by Jerry eBooks
None of these was now present. No corpse, no newspapers, no laundry packages.
“Well?” Fagin said ominously. “Where is the body?”
Dibble’s speech returned to him, and a sense of outrage, of indignation, began to flood him.
“This is absurd!” he choked.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Fagin said dryly. “Is this some sort of a joke?” the little manager ventured timidly.
Dibble turned on the two.
“See here,” he said indignantly, “there was a body. Right in this room. Ten minutes ago. I saw it. I’m no damned fool. My vision is perfect. There was a body.”
Fagin stepped past Dibble into the bedroom. He looked carefully around, grunted, bent his huge bulk over to peer beneath the bed. He groaned, stood upright, turned to glare at Dibble, then moved into the small bathroom. He reappeared a moment later.
“Maybe,” he said acidly, “the corpse went for a walk.”
“This is highly unusual,” the nervous manager declared uncertainly. “Highly unusual, Mr. Dibble.”
Dibble had opened the closet door, seen nothing, closed it again. He turned angrily on the little manager.
“I am not in the habit of being made a damned fool of,” Dibble snorted. “There was a corpse here. I saw it.”
Fagin rejoined them.
“Maybe it was some other corpse, some other time, some other place,” he said. “Maybe you’re just mixed up.”
Fagin was a big hulk of a man; Dibble a vest pocket dynamo. He rose up on his toes, pushed his face close to Fagin’s.
“Maybe you’d like a punch in the nose, you insolent boob!” Dibble rasped.
“Gentlemen!” cried the little manager in alarm. Fagin sighed. Dibble came down off his toes.
Fagin spoke wearily to the manager.
“Maybe we’d better get back to the lobby,” he said. “We’ve both got work to do.”
“Just a minute!” Dibble had just remembered something.
HE STEPPED over to the telephone by the bed and picked up the wires leading from the instrument to the box. Something hadn’t changed, at any rate. The wires were still disconnected from the box.
“How about this!” Dibble exclaimed triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you the phone connection had been broken?”
Fagin turned his weary, red-rimmed eyes pityingly on Dibble.
“Next time you have a telephone out of order and want to report it, do so to Repair or Room Service, not to the house detective or the manager,” he said.
Fagin and the manager filed out of the room, leaving Dibble standing there holding the severed wires aloft. As they moved out into the hallway, Dibble heard Fagin mutter something unintelligible, then chuckle pityingly. Dibble’s complexion slowly grew purple.
He dropped the telephone wires and stood there glaring at the door.
“Damned idiots!” he snorted.
Dibble looked carefully around the room in the next five minutes, paying particular attention to the carpeting where the dead man’s head had lain. Then he recalled the newspapers that had obviously prevented any of the blood from staining the carpet. He sighed then, and started for the door.
At the door, his hand on the knob, Dibble felt his outrage and indignation returning to him. He clamped his jaws hard on the cigar in his teeth, snorted angrily, and slammed the door in his wake.
Dibble’s disposition, by the time he had traveled the scant floor between his own room and the one he had just left, was quite definitely growing worse. He was muttering to himself as he reached the ninth floor and started down the corridor to his room.
“Ought to call the police!” Dibble grunted. “Maybe they’d be idiotic, too. Never heard of such stupidity.”
He found his key and was about to insert it in the lock of his door when he saw that the door was slightly ajar. In his departure a while back he’d probably forgotten to close it completely. He shoved his key in his pocket and pushed into his room.
Dibble smelled cigarette smoke at once, and heard the voice an instant later.
“Okay, buddy. Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.”
DIBBLE stepped through the hallway into his bedroom quickly. His outrage and indignation had left him in the sudden surprise and resultant curiosity.
He saw his visitor as he reached the end of the hall and the threshold of the bedroom. The man was sitting in an armchair. He had a glass in his hand, and at his elbow was a bottle of Dibble’s bourbon.
Dibble’s eyebrows and temperature both went up a notch.
