The newspaper reporter scribbled gleefully. “Hot dog,” he said, and scurried away toward the press room. A moment later he was back with a camera and a flash bulb. “Let me get a picture of this,” he said. “Hold up that imitation gem.”
Sergeant Ackley shouted: “You can’t publish this!”
The flash of the bulb interrupted his protest.
Edward H. Beaver, the undercover man, was still up when Lester Leith latchkeyed the door of the apartment. “Hello, Scuttle,” he said. “Up rather late, aren’t you?”
“I was waiting for a phone call.”
Leith raised his eyebrows. “Rather late for a phone call, isn’t it, Scuttle?”
“Yes, sir. Have you seen Sergeant Ackley tonight, sir?”
“Have I seen him!” Leith said, with a smile. “I’ll say I’ve seen him. You’ll read all about it in the papers tomorrow, Scuttle. Do you know what happened? The sergeant arrested me for recovering my own property.”
“Your own property, sir?”
“Yes, Scuttle. That imitation ruby. I was rather attached to it, and Vare felt so chagrined about having lost it that I thought it would be worth a small reward to get it back.”
“And you recovered it?”
“Oh, yes,” Leith said. “I got it earlier in the evening. Sergeant Ackley found it in my pocket and jumped to the conclusion it was the real ruby.”
“What did he do?” the spy asked.
Lester Leith grinned. “He covered himself with glory,” he said. “He put on quite a show for a crowd of interested spectators, and then committed the crowning indiscretion of inviting them to read about it in the paper tomorrow morning. They’ll read about it, all right. Poor Ackley!”
A slow smile twisted the spy’s features. “The sergeant didn’t give you anything for me, did he, sir?”
“For you, Scuttle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, no. Why the devil would you be getting things from Sergeant Ackley?”
“You see, sir, I happened to run into the sergeant a day or so ago, and he borrowed my watch. He was going to return it. He—”
The phone rang and the spy jumped toward it with alacrity. “I’ll answer it, sir,” he said.
He picked up the receiver, said: “Hello... Yes... Oh, he did—” and then listened for almost a minute.
A slow flush spread over the spy’s face. He said: “That wasn’t the way I understood it. That wasn’t the bet—” There was another interval during which the receiver made raucous, metallic sounds, then a bang at the other end of the line announced that the party had hung up.
The undercover man dropped the receiver back into place.
Lester Leith sighed. “Scuttle,” he said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Sergeant Ackley. He’s a frightful nuisance.”
“Yes, sir,” the spy said.
“And a very poor loser,” Leith remarked.
“I’ll say he’s a poor loser,” the spy blurted. “Any man who will take advantage of his official position as a superior to wriggle out of paying a debt—”
“Scuttle,” Lester Leith interrupted, “what the devil are you talking about?”
“Oh, another matter, sir. Something else which happened to be on my mind.”
Leith said: “Well, get it off your mind, Scuttle. Bring out that bottle of Scotch and a soda siphon. We’ll have a quiet drink. Just the two of us.”
Beaver had just finished with the drinks when a knock sounded at the door. “See who it is, Scuttle.”
Dixie Dormley and Harry Vare stood on the threshold.
Leith, on his feet, ushered them into the room, seated the actress, indicated a chair for Vare, and said: “Two more highballs, Scuttle.”
Vare said haltingly: “I’m sorry, Mr. Leith. The way the thing was put up to me, I couldn’t have done any differently.”
Leith dismissed the matter with a gesture.
Dixie Dormley said: “After you left, a Captain Carmichael came in. He seemed terribly upset, and was pretty angry at Sergeant Ackley. It seems that two of the people who had been standing there were friends of Captain Carmichael, and they telephoned in to him about the brutality of the police.”
Leith smiled. “Is that so,” he commented idly. “What happened?”
Dixie Dormley said: “Well, Sergeant Ackley had just let Lamont go — figured he didn’t have any case against him. Captain Carmichael listened to what Ackley had to report, and was furious. He issued an order to have Lamont picked up again, and a radio car got him within a dozen blocks of the police station.
“They brought him back and Carmichael went to work on him, and in no time had a confession out of him. It seems he’d agreed to open one of the steel shutters for some Hindu priests. They’d paid him for the job. Then he got the idea of doublecrossing them, opened the safe, lifted the ruby, and hid it.
“He had it with him tonight when he was arrested. He swore the plainclothesman must have taken it from his pocket when they were scuffling. The plainclothesman denied it, and then they thought of this man who had first grabbed Lamont.
“So then they figured he was the man they wanted, and it turned out the police had not only let him go, but given him a couple of courtesy cards. Well, you should have heard Captain Carmichael! Such language!”
Leith turned to Vare.
“There you are, Vare,” he said. “A complete education in the detection of crime by the case method. Just observe Sergeant Ackley, do the exact opposite of what he does, and you’re bound to be a success.”
And the police spy, resuming his mixing of the drinks, could be seen to nod, unconsciously but perceptibly.
The Hand Is Quicker Than the Eye
Lester Leith, sprawled in a chaise longue on the screened balcony of his apartment, read the newspaper account of the theft with considerable interest.
A few paces behind him, Edward H. Beaver, the police undercover man who had insinuated his way into Leith’s service as a valet, made a great show of dusting; but his beady eyes were riveted on the slender, well-knit figure of the man whom police considered the most brilliant crime technician of the decade.
The newspaper account was somewhat vague. The theft had taken place at the residence of Charles Sansone, the well-known authority on Asiatic history, who had recently returned from an extended trip in the Orient. The victim of the theft had been one Katiska Shogiro, a Japanese gentleman who owned a pearl necklace of immense value. The clasp of the necklace was of that peculiar bright yellow gold which characterizes Chinese workmanship, and while undoubtedly the necklace bore a resemblance to a priceless museum piece which had vanished from the storeroom of the Forbidden City, Shogiro smilingly explained that the resemblance was purely superficial.
Sansone, it seemed, was interested in the necklace. It had even been intimated that he contemplated its purchase. In any event, Katiska Shogiro had been invited to the highly cosmopolitan dinner party at which Frank Thoms, the big game hunter, Peter Grier, the explorer, and Silman Shore, the expert trapshooter, were also present. Because Charles Sansone’s secretary, Mah Foy, was Chinese, Sansone had tactfully given her a day and night off, although she usually supervised the details of his dinner parties, and was generally present in the capacity of hostess...
Beaver, the pseudo-valet, becoming more and more absorbed in watching the man upon whom he spied, slowed down his dusting operations until his hands barely moved.
Leith, looking up, said, “Something wrong, Scuttle?”
The valet resumed his duties with alacrity, replying, “No, sir.”