“Uh-huh. When do I cough?”
“When he begins to get restless. Hold him as long as you can. We want time. If you see he’s getting nervous, cough.”
“I’m on my way,” she said, and glided out through the door to the outer office.
The door had hardly closed before Della Street jerked it open once more.
“Chief, he’s gone!”
“What? When?”
“Gertie says the minute she started to put through your call to Paul Drake’s office, he got up, smiled reassuringly at her, said, ‘Be back in a second,’ and stepped out in the corridor. He...”
Mason jumped up so violently that his desk swivel chair was hurled back against the wall. He rounded the desk, jerked open the door of his private office, said, “Come on, Della. Tell Paul! Let’s go!”
Mason sprinted to the turn in the corridor, looked down toward the elevator. There was no one in sight.
He dashed to the elevator and frantically jabbed at the bell button.
Della Street, running on tiptoes behind him, detoured into the office of the Drake Detective Agency.
A red light flickered on and off, then glowed steadily. A cage came to a stop. Mason jumped in, said to the elevator operator, “Run it all the way down to the ground floor, buddy. Don’t stop. It’s important. Let’s go.”
The elevator operator threw the control over, and the cage dropped rapidly.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Want to catch a guy,” Mason said.
The cage came to a smooth stop. The door slid open. An angry elevator starter said, “What’s the idea, Jim? You...”
“I’ll take the responsibility,” Mason said, and dashed across the lobby to the street.
He looked up and down the street, saw no immediate trace of the man he wanted but recognized that the crowded sidewalk offered a perfect opportunity for anyone to mingle with the pedestrians and vanish.
Mason moved to the curb, looked down the street to see if a taxicab had recently pulled away from the curb, spotted one at the corner waiting for a stop light, and ran down halfway to the corner before the signal changed and the cab glided away.
Back at the entrance of the building, Mason saw Paul Drake, Della Street and one of Drake’s operatives standing by the door.
“No dice,” Mason said. “Not here. Let’s cover parking lots. Della, you know him. Take Drake’s operative and cover the parking lot down the street. Paul and I will take the one across the street. If you see him, stop him.”
“How?” Della Street asked.
“Stop him,” Mason said to Drake’s operative. “I don’t give a damn what you do. Pretend he ran over your toe, hit you, or anything else; just stop him. Claim he smashed a fender on your car. Demand to see a driver’s license.”
“Get rough if I have to?”
“Hell, yes,” Mason said. “Come on, Paul.”
Paul Drake and Mason ran out from the curb, threaded their way through traffic, regardless of the angry protest of horns, and crossed over to the parking lot across the street.
“If he came in his own car,” Mason said, “we’ll catch him one place or the other. Watch here, and get everyone who’s coming out, Paul. I’ll signal Della.”
Mason moved over to the curb, waved a signal, then said, “Come on, Paul, let’s take a look through and be sure he isn’t just sitting in a car.”
Five minutes later Mason acknowledged defeat. He walked back across the street to where Della and the operative from Drake’s office were waiting, and said, “Well, I guess we’re licked. I still don’t see how he could have got down and vanished into thin air, but in that time...”
“The taxicab?” Drake asked.
“I think it was empty. I don’t think he could have made it, Paul. I had my elevator operator shoot all the way down without stops. I sprinted out to the curb. Remember, if this man had been ahead of me... Oh, well, let’s go talk to the elevator operators and see if they know anything.”
They entered the building.
One by one they checked the elevator operators as they brought their cages down. The fourth and last operator listened to their story, said, “My gosh, Mr. Mason, I remember him perfectly. He didn’t go down, he went up.”
“Up?” Mason said.
The operator nodded. “I remember there was both a down and an up signal on your floor, because just as I picked him up the cage going down stopped and the door slid back, but there was no one waiting to go down. What he’d done was to press both the up button and the down button... Of course, sometimes fellows will do that when they want to go up. They’ll mechanically press the down button and then remember and change it to the up button, and...”
“Not this guy,” Mason said. “He knew he was hot. He wanted to get away fast. He pressed both buttons and took the first cage that stopped. He wanted to get off that floor. Paul, there’s a damned good chance he’s still in the building.”
“How was he dressed?” Drake asked.
Della Street said, “He had on a dark, double-breasted suit, a red and blue necktie, white shirt.”
“A hat?”
“He had a black hat last night, and— Yes, I’m quite certain there was a black hat on the chair beside him.”
Mason said to Drake, “Go on upstairs, Paul. Put one of your girls at my switchboard. Gertie saw him. Get her down here. He may have gone up a few floors, got off and just waited around, figuring he’d outwait us. We know now that he couldn’t have been ahead of us. I’ll go ask the girl at the cigar stand.”
Drake said, “A couple of minutes more and I’ll have another operative here. Let’s check at the cigar stand, Perry.”
The girl who was running the cigar stand and magazine rack flashed them a smile. “What was all the rush?” she asked.
Mason said, “Trying to find someone. I wonder if you might have noticed him.”
She shook her head and said, “Not unless he’s a regular tenant. People stream past here all day, and...”
“This man must either be in the building, or must have come out very shortly after I left,” Mason said. “He may, or may not be wearing a black felt hat, a dark, double-breasted suit, blue and red necktie, about thirty-five years old, five feet seven inches tall, weighs about a hundred and eighty-five. His most noticeable feature is a pair of bushy eyebrows.”
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why, he got off the elevator just after your secretary and Paul Drake and the other man reached the street.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“He didn’t seem to be in a hurry at all. He was just sauntering out of the building when he abruptly veered over here to the counter and started looking at a magazine.”
Mason exchanged glances with Paul Drake, said, “You see what happened, Paul? He saw Della Street standing out at the curb so he swung over and buried his face in a magazine.”
“Then he bought a cigar,” the girl said, “and when you and Mr. Drake ran across the street he went out of the door and turned to the right... I guess the only reason I noticed him was because I was so interested in seeing you dash across the lobby, and then your secretary and Mr. Drake and this other man came running out. Naturally, I wondered what was happening. He...”
“Come on, Paul,” Mason said. “Della, Paul and I will grab the first taxi and go up the street. You take the next one that comes along, go to the corner and turn right. We’ll keep circling around the blocks, watching pedestrians and seeing if we can pick him up.”
“What is this?” Drake asked. “A murder?”
“Not yet,” Mason said grimly.
“What’ll we do if we find him?” Drake’s operative asked.