And then Dibble saw that the man—a youngish, wrestler-like fellow with a broken nose, bushy black eyebrows and thick black hair—held a pistol in his other hand. The pistol, which Dibble had no way of knowing was a .45 was pointed at Dibble.
“Take a seat on the edge of the bed, buddy,” said the bearish young man. His voice was surprisingly soft, curiously touched by a faint and unrecognizable accent.
Dibble stared a moment at the gun. Then his eyes met those of the gunman.
“Put that damned thing down,” Dibble snapped. “It might go off.”
The young man grinned. But it wasn’t a humorous grin.
“It already has, once, today,” he said. “If you don’t want it to go off again, you’d better sit down there on the edge of the bed. And keep your hands up.”
Dibble sat down reluctantly. He held his hands aloft.
“This is a lot of damned nonsense. Can’t expect to get away with this sort of thing. Give me that gun and I’ll put in a good word for you if I can.”
The young man thought this very funny. At least worth a brief chuckle. He put down his drink, leaned forward in his chair, the gun still trained on Dibble.
“Okay, cough up. Where is it?”
Dibble frowned. “My money? I left it all in the room here. Don’t tell me you were damned fool enough to miss it.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed. “None of that guff. I’m not a fool. You know what I mean. Where is it?”
“Supposing,” said Dibble, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t.”
Dibble realized that the young man could not be persuaded anything to the contrary.
“You know me?” Dibble asked.
“Only from today,” said the gunman. “You went into Soltz’s room, after I’d plugged him. That’s the first I knew of your connection with him. But I didn’t have time to learn all Soltz’s connections in just two days.”
“You saw me go into his room?” Dibble demanded.
“I’d have followed you in and plugged you,” the young man said matter-of-factly, “only there were a number of people in the corridor outside the room at that time.”
How’d you know this was my room?” Dibble asked.
“I asked the operator who’d dropped you off of the elevator at Soltz’s floor. He knew your name and room number. You left your door open. I decided to wait here for you.”
Dibble could restrain his curiosity on this matter no longer.
“What did you do with the body?”
“After you left the room I waited until the hall was clear. I stuffed the whole works into a mop closet right next to Soltz’s room.”
DIBBLE’S mouth went tight with satisfaction. That would teach that blundering idiot Fagin a few things.
“I just wondered,” Dibble said vaguely.
“But that doesn’t mean a damn thing. Where is it? That’s all I want from you,” the young man said.
“Not here,” Dibble said with certainty. “You don’t think I’d leave it here, do you?”
The young man cursed. Dibble wished he knew what the young man was babbling about.
“Where is it?” he snarled. “I’ll give you just two minutes to tell me. To hell with this bantering.” The gunman’s eyes were blazing now.
Dibble swallowed hard.
“In a safe deposit box, of course,” Dibble said. “Where?”
Dibble na
med a bank. “I’m the only one who can open it,” he said, pleased with his deception. “They know me at the bank.”
The young man rose abruptly. He glanced at his watch.
“We’re going there,” he said, “right now. Get up.”
Dibble rose, still holding his hands aloft. The gunman moved up to him, frisked him swiftly for weapons, stepped back, satisfied.
“Okay,” he said. “You can drop your hands. “Keep ’em natural from now on. I’ll be right beside you and just a half step back, all along. This gun’ll be in my pocket. My finger will be on the trigger. Any false move on your part will be the last. Understand?”
“Naturally,” said Dibble. He let his hands fall to his sides.
The young gunman dropped his pistol into the pocket of his baggy brown tweed coat.
“Okay,” he said, pointing to the door with his bulging pocket, “you first.”
Dibble looked at the young man’s hand in the bulging pocket. He sighed, turned, and led the way out of the room.
There was no one in the corridor, no one waiting for the elevator. But Dibble realized that it wouldn’t have been any help had there been someone around. The young man was too close. His hand was ready on the gun.
