“You haven’t found the stuff that was taken from the jewelry store, and you can’t find it!” said the man. “Until you find it you can’t convict me of anything.”
Zoom shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s a problem for the police. I have no doubt you concealed it rather cleverly. I’ll get the police here and they can figure that angle of it out for themselves. I’ve just made certain, my friend, that you’ll be here when the police arrive, that’s all.”
And he beckoned to the dog, strode to the door of the apartment.
“Ain’t you going to search here?” asked the man, obviously disappointed.
“No,” said Zoom. “That’s a job for the police.”
Chuckling, he strode out of the apartment and pulled the door shut behind him. The lock clicked into place. Sidney Zoom strode rapidly down the corridor, down the stairs, out into the night. The white-haired woman looked at him anxiously.
“Did you get anything?” she asked.
Zoom got into the roadster, started the motor, ran half a block to an alley, backed into the alley and turned off his headlights.
“I can’t tell just yet. I think I did. I’m gambling on my judgment of character and on a guess as to what happened. I think that we’ll see some action pretty soon.”
He waited for less than two minutes. Then the door of the apartment house opened. A trimly formed feminine figure stepped out into the night. She carried a little handbag in her hand, and she walked rapidly, with swiftly nervous steps that sent her heels click-clacking against the cement of the sidewalk.
She walked in the direction of Zoom’s car, and Sidney Zoom watched her curiously as a street light illuminated her features. She was pretty, yet the prettiness was a bold, brazen type of beauty which would soon dissolve under the unkind hand of ruthless time into a coarseness of feature and a hardness of eye.
In the meantime she was something which would cause masculine eyes to turn and follow her in appraisal and approval. Her clothes were cut so as to accentuate the feminine lines of her form. The dress was very short and the legs were encased in black silk stockings. The legs were slender at the ankles, well molded. She wore a hat which was pulled down on her head, a brimless little hat that served as a bit of color for the blond hair which tendrilled out on the sides. The hat was a vivid red. The eyes were dark and large, the nose straight, the lips thick.
That much Sidney Zoom saw of her, and then she walked past the circle of illumination, past the alley where his car was parked.
Sidney Zoom waited a moment and started the motor. He didn’t turn on the lights. The car slid softly and smoothly out of the dark alley into the street. The form of the woman, walking rapidly, was visible some half block ahead.
The dog, crouched on the back seat, sensing the object of the chase, whined softly. The white-haired woman asked a question. It went unheeded. She settled back on the cushions of the seat.
The girl paused in her rapid walk. Sidney Zoom promptly slid the car to a stop. The girl looked back, then peered about her. She was standing in front of a brick wall which surrounded a private dwelling. She moved her hand, as though counting bricks. Then she moved her shoulder, leaned against the brick wall.
Sidney Zoom pushed his car into sudden speed.
He snapped on the headlights. They showed the young woman standing before the brick wall from which a loose brick had been pulled. There was a dark cavity back of this loose brick, and she was sweeping the contents of that cavity into the little handbag that she carried.
“All right, Rip,” said Sidney Zoom. “Catch her. Hold her!”
The dog’s claws rattled on the polished fender as he scrambled into a position from which he could leap. As he sailed through the air, Sidney Zoom stopped the car, flung open the door and stepped to the sidewalk. There was a police whistle in his lips. He blew it loudly.
The girl started to run.
The dog, dashing along, belly close to the sidewalk, overtook her, got in front of her, crouched, growled, snapped up his head and caught her skirt in his teeth.
Coming along behind her, Sidney Zoom said, quite courteously: “Really, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t escape. You’d better be nice about it.”
She whirled to stare at him from black, sullen eyes. Her thick lips opened and rasped forth a curse. Somewhere in the night, a block or so away, sounded an answering police whistle. Sidney Zoom blew his own whistle once more.
The girl moved toward him, smiling seductively.
“Listen, big boy,” she smirked, moving so that her body was close to that of Sidney Zoom. “You and me can reach an understanding...”
Sidney Zoom turned away. The girl rasped another expletive and sent her hand flashing to the front of her dress. The dog growled ominously.
Sidney Zoom said, casually, speaking over his shoulder: “I wouldn’t. He’ll leave teeth marks on your arm if you pull a gun. He might even break the skin, and that wouldn’t be so good. There’d be an infection, perhaps.”
A figure rounded the corner, running heavily but purposefully.
The street light glinted on a badge and brass buttons.
Sidney Zoom raised his voice and called: “This way, officer.” The white-haired woman got out of the car and stammered questions. The officer came running up. The young woman drew herself up scornfully.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll beat the rap. I always have so far, and I will this one.”
Zoom shrugged his shoulders.
“What is it?” asked the officer.
Zoom opened the handbag. The street light showed a glittering array of jewelry of the finest quality. Sidney Zoom said: “She was the lure who kidded Harry Dupree into being at the mouth of an alley where her accomplice could crack down on him with a black-jack. They planted some stuff on him to make it seem he had robbed Huntley & Cobb.
“This girl, and the man you’ll find in apartment fifteen at the apartment house a block or so down the road, robbed Hundey & Cobb of around twenty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels. They gave every one the slip and hid them in a place they’d arranged for in advance.
“I figured out who the man was and called on him. From his manner I knew the jewels weren’t concealed in the apartment. I knew there must have been a female lure to have trapped Dupree. I saw that two people had been in the apartment and that some one was hiding in the bathroom, listening to my conversation. So I handcuffed the man in a position where he was helpless and walked out, telling him I was sending the police to pick him up.
“I figured that the woman, having betrayed one man to his ruin, would be just the type of rat who would run out on that man if she thought she could get away with it. I counted on her figuring that the man was held helpless in the apartment, and corning down here to feather her own nest with the swag and walk out.
“You take the credit for the arrest. I don’t want to figure in it.”
The officer stared at Zoom, at the white-haired woman who stood open mouthed, wide eyed.
“Who’s she?” he asked.
“The mother of an innocent young man,” said Zoom, “who was about to be railroaded to jail by the pair of crooks.”
The woman clutched at his arm.
“A grateful mother,” she said, and started to sob her happiness.
The officer frowned.
“Well,” he said, “we gotta telephone to headquarters and get this thing straightened out.”
Sidney Zoom yawned.
“That’s okay. Only you take the credit of cleaning up the case. Say that I just happened along. It’ll mean a feather in your cap. It won’t mean anything to me.”
Sidney Zoom was at the wheel of his yacht The bar was choppy. A fresh breeze was ripping off the tops of the chops and sending spray drops as large as buckshot rattling against the windows of the cabin. The yeasty-water, churned into an agitated mass of tumbled foam, hissed past the sides of the rocking craft The yacht rose lightly on tumbled wave crests, only to be smashed by disordered cross swells.