One of the officers straightened with a whistle, a low note of whistling surprise. His flashlight, illuminating a circle of white brilliance in the darkness of the alley, disclosed something that sent the beam glittering back in scintillating reflections of cold fire.
The second officer lunged toward it, clamped his hands on it.
“Diamond bracelet,” he said.
“Genuine?”
“Looks like it.”
The ambulance clanged its way to the curb, turned, backed into position.
“Better take a look and see if we can find any more. That looks funny.”
They pawed through the man’s pockets.
“Here’s another one. Guess that’s set in platinum, eh, Bill?”
“Looks like it. Take a look through this wallet and see if there’s any cards.”
The stretcher bearers from the ambulance came up, set down the stretcher. A young man bent over the prostrate form.
“Dead, Doc?”
“Nope. Case of concussion. Think he’s coming around. Find out what hit him?”
“Think it was a sock on the bean. Looks as though he’d been robbed, or had been doing some robbery. Here’s his wallet, stripped of dough. There’s a card, automobile driver’s license. Name’s Harry Dupree, 1641 Dinsmore Drive. Here’s a letter. It’s old. Telephone numbers scribbled on the back of the envelope. A bunch of keys. Here, this card mentions that he’s a jewelry salesman for Huntley & Cobb. Bet he had some samples and got stuck up.”
The ambulance man said:
“Well, he’s coming around. He can tell us for himself what happened.”
One of the officers said: “You better telephone in a report, Frank. I’ll stick around and listen to the radio and see if anything breaks.”
The inert figure shivered, stretched, turned and was gripped with nausea. “Okay,” said the ambulance man, “let him alone for a minute. Okay. Now give him this. Here, brother, swallow. No, no, swallow!”
The man gulped, retched, sat up, supported by the stretcher men. He stared about him with wide, bloodshot eyes and groaned. “We’re officers,” said the man from the radio patrol car. “Tell us what happened.”
“I was robbed,” groaned the man.
“See who did it?”
“Somebody who was hiding in the alley... I walked past... He socked me.”
“What’d he get?”
“I don’t know... Had some money... Not much, about eighteen bucks.”
“It’s gone,” said the officer. “Your name’s Dupree?”
“Yeah... Oh my head!”
“That’s okay, Buddy. You’ll be all right in a little while. How about the jewelry?”
“What jewelry?”
“Didn’t you have some gems, some samples or somethin’?”
The man started to shake his head, then gave a deep groan with the pain. One of the stretcher men said: “Don’t shake your head, Buddy, Don’t move any more than you have to. Think you can walk to the ambulance?”
The groaning man leaned far to one side and retched again. The officer who had gone to telephone came back and said: “Report’s just come in of a robbery at Huntley & Cobb’s place. Guy had keys and got in, laid in wait for the watchman, socked him and tied him up. When he didn’t turn in his box they sent out to investigate. Found the watchman tied up and the safe looted.”
“How come?” asked the other officer.
“That’s all I know. They gave me the dope on the telephone. Car fifty-seven’s out there now. I reported this bird as being employed there. We better check up. They said to hold him and follow the ambulance in. Looks like he had something to do with it.”
There was a moment of silence, then the officer who had telephoned crouched down so that his eyes were on a level with those of the man who was propped up by the stretcher men.
“Look here, Dupree, had you been to Huntley & Cobb’s tonight?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Of course.”
“Have any samples on you?”
“No.”
The officer produced the articles of jewelry he had found near the unconscious man. He held them cupped in his hand, flashed the beam of the light on them and said: “How about these? Ever see ’em before.”
Once more the man tried to shake his head, and once more the effort brought on nausea.
The officers exchanged glances.
“Okay, Buddy,” said Frank. “You better take a nice ride to the hospital. They’ll shoot you some dope there that’ll make that head of yours feel better.”
He motioned to the stretcher men.
“Better boost him, boys. He’s wanted for questioning. We’ll follow you in. Them’s orders. There’s something phony here.”
The men lifted the half limp figure. He struggled to rise.
“There, there, lie back.”
He stretched out on the canvas. They raised him and slid him into the ambulance. The door clicked shut. The ambulance motor whirred into speed. The officers climbed in their car and drove away. The radio was whirring its demand for attention as they rounded the corner.
Sidney Zoom got in his roadster and turned it toward the place where Huntley & Cobb had their jewelry store and warehouse. He was scowling and he kept the throttle well depressed.
George Dike enjoyed the notoriety. He had a welt over his left eye, and there was a thin bit of dried blood which had stained a dark red stream from the corner of his left nostril, down his chin.
The police had finished with him, temporarily, but Dike was relating to any one who was curious enough to ask, or, for that matter to listen, exactly how it had all happened.
“I thought there was sumpin’ behind that bale of stuff, and I turned to get the flashlight on it then I seen him jump up. I seen he had sumpin’ in his hand, and I made a swing. I don’t even know whether I connected or not. I can’t remember that far. It seemed like somebody’d set off a firecracker inside my dome, and the next thing I knew the cops were bendin’ over me.
“I can just remember seein’ sumpin’ red. I think it was his necktie. It musta been his necktie. I bet I’d know the guy if I seen him again, though. There was a way he had of throwin’ his shoulders when he raised his arm, that I won’t forget. An’ he had a funny sort of neck, kind of short and thick like.
“I guess I musta got an awful sock, because it was just like the fourth o’ July. Sock, an’ I got it! A whale of a lam. Lookit the ridge it made. But it didn’t bust the skin. A regular slung-shot.”
There was a little knot of spectators in front of the place. A uniformed officer prevented them from crowding too dose. Every once in a while he muttered a mechanicaclass="underline" “Move on, move on! Don’t be blockin’ the sidewalk!”
Some of the men who had drifted to the door of the robbed company remained. For the most part, however, the crowd was formed of straggling units who drifted up to the place, paused to listen to Dike’s story, saw the welt over his eye, and then drifted away into the night. They were couples for the most part, young men with attractive young women who remained only long enough to find out what it was all about. Then the night claimed them.
Sidney Zoom heard the story of the watchman.
He saw the chauffeur pilot the big limousine to the curb, saw the very portly gentleman with the white face and flabby lips get laboriously from the car and plunge into the entrance of the storeroom.
He paused only long enough to give a name to the uniformed officer who guarded the place, and those who were near enough to hear that name sent the whispered gossip to the outskirts of the little group of spectators.
“Frank Huntley, the senior partner. Just got the call.”
There was another interval of silence. Then a whispered rumor sprang up from nowhere like a breath of wind in the desert, and seeped through the crowd, passing from man to man.