“Any chance that they suspect you are my agent?” he asked the girl.
“Don’t make me laugh!” The blond patted her hair. “With this layout I don’t even know myself. Gosh, Nace! What if this platinum dye won’t wash off?”
“I guess I could stand that!” As he took out the pipe, and plugged it, Nace eyed her.
Her first name was Julia. Her last name was the same as his own — Nace. She was a cousin, very distant. She had not been an operative in his agency for long and she was already good, and getting better.
She had what it took.
“You didn’t lose any time getting lined up!” he said, making the words both a compliment and a question.
She laughed. “It was easy! Half the people in town know the Robin Hood by sight. But you can save your blarney! I haven’t learned anything!”
Nace fired his pipe, then clamped one receiver of the sound pick-up to an ear.
“What do they want with me?” he queried.
“A talky-talk!”
“What about?”
“Search me. The Robin Hood is all hot and bothered about nothing. When he learned you were coming to town, he said he’d go out and meet you. I didn’t know until later that he only wanted to talk.”
“Everybody in town knew I was coming, huh?”
“The Robin Hood has his ways of learning things! He must have a spy on the Telegram.”
“Is he mixed up in this hot oil?”
“Sure! But there’s a catch to that, Nace! I don’t know how he stands — whether he’s in the ring, or out of it.”
Nace eyed a fly-specked telephone. “Do you think you’re safe, kid?”
“Believe it or not, this Robin Hood is the McCoy. He packs two guns and he’s killed his men. He’ll fight anybody. But he doesn’t shoot in the back, doesn’t shoot unarmed men, and respects women.”
“Chivalrous, huh?”
“That’s straight, Nace! Not one of the gang has made a pass at me; I haven’t heard any dirty stories, and they make their eyes behave. Different from our eastern mobs, eh?”
Nace took off the listener receiver. He went to the telephone, picked up a directory, and thumbed through it.
“Who did you tell ’em you were?”
“Just a little girl who got turned out of the California pen a few weeks ago! For fifty dollars a New York printer faked me a newspaper clipping with my picture and everything.”
Nace found his number. He placed a finger in the dial nobs. When the selector had made his connection he requested, “Ebenezer App, please!”
Probably twenty seconds later, he began, “This is Nace. I just got into town…. Oh, Jaxon told you, did he…. It was a fake note that led us to the hotel.”
A metallic gobble of words poured from the receiver. Nace listened to them for some time, asked, “Who was it?” twice, and hung up.
“App says he found out who’s behind the hot-oil ring,” he told the blond. “He said he accused the fellow and made him admit it — and for me to come over and make the pinch.”
“Who is it?”
“App said he’d spill that when I got there. He flatly refused to name the fellow over the phone.”
Tulsa was a town of a hundred and fifty thousand. Unlike large cities of the east, alleys ran behind the business houses.
Leaving the hotel with his zipper bag, Nace stepped from the rear door into an alley. He swung rapidly for the corner. Newsboys on the street were shouting, “Oil scandal grows! Last oil drowning victim still unidentified.” Every paper bore App’s Santa Claus picture. “Mr. App pushes investigation.”
Nace ignored them, striding toward the Telegram Building. His eyes roved alertly. He saw men in field boots, Osages in bright blankets, pasty-faced clerks with puckers between their eyes that meant eye-strain.
The Telegram was a tall narrow building of brick. Extremely pretty girls ran the elevators.
Nace thought of Julia as he rode up. Ordinarily she was a red-head. The combination of her looks and her brains was hard to find. She had been under his instructions for a month now. Numerous methods of signaling had been part of the training. Sun flashing with the compact mirror was one.
The tiny chalk marks, which he had stopped in the corridor of the Crown Block Hotel to erase, was another. They had warned him of the ambush in the room.
Nace swore. He had gone into that room deliberately. The reckless Jaxon had defeated his chances on learning something — perhaps something valuable.
Nace found a door bearing the name, “Ebenezer App, Publisher.”
He went in and found himself in a reception room — green carpeted, tan walled, fitted with leather chairs and a reception desk.
A girl with stringy brown hair lay across one of the chairs. She wore square-toed shoes and a brown frock with a starched white collar. She had a very long nose.
Blood was drip-dripping from her nose to the carpet.
Nace opened a door marked, “Mr. App — Private.”
The office beyond reeked of emptiness. The furniture was expensive and in good taste.
App’s picture hung on the wall. The Shavian beard bristled. His cheeks were ruddy. His eyes were fenced with little wrinkles. With the addition of a big white moustache, he would have made a perfect Santa Claus.
Coming back, Nace examined the girl with the long nose. When he moved her, her mouth fell open and let a little crimson come out. But she had only been struck on the jaw with a fist or a blackjack.
The fifth paper cup of ice water from the cooler revived her.
Jaxon came in when she was rolling her eyes and gurgling. He had combed his hair, put on a fresh shirt. Once more he looked as if he were right out of a bandbox.
He demanded, “What the hell’s going on here, Nace!”
At this, the girl leaped up. She dropped her cup, pointed both hands at Nace, screamed. “He’s the man who hit me!”
Jaxon sneered, “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Nace laughed at Jaxon, fists up and hard. The oil editor spun and fled from the office like a frightened peacock.
Nace turned back to the girl but did not approach her lest he frighten her. “You’re mistaken, you know! What happened?”
“A man came in! He said Mr. Nace was waiting outside!” The girl’s voice was scared. “He went in to see Mr. App. And then someone must have hit me. I didn’t see who it was.”
That was all she knew. When he had finished his questioning, Nace ambled out into the hall. Jaxon stood there, undecided. He walked off hastily at sight of Nace.
Nace went down to the city room. There was a big picture of App’s Santa Claus countenance on the wall. Nace asked for a late edition, got it, was stared at, and left the building. He hopped a cab at the corner, said, “The morgue the city uses.”
Unlimbered on the cushions, Nace studied the newspaper, centering his attention on the unidentified man who had been drowned in oil. The fellow had been found near Reservoir Hill two days ago.
There was little else of interest — except that no one seemed to know who he was. The body was being held at the morgue.
On the front of the morgue, a sign said, “Funeral Home.”
It was a plain building. Fifteen years ago, when Tulsa was a village it must have been a private mansion. The doors had been enlarged to permit of coffins being carried through.
Nace found a bright-eyed little man in charge. They went into a room where there were long marble slabs and much noise — laughter, shouts.
The funeral home, it seemed, also conducted an ambulance service. The ambulance drivers and an assistant undertaker were rolling craps on a marble slab. They had turned a stiff body on the slab and were using it as a backstop for the dice. They reminded Nace of small boys trying to show how callous they were.