Mouldy lifted his massive shoulders in a shrug. Then a customer at one of the tables in the cocktail lounge called him over to introduce him to a friend, and while he was occupied I went on back to Fausta’s office. I used her private phone to dial my own number, and Fausta answered at once.
“What’s up?” I inquired. “What the devil are you doing there?”
“Waiting for you, my one. Where are you?”
“Where I’m supposed to be,” I told her. “At El Patio. Didn’t you say pick you up here?”
“And did you not phone a message to my headwaiter saying you were hung up and I was to take a taxi to your apartment?” she countered.
“No,” I said slowly. “But if someone did, I don’t like the smell of it. Anyone else there?”
“I am all alone. Did you not leave that note on the door saying the door was unlocked and I was to wait inside?”
“Cripes, no,” I said with rising panic. “Listen, Fausta. Go lock both the front and back doors right now. Then sit there and don’t let anyone in until I get there. Got that?”
There was a sudden gasp, a half-articulate cry of pain, and then silence.
“Fausta!” I shouted.
“She decided to take a little nap, friend,” a low voice said in my ear. “But don’t worry about her. I’m as good with a sap as I am with a twenty-two. The bump won’t even show.”
The voice was that of the young gunman, Alberto Thomaso.
Forcing my voice to come out deadly calm, I asked, “What do you want, Al?”
“Me? Nothing, friend. I just work here. My boss wants a thing or two, though.”
“Who’s your boss?”
He let out a cynical chuckle. “Let’s not waste time with silly questions, pal. Where are you?”
“At El Patio.”
“Where at El Patio?”
“In Fausta’s private office.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the number of that phone?”
In a tight voice I read it off from the center plate.
“I’ll call you back in about an hour,” Alberto said. “You answer personally. If anyone else answers, your blonde girl friend is done. Got it?”
“I’ve got it,” I said bleakly.
“Another thing. Every five minutes until I call, somebody else will ring that number. If the line is busy, the girl is cooked. That’s to make sure you don’t make any outside calls.”
When I made no answer, he said, “Neat, ain’t it? The boss figured when you got Miss Moreni’s message you’d use her office to phone here, and you’d be there all alone. You’re stuck. If you get far enough from that phone so you can’t answer it instantly when it rings, or if you use it to call the cops, the girl gets it. On the other hand, if you play along, I guarantee she won’t get hurt.”
“I’ll play along,” I said. “But I’ve got some instructions too.”
He emitted a little laugh. “You ain’t in much of a position to give instructions.”
“No,” I admitted, “but I’m giving them anyway. Don’t hurt Fausta and I’ll do whatever you say. If anything happens to her, I’ll hunt you down and kill you. That’s a guarantee too.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” he assured me. “That is, nothing but being locked up for a time. You’ll hear from me in an hour.”
The phone went dead.
While I was talking to Alberto, my mind had been too full of concern for Fausta to even wonder why she was being kidnaped. But the moment he hung up I began to understand the reason. And the more I thought about it, the more amazed I became at the mixture of cleverness and stupidity behind the kidnaping.
It seemed obvious to me that Walter Ford’s killer had engineered the snatch, hoping to use Fausta as a lever to force me to abandon investigation of the case. The manner in which Fausta was kidnaped was clever enough, but the motive struck me as almost incredibly stupid. For even if it accomplished its purpose of making me drop the investigation, the killer should have known that eventually I would tell the whole story to the police, and to them it would simply constitute further evidence that someone was desperately trying to prevent the frame of Thomas Henry from coming to light.
All through the case it was impressing me more and more that Ford’s killer possessed an amazing mixture of brilliance and stark stupidity. These thoughts skipped through my mind almost instantaneously, then my whole attention reverted to plans for getting Fausta out of her situation. The elaborate plot for making sure I would stick close to the phone and couldn’t call the police, like most of the killer’s plots, had a cardinal defect. I had phoned my apartment from Fausta’s private phone, which had a direct line into the building. Next to it on her desk was a phone which went through El Patio’s switchboard.
The inspector dislikes being disturbed on police business after five o’clock in the evening, but at the moment I wasn’t concerned about anyone’s feelings. I cut him off in the middle of a growl.
“Listen fast, Inspector,” I said. “That young hood Alberto Thomaso has put the snatch on Fausta. Why, doesn’t matter right now, but I just talked to him on the phone. I’m in Fausta’s office and he had Fausta at my apartment.”
When he interrupted to ask how this arrangement came about, I said, “Just hold the questions and listen, Inspector. My instructions are to wait right here, where Alberto will phone again in an hour. Meantime a confederate of Alberto’s will call me every five minutes on Fausta’s phone to make sure I’m still here and I’m not calling the police. If I don’t answer, or if the line is busy, Fausta gets it. Alberto doesn’t know Fausta has two phones. I’m calling on the second.”
At that moment Fausta’s private phone pealed.
“There’s the call now,” I said. “Hold it and don’t make any squawking noises, or the caller might realize I’ve got a second phone.”
Laying down the one phone, I picked up the other and said, “Moon speaking.”
There was silence, a click and a buzzing noise. I replaced the receiver and picked up the other again.
“Here’s what I want,” I said rapidly. “First, get some cops to my flat. Probably they’ll get there too late, but it’s a slim chance. Next, get somebody here fast. Fausta has extensions to both phones in her apartment upstairs. A cop upstairs can listen on the extension of her private phone and use the switchboard phone to arrange for tracing the calls. Got it?”
“I can arrange for the last from here,” the inspector said. “What’s that private phone number?”
When I read it to him, he said, “Check. I won’t call you back because the phone might ring just as you were talking to your caller on the other phone. Think I’ll come out there soon as I get things moving.”
He rang off.
During the next twenty minutes Fausta’s phone rang on schedule every five minutes, and each time I answered I was greeted only by silence, the click of the other phone hanging up, and then the buzz of the dial tone. At the end of twenty minutes Warren Day walked in.
Giving me a gruff nod, he asked which was the phone connecting with the club’s switchboard and, when I pointed to it, picked it up. In a crisp tone he informed the operator he was Inspector Warren Day of Homicide, told her to get him police headquarters and instructed her to leave the connection open until she was told to close it.
A moment later the inspector was saying, “Blake? Any news from Moon’s flat?”
After listening a moment and giving a noncommittal grunt, Day said, “I’m having this line kept open so I’ll be in constant communication with you. Put a man on it and keep him there with the receiver to his ear so all I’ll have to do is pick up the phone if I have any orders. If you want me, have your man let out a whistle. I’ll be close enough to the phone to hear it.”