But he couldn’t really do anything to protect people when they were moving around the city, when he didn’t have any idea of the part of town in which the firebug would strike next. This wasn’t ordinary commercial arson.
There were certain times when it paid off to plant extra deputies in the wholesale millinery district in the thirties — right after the spring buying season was over. He had found out that it was a good idea, right after Christmas, to put added men in the areas where the toy manufacturing and wholesaling companies were located. Fires in the fur and garment districts along Seventh Avenue were somehow much more frequent right after the department stores had done their winter buying and sellers had a lot of excess stock to carry over to the next season. But he couldn’t foretell disaster in the present instance; it was a matter of watching and waiting — and hurrying to get the firebug before he burned down any more buildings.
He rang Barney from a confectionery store pay booth. “All quiet along the Bowery?”
“As calm as could be expected.” Barney was being cautious. “There’s a special messenger from the commissioner’s office lurking out in the hall.”
“Do him good to wait. How’s about doing an errand for me?”
The clerk broke in, anxiously, “I wouldn’t put it past those cops on the Shoo-Fly Squad to tap these phone wires here, boss.”
“Neither would I. I’ll meet you in the five-and-ten. Across the Square. United we stand.”
“Huh? What? Oh! Charades, no less. I’m as good as there, already.”
Five minutes later Barney crossed the Plaza to the United Cigar store on the ground floor of the Woolworth Building. Pedley was there, waiting.
“Hi, Barney.”
“Morning, boss. Holy cats! Whose door’d you bump into in the dark?”
“Miss Lownes’s. We’re going to have to drag her before a committing magistrate shortly. And then yours sincerely is going to be made to look like a badly rundown heel. I spent the night in her apartment.”
The grin that spread over Barney’s face was something to behold. He let out a long, low whistle of envy. “Never a word shall pass these lips, boss.”
“Plenty of word will get around. Sime Dublin caught me there — with my pants over a chair. Lay off that lascivious leer. Her husband undressed me and put me to bed. I was unconscious until I woke up to find myself in as sweet a frame as Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy.’”
“She put one over on you?”
“She. And Terry Ross. And Dublin. I’m about to have heaped on me more scorn than anybody since John Wilkes Booth.”
“Maybe,” Barney said, “Ollie can help.”
“If Ollie hears of this, I hate to think what she’ll do!”
“She’s been calling you.”
“Where is she?”
“Uptown. At Show.”
“Alone?”
“With an editor or somebody. She said to tell you Mister Toleman had been most helpful. And that she thought maybe she was getting somewhere. And would you please come up and see—”
Chapter Thirty-One
Strip Tease on Paper
The offices of Show, the News-magazine of the Entertainment World, were a bedlam of clacking typewriters, jangling telephones, feverish conversation. Nobody gave Pedley a second glance.
He found Ollie in the file room with an office boy in enthusiastic attendance. She grinned at the marshal, screwing up one eye to avoid the smoke of her own cigarette.
“Hello, darling. This is worse than delving into the tomb of King Tut.”
“What you expect to unearth, Ollie?”
“Something to verify my reticent cavalier’s suspicions.”
“How’d you make out with Wesley, the Wonder-Man?”
She glanced roguishly at the office boy. “You couldn’t classify his technique as neolithic. I escaped the fate worse’n death.”
“So did I. Barely.”
She was solicitous about the bump on his forehead. “Did the insidious Leila try to stun you and drag you home to her cave?”
“She succeeded.”
“Why, Ben!” She clasped her hands over her heart. “Must all my pangs of passion go unrequited because of this Other Woman?”
The office boy said, “Aw! You’re kiddin’—”
He left them together in the file room.
“What’d you learn, Ollie?”
“Deep in his cups — after the fourth claret lemonade — he confided to me that he knew what’s in the Florentine case.”
“But. he’d sworn on a Gideon Bible never to reveal his knowledge?”
“It’s full of love letters.”
“Oh! ‘My own cutie-pie, with remembrances of the last time we were together — underlined — from her own Matey-Watey.’”
“Have you been reading them?”
“Not yet. I have hopes. Does Wesley know who they were from?”
Ollie stood up and stretched languorously. “My escort was vague on that point. My intuition tells me there may be a couple from little Wessie, himself.”
“That babe’s worse than a grass fire for catching everything around her.”
“He didn’t admit any such peccadilloes. All he’d opine for sure is, there’ll be a lot of melting missives signed ‘your ever-lovin’ Chuck.’”
“Is she blackmailing her radio producer?”
“Wesley says she’s been working with Gaydel. To get brother Ned out of the way. So she and Chuck can split the profits of the program.”
Pedley looked blankly at her for a long moment. Then finally he sighed.
“Close — but no seegar. Doesn’t quite ring the bell, Ollie. Might account for several points. But there are a few that don’t jibe.”
“I thought that, myself. Why cut Gaydel in on it?”
“Especially when she’s just married a marine who’d feed Chuck to the goldfish if he thought the producer was still fooling around.”
“Wes says Kim Wasson will verify his story, soon as she can talk. Says the arranger met Leila through Chuck when he was running a one-tube station down in Baltimore four or five years ago.”
“Baltimore, again. Makes the third time. Adds up.” Pedley took out the snapshot of Leila and Ned. “I found this stuck in the lining of Lownes’s wallet. Looked as if he’d been hanging onto it a long time. Must have been a reason. And this was snapped in Baltimore.”
“Clairvoyance? Or do you have inside information?”
“Only town I know where half the houses have the same kind of low front steps. White marble. They don’t really eat off ’em, but they keep ’em scrubbed clean enough to.”
Ollie ruffled the pages of the magazines on the long binder-stick. “Take a little of that. Add a dash of this” — she pointed to an item in an issue of Show, dated March 26, 1940:
Chaney J. ‘Chuck’ Gaydel, who provides entertainment for local thousands over WBIZ predicts a sensational success for his new songbird Leila Lownes who is being starred in a noontime program at 12:15 daily: Songs You Remember to Love. Miss Lownes is also appearing at the Academy for the balance of the week. This is her first appearance on a radio program of her own.
Pedley read it carefully. “That could be the tip-off, toots.” He caught Ollie by the arm. “If we stay in here much longer, they’ll be asking us to sign a lease. Leave us hence.”
She didn’t ask where they were heading. Not until he’d parked on Broome Street and they were entering the rattletrap old building did she comment at all.
“I’m completely in the dark, Ben. Apparently you see a gleam of light.”
“One candle power. A mile away. In a tunnel.”
They went upstairs, past a row of benches at which men in laboratory dusters were sitting, eyes glued to the dual eyepieces of comparison microscopes. One of the men crooked a finger in Pedley’s direction.