“Chust like Boyd perhaps? A liddle machine dot goes off ven he schvitches on der lights? Dot iss a good, simple, reliable system mit no bugs in it. Or do you vant dis vun to be different?”
“I’ve got a crazy idea — I’d like to pull the trigger on this myself. Would it be possible to rig something that could be fired by radio, for instance? So I could wait till I got him on the phone and tell him what I was doing, and then press a button and even hear it go off.”
The Engineer’s torpid face lighted up.
“You should’ve been a clairvoyant, Nat. You ask for der very latest idea I been working on. Only a few days ago a feller comes in my shop mit a model airplane for me to repair, und it has radio controls so he can fly it he says two miles avay. Now you know how I’m alvays looking for new ideas to improve my service, so of course I see at vunce how dis could be exactly vot I’d need some day to schtart a fire or set off a special bomb, und naturally I find out vhere he gets it und I put it in schtock. Dis vill be so interesting I vould almost do it for nodding — only dot vould be unprofessional,” he added hastily.
“How long will it take you to get it working?” Grendel asked. “This can’t wait for weeks while you’re experimenting.”
“Der experimenting iss already done. I vould not be talking about it if I hadn’t proved I could make it vork. Der bomb I can haf ready tomorrow. Vhere iss Templar living?”
“At the Algonquin.”
Uberlasch frowned.
“To plant der bomb may not be easy. It iss a schmall hotel vhere everybody iss known und everybody iss noticed. Und I suppose Templar iss no fool, und he vill be looking out for somebody trying to take care of him like Boyd.”
“Up to a point, yes. But he’s so damned sure of himself that he doesn’t seriously believe it could happen to him. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced that he thinks he can bluff me out of making anything happen to him because it’s too soon after what happened to Boyd. So I’m betting it’ll be easier than you expect.”
“I alvays giff you top marks for psychology, Nat. Maybe you got der answer right dere.” The Engineer scratched thoughtfully at his benevolent walrus whiskers. “Now perhaps ve cash in on his blind schpot like dis...”
In a room only a few floors less lofty in an adjacent hotel, where he had registered under a new and utterly implausible name, Simon Templar presently took off the earphones and switched off the sensitive radio receiver which had brought him every word of the conversation.
Nat Grendel also had his blind spot. Like any other man involved in sometimes highly questionable stratagems, he was acutely sensitive to the risk that someone might try to install an eavesdropping device in his apartment, and his loyal and conscientious servant had standing orders which would have made it virtually impossible for anyone to gain admission and be left alone on any pretext even for a moment. But it had not occurred to Grendel, who did not have the Engineer’s turn of mind, that a Chinese ornament credibly sent to him by a trustful member of his union could have sealed into it a microphone and miniature radio transmitter capable of broadcasting for a more than sufficient two hundred yards.
Grendel placed the lion-dog temporarily on top of the cabinet which the Saint had vandalized and wrote a letter to Buffalo which he thought neatly solved his dilemma.
“I’m not an expert valuer,” he wrote, “but I do know that antique dealers expect to make a profit. Let me see if I can help you to share in it. I’m sending you herewith $100 — all that the dealer would have given you — to tide you over your immediate emergency. Send me the other figure, and let me get an offer for the pair. Perhaps I can get a slightly better bid than you could, from some dealer who owes me a favor, and if so I’ll send you the difference.”
In this way he would have both pieces in his possession, there would be no danger of the owner getting an embarrassingly different valuation, and in a short while an additional check for perhaps fifteen dollars would secure him an even more grateful and devoted disciple.
For the protective function performed by Grendel’s house-boy, Simon Templar was able to rely to a large extent on the voluntary devotion of a large part of the Algonquin staff, some of whom had known him for so many years that they took an almost proprietary interest in his welfare. When he returned to the hotel the following afternoon from typing and handing in his column at the newspaper syndicate office, a bellboy stepped into the elevator with him, exchanged a polite greeting and some innocuous comments on the weather, got out at the same floor, and trailed him unobtrusively to his suite.
“There was a man here while you were out, sir, supposed to be from the telephone company,” he said when they were alone. “I got the job of letting him in with the passkey and staying here while he worked, you know, like the hotel always has somebody do. It was some complaint about the phone not always ringing, he said. He fiddled about a bit and fastened something on the wire, under the bed, but he said that was only temporary and he’d take it away when he brought a new bell unit. I thought you’d like to know, sir.”
The bellhop showed him the attachment on the wire, and Simon removed it and examined it captiously. It was a small but very efficient wire recorder, as he pointed out.
“You might as well take it home and have some fun with it,” he said. “Or any shop that deals in second-hand recorders should pay a fairly good price for it. If that bogus telephone man comes back and finds it’s gone, I promise you he won’t even let out a peep.”
The bellboy grinned.
“Thank you, Mr Templar. And I hope nobody ever gets the drop on you.”
“Keep your fingers crossed for me,” said the Saint piously, “and your eyes open.”
As soon as his self-appointed sentinel had gone he made a further search and did not take long to find the second memento left by his visitor. This was a plastic box about the size of a couple of cigarette packages, and it was fastened to the underside of the telephone table with a gooey adhesive. Obviously it had been prepared so that all the operator had to do was distract the bellhop’s attention for an instant, strip off a protective covering, and press the sticky side of the box up against the wood, where it would cling without any other fastening.
It was not hard to detach, but he handled it very gingerly, knowing what it contained.
He could look back on many minutes of agonizing suspense in the course of his life, but none that were more icily nerve-racking than those that he spent before he was sure that he had rendered the Engineer’s newest masterpiece harmless.
Even after that he felt tense as he went back downstairs with a small valise which he had already packed, and told the desk clerk that he would be away overnight, and made an especial point of asking for the switchboard to be notified to give that message to any telephone callers. Not until his taxi had pulled away from the door, cutting him off from any chance of being prematurely contacted by Grendel, did he draw a completely relaxed breath.
He did not, however, go out of town, but before they had reached Fifth Avenue he changed the directions which the doorman had relayed to the driver, from the Air Terminal to the other hotel where he had set up his listening post, and it was from there that he called Fernack the next day and invited the detective to meet him for a drink at the Algonquin at five-thirty that evening.
“What’s the idea now?” Fernack asked suspiciously. “Are you thinking you can con me into giving you the same leads I gave Boyd, so you can keep up your newspaper career?”
“Don’t be late,” said the Saint. “And have a police car waiting for you outside — you may need it.”