The man, who was attired in pajamas, stared at the spectacle of the dog on his threshold, and the man who was puffing his way down the corridor. The light which came from the apartment glittered from the bracelet that the dog held in his teeth.
Sidney Zoom raced down the carpeted corridor. The man looked from the dog to the master, then recognition dawned on his face. It was a recognition that was uncordial, gave way to downright concern. Sidney Zoom, on the other hand, let his face break into smiles.
“Well, well, so that’s the explanation,” he said. “The dog managed to trail you after all!”
The man gruffed a hostile question.
“What’re you talkin’ about?” he demanded.
Zoom grinned, the grin of a man who has done a favor for which he will be rewarded.
“When you got out of the car,” he said, “you dropped this. I called to you, but you’d gone out of sight in the hotel. It took me a minute to get the car parked, and get into the hotel. I didn’t have your name, but I described you to the clerk. He said you weren’t registered there. He remembered having seen you come in, he said, but knew you weren’t registered.
“I had something of an argument about it with him, and then remembered that the dog was trained to return lost property. I gave the bracelet to him, told him to find you. He remembered your odor, of course. They’ve got wonderful noses, these dogs.
“I thought he’d go to the elevators, but he didn’t. He went to the side door and barked. I gave him his head. He led me here, but it was a long chase.”
The man gasped.
“That’s impossible!” he said. “The dog couldn’t have followed me. I was in a cab.”
Sidney Zoom’s smile was patronizing.
“That doesn’t make any difference. Here you are, and the dog found you. I thought maybe I was going to have to consult the store that had sold you the bracelet, for your address, though. You see it’s Huntley & Cobb. They’re big jewelers. I figured you’d bought the bracelet there today and they’d have your address.”
The man’s eyes narrowed ominously. He stared at the bracelet.
“It’s got their name on it?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Zoom, “on the tag.”
“I never saw it before,” said the man in pajamas.
Zoom laughed as though the matter were a fine joke. “That’s a good one,” he said, “when I saw you drop it. That’s rich! A man dropping a five hundred dollar trinket and then saying he had never seen it before!”
After a moment the man in pajamas joined in the laugh. He laughed heavily and mirthlessly.
“Come in,” he said.
Sidney Zoom walked into the room. The dog followed, caught a motion from Sidney Zoom’s signalling hand, and flopped down in a comer. The apartment was a one room and a kitchenette affair. The bed pulled out from the wall and let down. There was a bathroom which opened off the bedroom, and the bottom of the door joined the threshold loosely enough so that a ribbon of light came through from under the door.
Sidney Zoom noticed that there were twin blotches of shadow in this ribbon of light, that these blotches moved slightly. He noticed, also, that there were two pillows on the bed, pillows which lay side by side, and each pillow contained the impression of a head.
The man sat down on the edge of the bed, took the bracelet.
“You want a reward,” he said, as though making a statement rather than asking a question.
Zoom shook his head.
“Not at all. It was a relief to find the owner. I was going to get in touch with the jewelry company.”
The man nodded his head.
“Well, it’s mighty nice of you. I’m Rogers, an exporter of gems, and an importer. I buy and sell and deal all sorts of ways. The reason that bracelet has the price mark on it is that it was a sample that was offered me in connection with rather a large order.”
Zoom stretched his arms, yawned, laughed.
“How about the others you have?” he asked.
“What others?”
“Don’t try to fool me. That lie chained you up with the robbery. You lured Harry Dupree into a position where you could make it seem the job was done by him. I presume the reason you did that is that you’re connected with the firm in some way, and you knew it’d be tagged as an inside job right from the jump. So you figured you’d get some one for a fall guy.”
The man got from the edge of the bed. His eyes were narrowed to mere slits.
“Are you accusing me?” he asked.
“Who in hell did you think I was accusing?” asked Sidney Zoom easily. “You planted some evidence on Dupree, left him where he’d be found and promptly suspected. You lifted the loot.”
The man laughed, a laugh of cold scorn.
“Prove it,” he said.
Sidney Zoom chuckled.
“That’s a nice way to express a challenge. And I rather think I shall prove it! You know I’m something of an opportunist in the field of crime detection. When I walked into this room I hadn’t the slightest idea of how I was going about the proof of this particular crime. I wanted to make certain of your identity by seeing if you’d identify the bracelet as something that belonged to you. As soon as you did that, you branded yourself as the crook. You stole so much stuff that you naturally couldn’t remember the various items. As soon as you saw the tag price of Huntley & Cobb on this bracelet you were willing to accept my statement that you’d dropped it, at its face value.
“But, do you know, now I’ve got an idea of a very fine way in which I can pin the crime on you and recover the stolen property.”
Sidney Zoom reached for his pocket.
The man exploded into swift action. His hand jerked out from behind his back. He held a gun which he had slid into his hand as he sat on the edge of the bed, worming it out from under the pillow.
“Is that so?” he snarled. “Get your hands up, you damned dick!”
Sidney Zoom stared into the gun.
“Get ’em up, I say!”
Zoom elevated his hands. As he raised them, he said:
“All right, Rip.”
The police dog went from the floor into a long spring. His lips were back from the glistening fangs. The tawny eyes glittered with menace. A throaty growl emerged from his throat.
The man with the gun whirled the weapon. Sidney Zoom snapped his hands down and lunged forward. Zoom, the police dog and the man with the gun all tangled in one simultaneous merger of motion which swept the man back on the bed, thudded the gun to the floor.
Zoom slipped handcuffs from his pocket, snapped them on the man’s wrist. And he snapped the other handcuff around the steam pipe on the radiator.
The man snarled at him: “You still haven’t proved anything!”
Zoom laughed. “Come, come, not with this murderous attack of yours? And then there’s the matter of the gun. You’ve been using that gun somewhere. Probably in some other stick-up, or perhaps a killing somewhere. My dog detected the odor of powder in the barrel. These dogs have keen powers of smell, but, even so, I would say the gun had been fired within forty-eight hours, and had not been cleaned afterwards. The police will probably be interested in that gun, and in your possession of it.”
The man, chained to the radiator, moved uneasily, and the handcuff rasped up and down the steam pipe as he moved. Sidney Zoom stole a glance at the bathroom door. The ribbon of light still showed under the door, and the two blobs which were made by the feet of a person standing inside the bathroom, just against the door, had moved their position somewhat, but were still visible.