“Not much. No. If one of Lownes’s friends found you in here with the place turned upside down, it wouldn’t be too hard for him to draw the conclusion you’d pushed the button on brother Edward. Then you might get yours — without benefit of jury.”
“That’s silly. When I came in here, I wasn’t even aware Ned had been murdered. If I had known, of course, I’d never have come near the suite.” He edged toward the door. “Apparently I can’t be of any help to you in your investigation. So if it’s all the same—”
“As you were.” Pedley sauntered up to him, patted his pockets, shoved a hand inside the producer’s coat, drew a thin sheaf of blue papers from the inside pocket. “What have we here?”
“Contracts.” Gaydel chewed his lower lip.
“Your property?” The marshal scanned them briefly.
“As agency executive, I have a right—”
“Bushwa! These were Ned Lownes’s property. Signed by the Winn Coffee people. So you didn’t find what you were looking for. You ran across these and decided they might come in handy. They might. But they won’t come in with you. You’re out.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Roll your hoop.” Pedley stuck the contracts in his own pocket. “Before I roll you downtown.”
Gaydel went quickly, shut the door behind him. Pedley didn’t go through the waste motions of searching the room; the others had done that too thoroughly to overlook any Florentine leather case. Maybe the thing hadn’t been there at all. Maybe the first search party had located it. All he could be sure of was that Gaydel hadn’t.
The maid might have some ideas about the identity of the first ransack-artist. She might still be on the floor. It was worth a try. If Gaydel had been able to bribe her, she could be made to talk.
He went to the door, stuck his head out. He didn’t see who was behind the door — but he felt the blow coming. That was all he felt.
Chapter Eight
In a Medium Swivet
IT WAS DARK and wet and cold. He ached so it was torture to attempt movement. When he did attempt it, he found he couldn’t.
It took him a while to realize that his right arm was strapped to his side with surgeon’s tape, his feet bound together and his mouth plastered shut with the same adhesive.
He was propped up awkwardly in a bathtub, his left wrist locked to the end faucet with his own handcuffs. Someone had intended him to stay put.
If he could just get a leverage with his feet, twist around so the fingers of his left hand could reach the tape binding his right arm—
After a while he gave it up.
This must be Lownes’s bathroom. His assailant wouldn’t have run the risk of lugging him out of the suite. And the man hadn’t meant to kill him; there’d have been plenty of opportunity for that while Pedley lay unconscious. A possible exception occurred to him — maybe the slugger was coming back to attend to unfinished business.
Maybe he was back already — somebody was moving around in the next room. Still, it might be that floor-maid the marshal had been looking for—
It was a sweating effort to lift his feet off the tub, bang his heels on the porcelain. Probably the person in the next room wouldn’t pay any attention to what sounded like a steam-pounding in the pipes, anyway—
The knob rattled, the door was kicked open, light flooded in. For an instant, Pedley could only make out an ominous silhouette in the doorway. The ominous part was in the man’s right hand — an automatic, outlined against the bright light.
The man in the doorway murmured surprised profanity. He came into the bathroom a step. Then he threw back his head and laughed, raucously.
Pedley knew that harsh guffaw — and the man who belched it out so heartily. Practically the last person in the world the marshal expected — or wanted — to see was Sime Dublin. Captain Simon Dublin, of the Eighteen Karat Squad.
Sime was as smooth as greased glass — and as difficult to see through. The resentment which Pedley held against him had nothing to do with the apocryphal feud between the Police and Fire departments. Empowered with special and secret authority direct from the Police Commissioner’s office, Sime’s ways were dark, if not actually devious. He never said just what he meant or did just what he said he was going to. Pedley’s manner was brusque and direct. Naturally, they grated on each other’s nerves. For Dublin to find the marshal in this predicament was gall and wormwood of the bitterest.
The switch on the wall clicked. Dublin came to the tub, squatted on his heels with his dark blue jowls close to Pedley’s face.
“Ought to take your clothes off before you get in the tub, Benny.” The bright black eyes traveled from the tape over the marshal’s mouth down to the handcuffs.
Pedley mumbled under the adhesive. The line of scar tissue on his right cheekbone whitened.
“Oh — so you’re ready to talk.” Dublin used the police phrase with amusement, ripped the tape from the marshal’s mouth with a careless hand.
“Key to cuffs — fob pocket.” It hurt Pedley’s lips to say even that much.
Dublin went to work on the tape around the right arm; took his time about it.
“Unlock those cuffs!” Pedley spat out a little blood; the tape had taken some of the skin with it.
“Telling me how to run my business?” Dublin complained. “This stuff is stuck to your belt. How can I get to your panty pocket?”
Pedley wrenched his arm free, flexed his fingers, fumbled at the pocket under his belt. “Save the cracks. I just had one.” He got the key around to the handcuffs with difficulty.
The captain of the Special Headquarters Squad let Pedley wrestle the tape loose from his ankles. But when the marshal got his knees under him, Dublin gave him a hand, yanked him upright with a jerk that nearly dislocated the marshal’s shoulder.
“Who played you for a mummy, Ben?”
“At a guess, the same person who left Ned Lownes to fry in his own fat. Maybe you have the party in custody, already?”
“All in good time, my impetuous fire-eater. You can dismiss him from your thoughts. This one isn’t down your alley.”
Pedley sat on the edge of the tub, massaged his wrists. “Who says it isn’t?”
“Medexam’s office. They report enough poison in Lownes’s system to kill two marines.”
“He didn’t check out from denatured alky,” Pedley said. “He was an arson victim.”
“The fire wouldn’t have finished him if it hadn’t been for the blind staggers.”
“You ever go in to the dee-aye with one of those ‘if’ cases, Sime?”
“I’ll go in with this one.” Dublin smiled charmingly. “I’ve just been talking to him about it.”
“Keep on fidoodling around if you want to. I’m going to get an arson indictment.”
“You can get nice odds it’ll turn out to be a presentment for homicide. It you want to make a little side bet, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could find a few bucks that claim the fire was started by Lownes himself. Accidentally, of course.”
Pedley went to the washbasin, sopped cold water on his head. “Who’s putting the pressure on, Sime?”
“Pressure?” Dublin cocked an impish eye. “Perish forbid. ‘I seen my duty and I done it.’”
Pedley sopped a wet cloth against the lump over his right temple. “You’ll be a big help, I can see that. Impounding evidence for Homicide. Tying up witnesses when we want them for examination.”
“Why don’t you step out of it, Ben? What you looking for? A citation?”
The marshal leaned forward, tapped the captain’s top vest buttons with the back of his fingers. “I’m looking for a firebug, Sime. Anybody gets in my way is liable to wind up saying ‘hello’ to a surgeon. Eighteen Karat shooflys not excluded. Pass the word along to the Prosecutor’s office if it’ll make you feel better.”