Sidney Zoom set to work.
He uncovered the typewriter which stood upon a little stand, took a sheet of paper and began to write. His words were purely specimen words. Then he struck off the letters of the alphabet, writing each one several times.
When he had finished with that sheet he took another and did the same thing. Then he left the typewriter uncovered, left the sheets beside it.
Next Sidney Zoom did a strange thing.
He took from a hand bag he had brought with him, a large package of cheesecloth and a can of floor polish. He stooped to the linoleum and began to scrub the liquid polish upon the linoleum, working slowly, painstakingly.
The dog watched him from a corner, head on paws, eyes alone moving.
It took Sidney Zoom three-quarters of an hour to finish his task. Then he motioned to the dog, indicated the closet.
Slowly, questioningly, the dog entered the closet.
“Stay there, Rip,” commanded Sidney Zoom.
Then he stepped to the outer doorway.
The corridor of the office building was of a white marble effect. Upon it, in front of the door of the office, Sidney Zoom sprinkled some white powder. It was virtually invisible against the white of the corridor.
“Wait there, Rip,” he called to the dog who had crawled back into the corner of the closet at the command of his master, and closed the closet door until it was open but a half an inch.
The dog whined, but remained where he had been placed.
Sidney Zoom left the office. The latch on the outer door clicked as he pulled it shut.
Then Sidney Zoom took up a vigil before the entrance of the office building. There was in his posture something of the grim efficiency of a lion waiting by a water hole.
The traffic of the street increased. Early office workers began to straggle into the building. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the stream increased. Abruptly it reached its crest. Young women, expressionless of face, bright of eye, shouldered their way into elevators, thronged the corridors.
Then almost at once, the stream thinned. Late comers sprinted for elevators, glancing anxiously at the clock. Business men bustled into the corridors, portly, important.
Sidney Zoom surveyed the whole stream of civilization’s flotsam as it slid past. His scornful eyes showed his hatred for the entire affair, but they missed no face.
It was nine twenty that a pasty face showed at the doorway of the lobby. A fat man walked with swift, jerky steps, so nervously rapid that they jiggled the pasty balls of flesh which clung to his flabby face.
“Ah,” said Sidney Zoom, “Mr. Jed Slacker.”
The man jerked himself to an abrupt stop.
“Huh? Who? What?”
The words were explosive.
Sidney Zoom smiled, a cold, frosty smile.
“It’s a wonder you wouldn’t come to your office in the morning! I’ve been waiting an hour.”
The flabby face twisted into a sudden smile that pushed the balls of fat about into a strange distortion.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes! Zoom! Mr. Sidney Zoom. Met you out at Goldfinch’s place. Sure had me worried last night. Or was it this morning? Guess it was this morning. Slept late. Seemed good to get to sleep. First sleep I’ve had for a long time — seems like a long time. Tried to get to sleep but simply couldn’t. Worrying... What d’yuh want?”
“Just wanted to talk with you. Thought maybe Hargrave had seen you.”
“Hargrave? Hargrave? Hargrave? Oh, yes, Jack Hargrave. Detective. Young fellow. Nice chap that. Why should he see me? Looking for me?”
“I suppose so. He had the key to your office, I noticed.”
The flabby face seemed for an instant to become more pallid. The skin took on a waxy luster of dead white.
“Key? Key? Key? Key to my office? Must be mistaken, Zoom. Nobody has a key to my office, only me.”
Zoom’s smile was patronizing.
“Well,” he said, “you must have shut that detective up in the office all night then. When I went up to your office to see if you were in I met him coming out He had a sheet of typewriting in his hand, and some sort of a legal looking document.
“I spoke to him and he didn’t seem glad to see me in particular. Don’t think he knew who I was. He figured I was some other tenant of an office on the same floor, I guess. But, even so, he wasn’t at all cordial. Didn’t seem to want to be seen. Hope I have not said anything I shouldn’t.”
The fat man suddenly broke into an explosive laugh.
“Say anything you shouldn’t! Hell, no! Remember now. Hargrave asked me if I had a duplicate key. Said he wanted to try out my typewriter. Seemed like he wanted to trace the writing on that declaration of trust I found. Don’t know why he wanted to do that, though.
“I’d forgotten about the key. Matter slipped my mind. That what he had with him, the declaration of trust?”
“The one you found last night?” asked Sidney Zoom.
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
Sidney Zoom puckered his forehead.
“Well now, I couldn’t say for certain, but it looked like it.”
Jed Slacker jerked a watch from his pocket.
“Gosh, late. Got to go meet some friends on a train. What was it you wanted, Zoom?”
“I wanted to see you for five minutes.”
The man fingered the watch.
“Tell, you what you do, give me five minutes to open my mail. Then come up. Five minutes is all I want. Don’t be longer. Five minutes. Remember.”
Sidney Zoom inclined his head.
“Five minutes,” he agreed.
But it was a scant three minutes between the rime he said it and the time his hand twisted the knob on the door of Jed Slacker’s office.
The fat man was seated at the desk, his hands holding the two typewritten sheets Zoom had written on his machine.
He glanced up as Zoom pushed the door open.
“Huh!” he said, dropped the sheets.
Sidney Zoom walked forward and took a chair.
He smiled, a cold, frosty smile.
“I’ve discovered about the dodger,” he said.
“What dodger?”
“The one you had printed that had the picture of Charles Gillen on it. Rather clever, too. Gillen is listed in the city directory, by the way. Probably you knew that.”
The fat man licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.
“Gillen, Gillen, Gillen?” he said. “Dodger, city directory?”
Zoom nodded affably, but coldly.
“Yes, the dodger you had printed describing Mr. Goldfinch’s dealer as a thief.”
The man rotated his head upon his massive neck in a gesture of oily negation.
“No. He never sold Goldfinch many diamonds. Just a few — comparatively.”
Chapter VIII
The White Steps—
Sidney Zoom leaned back in the chair, crossed his long legs, smiled, lit a cigarette.
“Now,” he said, after the manner of one discussing a chess problem, “it’s interesting to see how your mind worked. You could influence Goldfinch. You didn’t dare to steal his diamonds, murder him, and at the same time have him leave a will in your favor. That would make it appear you were the beneficiary of his demise.
“You wanted to have suspicion point elsewhere. So you fixed things so the housekeeper would be placed in a position where she’d be convicted even before she came to trial. You fixed things so Goldfinch would actually tell her something that would sound so bizarre when it was repeated that it would make a jury laugh.
“And, in case anything went wrong, you wanted a second string to your bow. You were given applications for the position of butler by Mr. Goldfinch. In running down some of the references you found those of Arthur Madison were false. So you checked them a little more carefully, found Madison was an ex-convict who was trying to find a place where he could lie low for a while. That suited your purpose splendidly, so you hired him.