“We got the goods on him right enough,” said Joe.
“Open the trunk anyway,” said Sergeant Ackley.
“Guy’s gone for the keys,” said Joe.
There was a period of shuffling silence. Someone scraped a match and lit a cigarette. Then someone coughed.
“Say, where is that guy?” asked someone.
Lester Leith moaned, twisted.
“Don’t let him get away,” he pleaded in a groaning whisper. “I tried to get you, Sergeant...”
Sergeant Ackley suddenly exploded into action.
“Go grab that bird, Joe! Bill, get that trunk open. This looks like a job that’s been bungled. That guy in 403... Get started!”
There came a scurrying motion, swift voices, shouted comments. Then a report was called down the hallway. “Went down the stairs. Thought you sent him, Joe. He said you did!”
Profanity spouted from Sergeant Ackley’s lips.
“Get that guy! He’s the murderer and the gem thief. Hurry up. Throw out the dragnet. Give the signal. Close the block!”
And he ran to the window, flung it open, raised a police whistle to his lips, blew a shrill blast.
Lester Leith sat up.
For a man who had been knocked out, he seemed to be in serene possession of his senses.
“I warned you, Sergeant,” he said. “Will someone please give me a cigarette?”
Sergeant Ackley flung back from the window, glowered at the handcuffed figure on the floor.
“Hell!” he said.
Lester Leith talked fluently.
“We’ve had our differences, Sergeant, but I thought I could patch them up by putting a feather in your cap. I figured the murdered man’s trunk had held the gems, but that the trunk had proven obstinate. The murderer, however, would never have carried the whole trunk with him unless something had happened to make that the only course possible.
“He’d killed the gem thief and was opening the trunk when something happened to alarm him. That something must have been the arrival of the officers. That meant the murderer was trapped in the room when the officers were demanding an entrance.
“He’d previously forced the window over the fire escape to make it seem like an outside job. But he couldn’t have escaped through that window because it’s obvious that he must have taken the trunk with him.
“Therefore there was only one escape he had — through the communicating room and into his own room. If my theory was correct, the murderer had been at work on the trunk when the officers banged on the door. He didn’t want to leave his loot, so he shouldered the trunk, slipped into 405 and through it into his own room and locked the door.
“Then he had to do something with the trunk. He realized there’d probably be a search for it. So he hid it in the most obvious place in the world — remember ‘The Purloined Letter’ by Poe? He simply put the stolen trunk, which was small, inside his own trunk which was large!
“That meant he had to wait for a later time to tackle the secret combination. It also meant that he had to be an old resident of the hotel, both for the purpose of avoiding suspicion, as well as to have been sufficiently familiar with the hotel to know that the rooms he wanted for his victim, which would adjoin his room, would have an opening on the fire escape—”
Lester Leith was interrupted by a man bursting into the room.
“There’s a secret hiding place in 403 back of a wall fixture. A guy jerked it out by the roots, and...”
And that man, in turn, was interrupted by the rattle of gunfire from the street.
There were more than a dozen revolver shots, exploding in rapid succession. Then the wail of a siren, the sound of shouts, a police whistle blowing frantically.
“They’ve got him!” exclaimed Joe.
The men rushed toward the window.
“Go see what happened, Joe!” rasped Sergeant Ackley.
Men piled out of the room.
Left behind, Sergeant Ackley glowered at the handcuffed figure.
“I think I’ve got you this time!” he said.
Lester Leith sighed.
“I did so want to give you an olive branch by letting you take the credit for capturing the murderer. And then you had to spoil it all. And one of your men struck me, while I was handcuffed! An unprovoked, brutal police assault.”
Sergeant Ackley grinned.
“Tell it to the jury,” he said.
Lester Leith shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I shall tell it to the newspapers!”
Sergeant Ackley began to look worried.
He surveyed the room with suspicious eyes, strode to the covered bird cage, ripped off the cover. A startled canary hopped about the cage, chirped indignantly. Ackley cursed the bird, kicked the cage.
A man rushed into the room.
“Bagged him!” he exclaimed. “He was shot half a dozen times. They closed in on him and he tried to smoke his way out. Dead now, but he had enough life left when they got to him to admit that he did the job. And he had the loot with him.”
There was disappointment in Sergeant Ackley’s voice.
“Had the loot with him!”
“Yep, in a small chamois bag that he’d kept hidden in the space back of the wall light. He told ’em how he did the job. Knew Cogley was coming here to the Palace. Knew he was going to keep an appointment with a fence. So this bird reserved the room he wanted, trapped Cogley, and tipped off the fence the bulls were hep. That kept the fence away.
“The guy sneaked into Cogley’s room when he was washing up, cracked him on the dome, tied and gagged him, intended to get the stuff and beat it. But Cogley came to, recognized him, so he croaked Cogley, then started after the trunk when he heard the officers coming. He dragged the trunk into his own room, and...”
“Never mind all that,” snapped Sergeant Ackley. “I had deduced that much myself. I would have arrested this man only I wanted to use him to bait a trap for Leith. But did the police recover all the gems?”
“The whole sack!” gloated the detective.
“Hell!” said Sergeant Ackley.
Lester Leith smiled.
“Now can I have a cigarette?” he asked.
Sergeant Ackley walked to the door, slammed it shut.
“Listen, this guy never had the chance to check all the jewels. There were a lot of diamonds in that haul. Maybe some of ’em got away. Let’s search this room and the two adjoining. And I mean search ’em. No maybe about it. Take ’em to pieces. Rip out the wall fixtures, X-ray the furniture. This bird Leith is too smooth to have let anything like that slip through his fingers.”
They got busy and searched, and the net result of that search was to uncover nothing at all. Never had rooms been subjected to such a search, and Lester Leith himself helped make the search complete. Whenever the police seemed to be overlooking a single cranny or corner, Lester Leith would point it out.
“The brass in the bed is hollow, Sergeant,” he suggested. And: “There might have been a hole bored in the curtain pole in the closet.”
Those suggestions were received in sullen silence, but acted upon with alacrity. The morning was sending its chill fingers through the air when the officers finished. A clock struck two somewhere. Sergeant Ackley ran doubtful fingers through his matted hair and surveyed the wreckage.
“Well,” he said, “they ain’t here.”
Lester Leith grinned.
Sergeant Ackley scowled at him.
“But you still got some explaining to do. I’ve half a mind to throw you in on suspicion and let you explain how you happened to be trailing this crook around. You intended to hijack him, even if we did beat you to it!”
Lester Leith looked hurt.
“Tut, tut, Sergeant! I was doing you a favor. My solution was only academic.”