“He bopped you?” cried Sam. “Why, I’ll tear the guy to pieces.”
“If he comes back.” Johnny exhaled heavily. “He took the money — fifty-two dollars...”
“What about the ten he promised if you collected the bill?”
Johnny shook his head. “He’s applying it on the mandolin bill.”
“Why, the dirty...” swore Sam.
“You said it. So we’re broke again. Except for these pennies and dimes and quarters and...” Johnny’s eyes lit up. “How much have you got left from that fiver I gave you?”
Sam winced. “I was pretty hungry.”
“You had a big lunch. How much...” Johnny held out his hand.
Abashed, Sam brought out a crumpled dollar bill and some loose change. “A dollar forty-five.”
Johnny groaned. “You ate three dollars and fifty-five cents’ worth of food on top of what you had for lunch!”
“The bill was only three five, but I left a half-buck tip.”
Johnny howled. “We’re about to be thrown out of our hotel room and you go leaving fifty-cent tips.”
“Well, you gave the fellow at the Chesterton Hotel a buck.”
“I didn’t give him anything,” cried Johnny. “I just wrote it on the check. You don’t think Malkin, or whatever the guy’s name is, is going to pay that, do you?”
“How was I to know?” Sam growled defensively. “I’m always about six laps behind you on these stunts of yours. Anyway, we got a dollar forty-five and these dimes and pennies and quarters.”
“That’s not enough to keep Peabody from throwing us out on the street. And I don’t know about these pennies. They might be more valuable than I think. I’d hate to give them to Peabody and then find out they were worth about ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand?” cried Sam. “You think they might...?”
“I’m going to find out. And right now’s as good a time as any. Come on.”
He put on his coat and they left the hotel. They crossed to Fifth Avenue, then turned south to Forty-second, where they entered the huge New York Public Library.
In the card-file room, Johnny looked up books on rare coins and a few minutes later a book was presented to him in the big reading room. With Sam trailing, he carried it to one of the tables and rapidly turned the pages to Indian head pennies.
“Ha!” he exclaimed. “Eighteen fifty-six, Flying Eagle cent, worth one hundred dollars and up—”
“Jeez!” cried Sam. “We got one of those?”
“No, our oldest coin is eighteen sixty, I believe. We’ll look those up in a minute. Here — eighteen sixty-one, cent, worth fifty cents to a dollar...”
“That’s all right.”
“Not bad, but say, look at this — eighteen sixty-four, up to thirty dollars.”
“For a penny?”
“That’s what the book says. And here’s another, eighteen seventy-one, and here’s the best of all, eighteen seventy-seven, up to fifty dollars.”
“Wow!” cried Sam.
Across the table an elderly man put his forefinger to his lips and whispered sibilantly, “Shhh!”
Johnny skimmed over a few pages. “Here’re the dimes. Mmm, they seem to run about the same, maybe a little less even. Oh-oh, here’s an exception, eighteen ninety-four-O — up to twenty-four hundred dollars.”
“We got one of those, Johnny?”
“I don’t know. I hardly think so. It says here that only twenty-four were made.”
“Take a look, I’m all goose pimples,” Sam blinked, then chuckled. “Goose pimples — from a goose bank.”
Across the table the elderly reader exploded. “Please, it is forbidden to talk in the library. Shut up, please!”
“Okay,” said Sam loudly.
“Here,” said Johnny, “we’ll copy all this down about the dimes and the pennies. You got a pencil?”
“You know I never carry one. I haven’t got anybody to write to.”
Johnny looked across the table. “Excuse me, but do you have a pencil I could borrow?”
“If it’ll keep you quiet, here’s a fountain pen,” exclaimed the elderly reader.
“Thank you. You don’t happen to have a couple of sheets of paper on you, do you?”
The reader groaned. “Here... here’s a notebook, tear out some pages. Now, write please, and keep quiet awhile.”
Johnny scribbled furiously for fifteen or twenty minutes, then returned the fountain pen and gathered up his sheets. “This’ll do it. Good-bye, sir, and thank you for the use of the pen and the paper...”
Two chairs away, a heavy-set man with thick glasses slammed back his chair. “There’s too damn much noise around here!”
Johnny put his finger to his lips. “Shhh! It’s against the rules to yell in the library.”
He chuckled and started out of the reading room. Sam followed.
They walked down Forty-second Street and started to cross the street. Passing the newsstand, Johnny’s eyes went to the papers. A headline caught his eye and he whirled back. A groan was forced from him.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Johnny folded the paper and handed the news vendor a nickel. He crossed the street. Then he opened the paper and exposed the headline to Sam.
It read:
“Holy cow!” gasped Sam Cragg. “That’s the joint we were at this afternoon.”
Johnny continued to read the article. His breathing became heavier as he went on. Finally he lowered the paper. “Something tells me that we’re going to be in trouble.”
“We didn’t do it,” cried Sam.
“We know we didn’t, but will the police know? Look, it says here: ‘The beautiful former showgirl gave police the names of two men who called on her a short time previously and threatened her with bodily injury.’ That’s us, Sam.”
“I didn’t threaten her with nothing,” complained Sam. “I wouldn’t hurt a girl.” He scowled. “You ask me, that babe coulda done the job herself.”
“Don’t worry,” said Johnny, “she’s suspect Number ONE.” He studied the paper again, then read, ‘Ю“ Miss Cummings admitted that she and young Carmichael had a quarrel and that she left the apartment in anger. But Carmichael was alive, she insisted, when she left him. When she returned an hour later, his body was found just within the door leading to the corridor...” ’
“How was he knocked off?”
“Shot, it says here, but the police didn’t find the gun. Ar they can’t find anyone in the building who heard the shot, either.”
Sam groaned. “Something tells me we’re going to get in trouble over this. We went all around town asking for young Carmichael—”
“I know,” Johnny said.
“There’s the subway,” Sam said, “we got those dimes. We can be over in New Jersey in a half hour.”
“It’s no good.”
“All right, I don’t like New Jersey, either. But we can take the subway to Yonkers and from there we can head north. Canada’s up north, ain’t it?”
“If the police want us badly enough, they’ll get us in Canada.”
“Johnny,” cried Sam in sudden panic, “you ain’t going to play detective again, are you?”
“Who, me?” asked Johnny innocently.
6
Mr. Peabody was in the lobby of the Forty-Fifth Street Hotel, near the elevators. “Ah, Mr. Fletcher,” he said, “and Mr. Cragg, how are you?”
“Lousy,” said Johnny sourly.
“Hey,” said Sam, as they stepped into the elevator, “how come he’s so friendly all of a sudden?”
“Because he’s thinking about tomorrow, when he gets to throw us out.”