At the elevators, the young man pushed the “Down” buzzer. Dibble stared morosely at the vase of sand and cigarette butts just beside him, between the elevator doors. There was the usual array of match sticks and gum wrappers, and someone had tossed a single-edge safety razor blade into the debris.
The indicator showed that the elevator was on the way up. Dibble took his cigar from his teeth and looked at it distastefully.
“Damn thing’s gone out,” he snorted.
He bent over the vase, grinding the cigar butt into the sand, and when he straightened he had the safety razor blade palmed quite inconspicuously in his right hand.
The elevator arrived. The doors opened. Dibble stepped in ahead of the young gunman. He took a place in the far corner of the cage and the young man moved beside him. There was no one else in the car save the operator.
They picked up several passengers at the seventh floor, however, and three more at the fourth. There were three more passengers by the time the car reached the lobby. The young man prodded Dibble inconspicuously with the gun in his pocket.
“Let them go out first,” he whispered.
Dibble did so, and in the noise of their movement, was able to drop the safety razor blade to the floor of the car without its being heard.
“Okay,” hissed Dibble’s escort.
DIBBLE moved out of the car slowly, making sure that the young man did not drop more than three or four inches back of him.
“Easy does it,” said Dibble’s escort softly. “Be natural, or be dead. Take your choice.”
“Of course,” said Dibble.
“That’s the way,” applauded his captor.
Dibble made for the door at the south end of the lobby. It entailed passing the desk, where he saw the big-stomached Fagin leaning negligently against the counter.
Dibble walked as slowly as he could without creating suspicion in the young man’s mind. The gunman kept close to him.
Behind them, Dibble heard somebody giggle. It was a feminine giggle, and Dibble flushed faintly but continued his easy saunter toward the door.
He was almost at the desk when he heard a man’s hearty guffaw. Then there was more laughter, rising rapidly in volume and growing greater until it was a contagious thing that swept the lobby behind them.
The young gunman’s step almost faltered. He looked at Dibble suspiciously.
“What the hell’s wrong?”
Dibble shrugged. “Haven’t any idea.”
The young man turned to look back over his shoulder. Dibble did so, too. Several dozen of the lobby occupants were gathered in small groups, convulsed in laughter, pointing at Dibble and his companion.
“Say!” the young man grated savagely. “Something is—”
His sentence was interrupted by a sudden loud frightened voice.
“Mr. Dibble. I say, Mr. Dibble!” the voice cried. Dibble saw the thin, nervous little manager running toward him. He had obviously been somewhere behind them in the lobby crowd. His face was flushed in crimson dismay and he was staring at Dibble wide-eyed.
“Listen,” grated the gunman ominously, his suspicions now quite thoroughly aroused.
At the sound of the manager’s voice, they had both stopped and turned to face the elevators they’d just left. That put Fagin, and the hotel guests at the desk behind them.
Fagin’s laughter was the first, and the loudest, to roar forth. Then the new laughter was immediately added to it.
The little manager paused breathlessly before Dibble and his companion now.
“Mr. Dibble,” he gasped, his voice barely heard above the laughter that filled the lobby. “You are apparently unaware of it, but—I mean, I feel it is my duty to tell you—ah—”
But Dibble hadn’t been paying any attention to the manager. He had been too intent on the young man at his side. And now, as he saw the gunman’s attention distracted a dozen ways by the laughter and confusion, he acted.
Dibble took a step backward, then kicked upward, football style, with his right foot. It smashed squarely into the young man’s hand—the hand in the bulging pocket.
There was a simultaneous roaring. One of the gun going off, and the other a roar of pain from the gunman’s lips.
Someone screamed, and the laughter had suddenly subsided completely. Only the raging torrent of obscenity from the gunman’s lips now split the air. He was tugging at his broken hand, trying to wrest it from his pocket, doubling up instinctively with pain as he did so.
All this happened in a split second. And in the next half second Dibble took advantage of the young gunman’s doubled-over position. He delivered another savage, clean-swinging kick to the point of the young man’s chin.
