The door buzzer whirred.
Peel made a swift silent leap for the door, pressed his ear against it. The door buzzer whirred again and he groaned inwardly.
A key turned in the lock. The maid...!
It was too late to shoot a bolt. Peel put his weight against the door. Pressure was put against his shoulder but Peel leaned desperately against the door.
The key clicked the lock back and forth, pressure was put on the door again and a woman’s voice muttered on the other side of the panel. Then the key was withdrawn from the lock. Perspiration filmed Peel’s face.
He waited a full two minutes, then suddenly opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. The door of Apartment C stood partly open.
His eyes on the stairs, Peel moved swiftly forward. A dark face appeared in the doorway of Apartment C and a frightened voice cried out: “Who you?”
But Peel went down the stairs swiftly, though not in flight. Not until he reached the seventh floor, then he took the stairs three at a time, all the way down to the garage.
The attendant in the garage looked at him in surprise, but Peel merely nodded and left by the rear door.
Out on the street, reaction set in and he found himself shaking like a yucca palm in a Death Valley gale.
8
When Peel entered the office of the agency, Beagle was leaning back in his chair, the picture of contentment. He was puffing a fat, dollar cigar and enjoying every penny of it.
“Well, Joe,” he said pleasantly, “what are the peasants doing these days?”
“Peasants?” Peel looked sharply at Beagle, then sniffed the air. “Don’t tell me that’s one of those dollar cigars?”
“And a good one. Let’s see, what was that little matter you were harping about? Oh, the balance of your last week’s pay.” He brought out a fistful of bills. “Fifteen dollars, I believe.” He put two bills on the desk.
“Since you’re so flush, add this week’s pay,” Peel said. “It’s due tomorrow.”
Beagle hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not?” He counted out an additional sixty dollars.
“I’ve got a little job for you, my good man,” he went on.
“I thought so. You’ve got a new sucker. Don’t you want to hear how I made out at the Towers?”
“No hurry. The new client has hundred-dollar bills, nice, crisp, brand-new hundred-dollar bills.”
“Does he make them himself?”
“Tut-tut, that’s no way to talk about a client.” Beagle paused while a mental fly dipped into the ointment. “About this young lady, Susan Sawyer...”
“You’ve lost interest in her since you’ve got the big-shot client.”
“On the contrary, my interest in her has been heightened.” Beagle coughed gently. “The new client also wants to find her.”
“What?”
“My observations on your experiences of yesterday, Joe, were very shrewd—”
“Your observations!” exclaimed Peel.
Beagle waved his fat hand. “Hear me through. As I said, you walked into a badger game.” He shook his head and sighed lightly. “Alas, the beauteous Miss Sawyer is an old hand at the game. Now, hear this. Three years ago Miss Sawyer and her partner, Charlton Temple, shook down a man named Seymour Case for the sum of five hundred dollars. We have been retained by one of the principals—”
“Seymour Case, eh?”
“No, Charlton Temple—”
Peel stared at Otis Beagle. “I smell a three-letter word meaning rodent.”
“Mr. Temple,” Beagle proceeded, “says that his conscience bothers him and he wants to give Mr. Case his five hundred dollars back and he is paying us a thousand dollars, five hundred in hand, to locate the said Mr. Case. That is what Mr. Temple told me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Mr. Charlton Temple, Joe, is as phony as a three-dollar bill. The only thing I believed about him was his five hundred dollars. The article was genuine and we will therefore locate Mr. Seymour Case and the beautiful Miss Susan Sawyer.”
“It stinks, Otis!”
Beagle took the dollar cigar from his mouth and sniffed it. “I find it a rather pleasant odor.”
“I’m talking about the case.”
“So am I. Of course it smells, but I haven’t been able to buy a dollar cigar in over two months. And you’ve got money in your pocket. So... let it smell. Now, tell me what you found at the Hillcrest Towers.”
“The place was cleaned out.”
“You didn’t — find the letters?”
Peel took the three letters from his pocket. “I found these behind the mirror in — get this — Dave Corey’s apartment. But — they’re not your letters...”
“Yours,” Beagle reminded.
“Same thing.” Peel took one of the letters out of the envelope. “Get this. ‘Dear Box 314. I am still on the sunny side of forty and I have a fine batch of Chinchilla rabbits and a small fruit orchard. I own a beautiful four-room home, have a television set and radio. My friends call me handsome and I have an affectionate disposition. I need only one thing in life to make my happiness complete, a loving helpmate. I would like to meet you and become acquainted, in the hope that you will be attracted to me as much as I am attracted to you. Signed: Mortimer Brown, Reseda, Calif. P.S. If you are a little on the plump side, I do not mind. I weigh slightly over two hundred pounds myself.’ ”
“If I were Miss Susan Sawyer,” said Otis Beagle sententiously, “I’d get those Chinchilla rabbits from Mr. Brown.”
Peel took out the second letter. “This one’s from a big businessman named Thaddeus Smallwood and Number Three is from a — what’s a sales engineer? — named Elmer Ellsworth.” He handed the letters to Otis Beagle, who tossed them to the desk.
“She said she got two hundred and fifty letters.”
Peel shrugged. “These are all I found and they were hidden in a pretty safe place. So was this.” He took out the copy of Heart Throbs. “Also behind the mirror, but down in Susan Sawyer’s apartment.” He paused. “I forgot to mention there’s a woman’s bathrobe in with Dave Corey’s clothes.”
Beagle frowned. “What do you make of it?”
Joe Peel scooped up the phone directory, looked up the number of the Hillcrest Towers and dialed it. When the operator answered he said, “Miss Susan Sawyer.”
“Who is calling?”
“Elmer Ellsworth,” said Peel quickly.
“One moment, please, I’ll see if Miss Sawyer is in.”
Peel hung up. “The operator doesn’t know she’s missing.” He nodded. “I don’t know why, but my hunch is that when Susan disappeared she merely moved up to Dave Corey’s apartment. Then, during the day when Linda Meadows had gone to work, she went down to her own apartment — where she conducted her little badger business.”
“I was already thinking that,” Beagle said, “but why... why would she want to make Linda Meadows think she was gone?”
“That doesn’t bother me half as much as who knocked off Dave Corey.”
He looked at the three letters on the desk, raked them in. “I’ll need some expense money.”
“What for?”
“I’ve got to find Susan Sawyer, don’t I? One of these fellows lives out in Reseda.”
“You won’t find a girl like Susan Sawyer on a rabbit ranch.”
“I don’t expect to find her there. But these are evidently prime prospects and, since all the letters are dated a week to ten days ago, Susan’s been in touch with them.”
“Well, they’re worth a try,” Beagle said reluctantly. He took out a five-dollar bill. “No taxis. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
Peel turned left on Sunset and walked a half block to the automobile agency. He stopped outside and looked through the huge plate-glass window at the various models on display. A salesman inside smiled at him invitingly.