“That’s one.”
“What’s two?”
“That it was all a carefully planned operation which suggests professionals.”
Frances Wingo tapped the eraser some more. “They had three months to work it out.”
“Why three months?”
“Because that’s when we first knew that we were going to get the exhibition. Up until then, we weren’t sure.”
“And you announced it then?”
“Yes,” she said. “It made quite a nice splash.”
“Did the shield get more publicity or attention than any other piece?”
“The Jandolaean Embassy saw to that.”
“Then whoever stole it had three whole months to find themselves an accomplice,” I said. “You can do a lot of persuading in three months.”
Frances Wingo quit tapping the pencil and I almost thanked her. “Why do you think they killed the guard — provided they killed him?” she said.
I shrugged. “Probably to save money and to keep him from talking. Or maybe he planned the whole thing himself and someone got greedy, but that seems a little farfetched.”
“But the murder hasn’t yet changed your mind?”
“Not yet.”
“You mean it could later?”
“At any time.”
Frances Wingo didn’t like that so she started tapping the eraser on her desk again. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“An oversight,” I said.
“I thought that’s what you were being paid for, to take such risks.”
“No. You’re paying me to get the shield back, not to run risks. My principal problem is to arrange the transaction so that the risks are minimized. If I find that I can’t do that, then I’ll back out.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “You’re not exactly the boy adventurer, are you?”
“Not exactly,” I said, but the topic was beginning to bore me so I asked her a question. “What do I do if I suddenly find that I need a quarter of a million dollars in relatively small bills at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon in Pittsburgh?”
She didn’t hesitate or stop tapping the eraser. “You call me,” she said. “Mr. Spencer will either arrange for a corresponding bank to supply the money or it will be flown to you by private plane from Washington.”
“To wherever I need it?”
“To wherever you need it. Anything else?”
“A couple of things. If you get any more calls from the man with the muffled voice, tell him he can reach me at the Madison until nine in the morning; after that I’ll be at my place in New York.” I gave her the number and she stopped tapping the pencil long enough to write it down on a buff-colored pad.
“All right,” she said. “What else?”
“The last item. If you’re free this evening, you might drop by the Madison and I’ll buy you a drink.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at me speculatively. This time I was no longer a slightly audacious water color; I was a forgery trying to pass as an old master and not a very good forgery at that.
“Don’t you think my husband might object, Mr. St. Ives?”
“No,” I said, “because I don’t think you’re married, at least not any more.”
“Why not?”
“You just don’t look married.”
She rose then and there was nothing else for me to do but rise with her. “If you need any more information about the shield, Mr. St. Ives, please feel free to call at any time.”
“If you change your mind, the offer for the drink still stands,” I said.
She looked down at her desk, picked up the yellow pencil, and began to tap the eraser against the wood. “Thank you, but I don’t think so.”
At the door I paused and looked back. I don’t know why I bothered because I really didn’t care whether I bought her a drink. “But you’re not married, are you?”
“No, Mr. St. Ives,” she said, “I’m not. Not any more. My husband died in an auto accident four weeks ago.”
It had warmed up a little, I noticed, as I stood outside the museum and vainly waited for the miracle of a cruising cab. I stood in the shade of a telephone pole, and wondered what the temperature was in Leadville and San Francisco and Nome and some other fine places. After a quarter of an hour or so a cab came along with its windows rolled up which meant that it was either air-conditioned or the driver had gone mad. It was twenty degrees cooler inside and I asked to be driven to police headquarters.
“Wait a minute,” the driver said, and pointed at his radio which was blasting an acid rock number so loud that the speaker vibrated.
“Your song?” I said.
“No, man, the temperature’s coming on.”
We waited, not moving, until the number was nearly through and then the disk jockey’s voice came on, crackling hard over the fading dissonance: “Now it is warm out there. Man down at the weather bureau says it’s one hundred and two, that’s t-w-o, degrees right here in the nation’s Capital. That’s uh-one-uh-oh-uh-two degrees and Mr. Weatherman says that’s the all-time record for this August date. So why don’t you lean back, grab something tall and cool — to drink, I mean — and listen to—” The driver switched it off and looked at his watch.
“If it don’t get no hotter, I won,” he said.
“Won what?”
“The weather pool. I had a hundred and two at 3 P.M. Twenty-five-dollar pool.”
“Let’s hope you won. Now how about the police station?”
He turned to look at me then, a dark brown man with his hair worn natural bush, I suppose, and the blackest pair of sun glasses over his eyes that I’d ever seen.
“Now we’ve got a lot of police stations,” he said. “We’ve got the Park Police and the Capital Police and the Metropolitan Police and we’ve got fourteen precinct police stations plus the harbor unit down on Maine Avenue and that’s still not counting the FBI and the CIA out in Virginia. Just make your choice and I’ll be happy to take you to any one of them.”
“Let’s try the Metropolitan Police headquarters,” I said. “If that doesn’t work out, I’ll give the rest of them a go.”
The cab moved away from the curb with something of a racing start. “The Metropolitan Police headquarters is located at 300 Indiana Avenue,” the driver said. “A very nice neighborhood out of the high-rent district and within easy walking distance of the Capitol and a lousy sixty-five-cent ride from here.”
It was a brief ride and the driver kept up his running commentary until we pulled up before a large, six-story granite building whose architectural style leaned toward Midwestern municipal. “How much?” I said.
“Like I said, sixty-five cents unless you’re a big spender from out of town.”
“You figured it out after all,” I said, and gave him a dollar.
“Thank you, my good man, and I hope you have a pleasant visit with the friendlies.”
“And I hope you win the pool.”
Inside there was the usual number of people who had reason to come calling on the police at three o’clock in the afternoon. They avoided each other’s eyes as they waited before the bank of four elevators that would take them up to talk to someone with a badge about something that had turned out differently from what they had expected. About something that had turned out wrong.
The halls of the building, which also seemed to contain the city’s tax division, were covered with brown marble that ran halfway up the wall and then turned into pale green plaster. The floors were covered with black and white speckled marble and it all seemed solid and secure and as if it were meant to last for a long time. A directory said that the robbery squad was on the third floor so I took one of the elevators up and when I emerged the first thing that I saw on the right was a brown shield about eighteen inches high with gold lettering that read ROBBERY SQUAD. The door was open and I walked into a small waiting area that was bounded by frosted glass and plywood partitions. A worn brown bench, something like a pew in an old church whose building fund suffered a deficit, was placed against one of the walls, apparently for the use of robber and victim alike. At the left was a door and a window that was very much like a bank teller’s cage without the bars. I approached the window and a man in a white shirt, blue tie, and a holstered gun under his left arm wanted to know if he could help me.