I’d give him credit for. Did he suspect that I was The Phantom Crook? That I wasn’t a detective at all, but Ed Jenkins, himself?
I lit the cigarette and held the match for a second or two, so that he could see my hand was steady.
“And there was a mysterious girl mixed up in it,” he said.
“Yeah,” I told him. “But you know who pulled the job, and so do I.”
As a matter of fact, it was on account of that mysterious girl that I was mixed up in my present surroundings. Norma Gay had been the queen of the diamond thieves. She’d reformed and started to go straight. But a couple of men had framed her, had her present when what was intended to be a gem robbery was pulled. But Simpson had become impulsive, his wits muddled perhaps by a few too many highballs, and the robbery rap had become a murder case, a frying job.
I’d been accused for a while, then Norma Gay had helped me clear my name. But, until the men who had actually pulled the job had been uncovered, Norma Gay could be brought into it at any time.
I don’t think Norma had figured the play out. But I had seen it from the minute I won into the clear. The two crooks knew who Norma was. They had only to spill the information to the police, and Norma would be in bad on account of her record. And the chorus girl hadn’t given Norma any alibi.
So I’d started out to solve the case, on the quiet, and here I was, in company with The Cracker, in the apartment of a girl who was supposed to be the moll of the bird that had done the killing, and the moll was supposed to have the ring and bracelet that had been taken from Mrs. Wright.
The Cracker had turned stool pigeon. He figured me for a private dick, or I thought he had. Now he was talking funny. I moved over towards him, carelessly, but I kept the balls of my feet on the floor and my weight balanced over them. If I had to, I could slam home a right that would put The Cracker out of the way for a while and I didn’t like the way things were going.
The Cracker had put his finger on the weak spot. If I’d been a detective I’d have gone after the evidence in another way. As it was, it was a case of a crook chasing a crook. The police had pinned everything on me they couldn’t explain any other way. I was a convenient goat—and I was too damned weary of the perpetual fight to try and keep my name clear.
Let ’em go ahead and pin things on me, and then let them try to catch me. What the hell did I care? I’d earned the nickname of “The Phantom Crook” because I’d always been able to slip through the fingers of the police, and I was willing to keep right on slipping.
It gave life a zest anyway, my wits against those of the police. And, if they caught me, they were welcome to me.
The Cracker sucked in his under lip and gnawed on it in an ecstasy of nervousness. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
“Well,” I said, “if it’s not here, it may be somewhere else. Let’s take a look in the kitchen.”
He snorted.
“That baby never used the kitchen!” he said. “This apartment was a gift to her. It’s just so much velvet. She sleeps here and that’s about all.”
“Yeah,” I told him, not really paying too much attention to what he had to say, “it’s pretty soft for Mabel Morgan.”
“I’ll say,” said The Cracker.
He moved out towards the living-room again, stared at the davenport.
I followed his eyes and shrugged my shoulder. The bedroom had been a blank. Maybe I wasn’t as shrewd at doping out hiding places as I thought I’d been.
I went to the kitchen.
The Cracker was right. It hadn’t been used. Not by the same baby who had littered up the bedroom, at any rate. Here again everything was slick and clean, spick and span.
“Sugar sacks and flour sacks are always nice hiding places,” I told The Cracker.
There was a little uncurtained window up over the sink.
I didn’t want to switch on the light with no cover over that window—not until I saw whether or not somebody’s bedroom was where I could be seen prowling about the kitchen.
So I walked towards the back door, found the key in the lock, twisted it, and looked out on a little balcony that ran down to a court.
It was a sort of a service entrance for the rambling apartment building. The place was a network of wooden stairs and landings. There was a moon, and that, coupled with the reflections of light from a globe that burned in the alleyway, showed the deserted court with its twisting staircases.
There wasn’t any bedroom that had a view of the kitchen window. There was the window of another kitchen opposite, but it was after one o’clock. People wouldn’t ordinarily be in kitchens at that time, and I wanted light, so I decided to take a chance.
I went back into the kitchen, switched on the light and then looked into the living-room.
The Cracker was standing over by the davenport, running his fingers around the cracks in the upholstery.
I grinned at him.
“Thought you covered it the first time.”
“No,” he said. “I only got half way around, and you was so sure it wasn’t here, that I gave in to you. I still figure it’s a good place.”
I watched him while he ran his hand around, saw the crestfallen expression on his face as he drew a blank, and laughed at him.
“Come on,” I said, “we’ll try the kitchen.”
I looked up at the window over the sink.
It was a square affair, and, on either side of the frame were the little brass fasteners for a roller shade. But the shade wasn’t there. There wasn’t even any lace curtain there. That window was just as bare and blank as though the kitchen was part of a vacant, unfurnished apartment.
I didn’t like it, but life is always a question of taking chances. The man that doesn’t take chances simply doesn’t live, that’s all. If he acts so blamed cautiously that he doesn’t take the risk, he just doesn’t act at all—and life will get him in the end, anyway, so what’s the difference?
I found the flour bin, and rolled up my sleeves and started groping around.
The Cracker was over in the cupboard on the other side, moving cans around.
The bin was deep. I had to lean way over and grope. I made a good job of it and drew a blank.
“Any luck?” I asked The Cracker.
“No luck,” he said. His surliness had left him. Perhaps I’d convinced him, after all, that my methods weren’t so irregular.
I found the next bin loaded with potatoes. It wasn’t much of a lead, but I worked through them. I could hear The Cracker, behind my back, working through the cans of baking powder and spices. I finished with the potatoes, took a few steps, and stopped in my tracks.
The kitchen was covered with linoleum, and my feet made a peculiar, rasping sound against the linoleum.
The Cracker looked up at me, his face stamped with alarm.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Have you found the sugar?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I grinned.
“Then that’s our lead. Somebody’s been into the sugar recently—after the kitchen was swept out, and the place is so neat that that means after the last meal was cooked here. I just stepped on a crystal of sugar.”
“Gee!” he said, and there was awe in his voice. “You sure called the turn.”