“Yeah?” the menace croaked. “Show her how what’s done?”
“See that,” I told her. “See the kind of mind he’s got.”
All her muscles were now under control. “You’re smart as they come, aren’t you?”
“That,” I said, “you will learn more about as time goes on. I’m at least smarter than you are if you let that meter continue to tick. Pay him and come on.” She moved, so I stood aside and held the door while she got out. On the sidewalk she faced me and said, “You seem to be in charge of everything, so you pay him.”
It was an unpleasant surprise, but I didn’t hesitate, first, because I liked the way she was handling herself, and second, because all expenses would come out of the five grand anyway. So I parted with two bucks, took her elbow and steered her to the sedan, opened the front door and told Joe Groll, “Move over a little. There’s room for three.”
It was his turn to let his jaw hang. Apparently it was going to be prolonged, and he didn’t budge, so I took her elbow again and escorted her around to the other side and told her, “Slide in under the wheel. I’d rather have you next to me anyhow.”
She did so, and I got in and slammed the door. By the time I had got the engine started and rolled to the corner and turned downtown, neither of them had said a word.
“If I were you folks,” I told them, “I would incorporate and call it the Greater New York Mutual Tailing League. I don’t see how you keep track of who is following whom on any given day. Of course if one of you gets convicted of murder that will put a stop to it. You have now, however, the one good reason that I know of for getting married, the fact that a wife can’t testify against a husband or vice versa.” I swerved around a pushcart. “One thing you want to watch. Now that Poor is dead, Helen will try to sell you the idea, Joe, that she was meeting him on the sly merely to keep him informed of anything Blaney seemed to be up to, and Joe will try to sell you the idea, Helen, that he was seeing Martha merely for that too. Now, of course, he can’t marry her, at least not for a long time, because it would look suspicious, and he may want you for a stopgap. You should both be realistic-”
“Can it,” Joe croaked. “We’re not going there, where I said. Stop and let me out.”
“Oh, yes we are.” I stepped on it. “Stopgap or not, you are enjoying feeling her sit next to you as much as I am, and I could keep right on going to the foot of the rainbow. If you really wanted out, what was wrong with any of the stops for traffic lights? She can help us, and it won’t hurt to have a witness. The idea is, Helen, we are bound for the Blaney and Poor office to go through the abditories. We think we hid something in them.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We don’t know. Maybe a detailed estimate in triplicate of what it would cost to kill Poor. Maybe a blueprint of the cigar. Even a rough sketch would help.”
“That’s ridiculous. You sound to me like a clown.”
“Good. It is a well-known fact that clowns have the biggest and warmest hearts on record except mothers of three characters in books by Dickens. So if and when you get tired of being a stopgap, just give me a ring and-here we are.”
I pulled over to the curb in front of Blaney and Poor’s on Varick Street.
VII
That office was no place for a stranger to poke around in. It was on the first floor of a dingy old building in the middle of the block, with part of the factory, so Joe said, in the rear, and the rest on the second floor. As soon as we were inside and had the lights turned on, Helen sat in a chair at a desk and looked disdainful, but as the search went on I noticed she kept her eyes open.
Joe tossed his hat and coat on a chair, got a screwdriver from a drawer, went to the typewriter on the desk Helen was sitting at, used the screwdriver, lifted out the typewriter roller, unscrewed an end of it and turned it vertical, and about four dozen dice rolled out. He held the open end of the roller so the light would hit it right, peered in, put the dice back in and screwed the end on, and put the roller back on the machine. His fingers were as swift and accurate as any I had ever seen. Even if I had known about it, I would have needed at least ten minutes for the operation; he took about three.
“Trick dice?” I asked him.
“They’re just a stock item,” he said, and went over to a door in the rear wall, opened it, took it off its hinges leaned it against a desk, knelt on the floor, removed the strip from the bottom edge of the door-and out came about ten dozen lead pencils.
“Trick pencils?”
“When you press, perfume comes out,” he said, and stretched out flat to look into the abditory. I thought I might as well help with the doors and ambled over to open one in another wall that would probably be to a closet. I grabbed the knob and turned, and something darted out and banged me on the shin so that almost anyone but me would have screamed in pain. I uttered a word or two. The piece of wood that had hit me had gone back into place and was part of the door again.
“That shouldn’t have been left connected,” Helen said, trying not to look as if she wanted to giggle. I saw no reason to reply. My shin feeling as it did, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if the skin was broken and started to lift my foot to a chair, but the light was dim because the ones in that part of the room hadn’t been turned on, so I stepped to the wall and flipped a switch. A stream of water, a thin stream but with plenty of pressure, came out of the wall and hit me just below the right eye. I leaped to one side and used more and better words.
“That’s interesting,” Helen said. “Some customers say that the person won’t be standing in the right place, but you were, exactly. A person not as tall as you would get it right in the eye.”
“You are,” I told her grimly.
“I am what?”
“Not as tall as me.”
“Oh, I have better sense.”
Only a female idiot would have put it on a basis of sense. Joe, who had put the door back up and was lying on the floor again with his head stuck under a desk, said to me, “Maybe you hadn’t better touch things.”
“Thanks for the suggestion.”
I went to a chair at the end of the desk he was under and asked, “What happens if I sit on this?”
“Nothing. That one’s okay.”
I sat and became strictly a spectator, after wiping my face and neck and inspecting my shin. Joe continued his tour of the abditories, which were practically everywhere, in desk lamps, chair legs, water cooler, ash trays, even one in the metal base of a desk calendar that was on a big desk in the corner.
It was while he had that one open, jiggling things out of it, that I heard him mutter, “This is a new one on me.” He walked over and put something on the desk in front of Helen and asked her, “What is that thing, do you know?”
She picked it up, inspected it, and shook her head. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Let me see.” I got up and went over, and Helen handed it to me. The second I saw it I stopped being casual inside, but I tried to keep the outside as before.
It was a thin metal capsule, about three-quarters of an inch long and not over an eighth of an inch in diameter, smooth all over, with no seam or opening, except at one end where a thread came through, a dark brown medium-sized thread as long as my index finger. I grunted. “Where did you find it?”