by Craig Rice
“There are probably some professionals, as you called them, trying to make contacts right now. We don’t have an exclusive on the project. It’s a competition. If this were Istanbul, or Paris, or even Washington D.C., we might not get very far. But it’s my town. I know Chicago. That makes the big difference.”
“Chicago knows you, too. That makes a big danger.”
He had become interested in her gorgeous left breast. He touched the nipple as though it were a button that would turn the lights on. But as quickly, he lost interest. He sprang from the bed. “There’s something I must do.”
He dressed and left the room, checking the outer corridor carefully before he hurried to the red overhead light marking the exit stairs. From that point on, he ceased to be furtive, meeting several Craymore employees on the way to the service entrance.
Outside, he found a public phone and dialed a number. The voice that answered was faintly muffled.
“Yes?”
“We are planning a picnic. I’d like to check the long-range weather forecast.”
“For what day?”
“We plan it for sometime within the next ten days.”
“You will have to be more explicit.”
“I can’t. But definitely within that time.”
There was a pause as though the weatherman were checking his chart. He returned. “I cannot promise you good weather.”
They were being cagey; playing cat and mouse. But they could be handled. “Then perhaps we’d better call off our picnic. It is not beyond possibility that I can get a promise of better weather elsewhere.”
That ought to shake them up—sitting there under their cover waiting for the prize to be laid in their hands. If there were other groups trying to hit pay dirt at Walden, there could also be other hands waiting outside to grab.
“You have to be more explicit as to the day.”
“I can’t.” He sensed the anger at the other end of the phone.
“All right. The chances of bad weather are remote. Check with us again when your plans shape up.”
He grinned and left the phone booth and went back to the Craymore. Ten minutes later, he was in his bellman’s uniform, seated in the lobby waiting for his turn to be called to the desk, thinking of the perfect cover the job gave him.
There was a lull in activity that DuBois welcomed. It gave him time to meditate upon the splendor of his plan. He would probably have cheerfully admitted, upon direct accusation, that he was an egomaniac. But what was wrong with that? Anybody who got anywhere in the world had to be. How else could you beat the competition? DuBois prided himself in the fact that he’d worked out this whole brilliant operation all by himself.
Once before, he’d almost made it—gotten into the big time. That was when he’d had a valuable Washington contact and had been approached by some big wheels with the suggestion that he could profit greatly thereby. The deal fell through because he’d lost his contact. Plain bad luck. But he’d gotten close enough to the big money to smell it, and if the chance ever came again—
It had—a dazzling second chance—and this time he’d moved so carefully and cleverly that luck wouldn’t be a factor; so skillfully that he could only look back with a sense of wonder at his own brilliance. The obstacles in his path had seemed insurmountable. At one end, there was Terminal, the cover name for the people with the money—which made the whole thing Operation Terminal to DuBois at least. At the other end, inside Walden, was some jerk hiding under the cover name of Marcus. A voice over a telephone. Marcus would go along, but not with any risk to himself. So DuBois’ plan had to be foolproof. And it was. Helene Jusus would be the carrier. She would transfer the material from Marcus to DuBois without the foggiest notion of what she was doing.
DuBois had worked with consummate skill. None of his pawns in the game knew any more than each was absolutely required to know. Barnhall, an old Svengali from way back, had no idea why DuBois wanted Helene Justus conditioned. He took the money and did the job. Nor had DuBois told Vivian Conover about John J. Malone.
Having Malone rubbed out had been DuBois’ toughest decision. But it had been necessary. Malone was too close to Helene Justus. All he had to do was set eyes on DuBois just once and the whole deal would have collapsed. But having a guy rubbed out in Chicago, where DuBois had many connections, wasn’t difficult or even dangerous. DuBois had made a telephone call and had then gone down the block to watch a man with his hat pulled down pick up the money from the floor of the telephone booth. They would be hauling Malone out of the lake any morning now.
So things were going fine. There would be a dry run the day Helene Justus went to work at Walden, a precaution demanded by Marcus. Then, in a couple of days, the real thing.
DuBois chuckled. The bell rang at the desk and he went smartly forward to take the grips of a fat Iowa farmer and his wife. As he followed them to the elevator, he fantasized a bit, wondering how they’d react if he told them: I’m no ordinary bellhop. This job’s just a cover while I pull off the neatest heist of the week in a top-secret government plant out on Grand Avenue. The bathroom’s thataway. Anything you need, just ask for me. …
Chapter Seven
“It seemed so exciting at first,” Helene said.
The man sitting across from her in the coffee shop at five minutes after nine the next morning would not have stood out in a crowd. But viewed individually, he had good character in his face and appeared to be a person you could have confidence in.
“I imagine it did,” he said, “but how is it now?”
“Miserable. I’m scared. I’m in so deep. I can’t tell my husband. I can’t—”
“I didn’t agree with Fletcher’s method of handling the case,” the man said. “I don’t believe in asking people to work in the dark. Jack’s theory was, the less you knew, the better off you were. He was a good man, but I think he was wrong.”
“Who killed him?”
“His killer is dead. A cheap hoodlum. You wouldn’t know him.”
“That was when I got frightened. I didn’t expect anyone to be killed.”