The howls of pain stopped abruptly and the young gunman fell forward to the floor, landing flush on his face in the manner of one out for the count.
Fagin had rushed up and was making heroic efforts to kick the unconscious young thug further into unconsciousness. The lobby was a chaos of shouts and screams and confusion.
Dibble turned to the almost hysterical little manager.
“Stop blubbering, man. Call the police. You’ll find that body I told you about in the mop closet next to eight-oh-nine. And get me something to wrap around my middle. I’ve made enough of a spectacle of myself.”
DIBBLE sat in the manager’s office half an hour later. He had changed his trousers and was busily answering the questions of a business-like, gray-haired homicide lieutenant. The hotel manager, Fagin the house detective, and a number of other official persons were present.
“That’s how I happened to find the body,” Dibble said. “Had to get a decent pair of drawers, you know. These damned fools”—he shot a withering glance at the chastened Fagin and the manager—“just about drove me crazy. Wouldn’t believe me.”
The lieutenant from the homicide squad smiled wryly.
“And you say you used that razor blade you picked up to slit the seat out of your trousers on the way down in the elevator?”
“Had to,” Dibble said. “Only way to call attention without my guard’s getting suspicious. With my trousers ripped wide open, and those hideous drawers visible to the world, I knew I could cause enough commotion in the lobby to start a small riot.”
The homicide lieutenant chuckled. “You have a nice kicking toe.”
“Great drop-kicker in my days at college. Class of ’02 at Barrow U.,” Dibble said unblushingly. “Still keep in shape. Exercise every morning and night. Man’s a damned fool who doesn’t.”
A serious young man with blond hair and wide shoulders and glasses entered the room at that moment. All heads turned to observe his entrance.
The lieutenant from homicide spoke.
“Ah, Weber, glad you’re here,” he said. Then,
to the others, he added, “Gentlemen, this is Mr. Weber of the Federal Bureau.”
Weber nodded by way of acknowledging the introduction.
“It was Haupt, all right,” he said, speaking to the homicide lieutenant. “He’s confessed to killing his ex-confederate, Soltz. Soltz was trying to make a deal to sell his information to our office. Haupt”—he nodded at Dibble—“the chap you knocked out, was furious. He wanted to get the message from Soltz. They were both German agents. Soltz had picked up the message from a submarine off the coast, then failed to show up at a meeting with Haupt where he was supposed to turn it over. Haupt tracked Soltz to the city here, killed him, but didn’t find the message in his search.”
“But what on earth was the message?” Dibble demanded.
Weber, the FBI man, smiled. “I’m coming to that. You had the message all along, Mr. Dibble. Haupt didn’t know that. He only knew that you were somehow involved with Soltz and probably knew where it was. That’s why he waited for you in your room, after seeing you enter Soltz’s room.”
“Too damned involved,” said Dibble impatiently. “Get to the point.”
“Soltz was afraid Haupt might find him. He hid the message temporarily until he could figure out a way to sell it to us. He hid it by sending it off with the rest of his laundry. That laundry was returned, by mistake, to you, Dibble.”
“Message in the laundry? Preposterous!” Dibble snorted.
“You have a washroom here?” Weber asked the manager. The manager nodded, pointed to a door at the end of the room.
“Be good enough to come with me a moment,” said Weber.
Dibble frowned but followed the agent into the washroom. The door closed behind them. Those in the office heard voices murmuring, Dibble’s, then Weber’s. There were several indignant exclamations from Dibble. Then Weber emerged from the washroom. In his hand he held a pair of from the washroom. In his hand he held a pair of silk, riotously colored and madly patterned shorts.
“Here, gentlemen, is the message the two spies, Haupt and Soltz, wrangled over. These crazy colors, and the utterly preposterous pattern, are nothing less than a very ingenious symbol code containing instructions to several of the most prominent German saboteurs on the east coast. Highly ingenious, gentlemen, but we’ve encountered similar samples of it in scarves, handkerchiefs, and so forth, before. Our cryptographers will crack it easily enough, I imagine.”