“Jack got careless. But now, I think it would be a good idea if we briefed each other.”
“I always wondered what led Mr. Fletcher to get in touch with me. How did he know I’d be of value?”
“It’s rather complicated, but I’ll explain it as best I can. There are several people we have been watching for a long time. You see, in this business, even though you have solid evidence against a suspect, you don’t necessarily pick him up. You wait to see where he leads you. We have people on our lists we watch for years. We learn their habit patterns, how they work. Thus, when a case comes up involving anyone in our files, we have an advantage because we are familiar with their
“M.o.’s?”
“Modus operandi. Methods of operation. When this case we’re involved in broke, some old familiar names turned up. One was Joseph Zalek. Our first smell of him was five years ago when he was approached by an international information syndicate. He was having an affair with the wife of a top-level man in the State Department and the syndicate wanted him to use her to their advantage. Nothing came of it because the husband found out about his wife and divorced her.”
Helene said, “I never heard of anyone by that name.”
“Yes, you have, but under one of his aliases. André DuBois.”
“But he’s French!”
“Hardly. He was born here in Chicago—on the West Side. He’s loaded with ability and he has all kinds of talent. His one weakness is that he’s hopelessly conceited. This case began simply when we started a clearance check on Vivian Conover for her job at Walden. When we found that she was going with Zalek—or DuBois—we made that check pretty thorough.”
“I’d imagine she would have been rejected.”
“Normally she would have, but other factors entered into it. Some things that involved Walden. We put a close surveillance on both Vivian Conover and DuBois and found out that he had been ur
ging her to apply for the job. We learned a great deal about their relationship, and that was when we got a line on you. We arranged to read some of the correspondence between you and Miss Conover and found she was recommending that you go to a psychiatrist named Barnhall, whose name was also in our files.”
“Then you know a great deal about my personal life, don’t you?”
“Honestly, Mrs. Justus, we aren’t the least interested.”
“It was just that I felt my husband and I were drifting apart. I thought it was my fault and I confided in Vivian:”
“Please don’t be embarrassed. That is no concern of ours whatsoever. What did concern us was that DuBois and Barnhall had had dealings before. Then we became convinced that DuBois, through Vivian Conover, was somehow fitting you into plans he had concerning Walden. That was when Fletcher contacted you and asked you to keep us informed as to what took place. When Doctor Barnhall suggested that you get a job at Walden the situation became even more interesting and Fletcher urged you to go along with them and keep us informed.”
“And I agreed. But Vivian! She’s my friend. I’m sure she is not disloyal to her country.”
“If she is, it is because of DuBois’ influence. Was anything of importance said when you went to see her at the Craymore?”
“No. It seemed to me that she had changed, though it could have been my imagination. We didn’t even talk about Walden—my job there or hers. I got the feeling she wanted to get rid of me.”
“DuBois might have been in the next room.”
“Why did she tell me her affair with him had broken off when they were still—”
“It’s obvious that DuBois is working completely under cover. What he’s trying to do is get a vital chemical formula out of Walden. It has to do with our research into what you might call anti-germ warfare. Means of combatting germ warfare if an enemy ever uses it against us. The scientists at Walden have made a real breakthrough on the problem, and several foreign interests would pay almost anything to get their hands on our new formula.”
“I should think so,” Helene said.
“We know where DuBois will deliver it if he succeeds—a man who goes under the cover name of Terminal. He’s authorized to make a big cash payment on receipt. We could pick him up in ten minutes.”
“But there is another man on the inside at Walden—a traitor of the most dangerous type. His cover name is Marcus, but that’s all we know about him. He’s the man we’ve got to get. He’s clever and slippery. He’ll do the inside work, but he refuses to make any move that he considers a risk to himself. The plan in its broad sense is to get the formula out of Walden without our security people being able to prove it ever left, thus leaving Marcus entirely in the clear.”
“And you think DuBois has devised such a plan.”
“Yes. He’s a very dangerous man, too. What he’s doing appeals to his vanity as much as his greed. He wants the money, of course, but even more, he wants to prove his ability to carry out the operation.”
Helene said, “There’s one thing I simply don’t understand—why all this is necessary.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“All this intricate planning on DuBois’ part. Why does Marcus need him at all? Marcus is no doubt a scientist. He’s on the inside. He knows the formula and he’s not a prisoner. He must go home nights. What’s to prevent him from writing it down and giving it to someone on the outside himself? All the scientists at Walden are not watched twenty-four hours a day, are they?”
Blane smiled. “They can’t be sure of that. But the main point is that no one scientist in the plant knows the whole formula. It’s split up. No one man could carry the whole thing away in his head.”
“Then the formula must be safe under any conditions.”
“Not necessarily. We security people can go just so far in protecting vital information. If we put a man on every technician in Walden, it would be the equivalent of running a police state. A way might be devised to assemble the formula on the inside, but no one individual could bring it out in his head. That’s about all we’re sure of. We think you’re their tool.”
“But that’s impossible. I couldn’t get into the restricted area if I wanted to. And I wouldn’t know what to look for if I could!”
“There is a plan, though.”
“But I’ve been no help to you. And I’m only hurting myself. There’s something wrong. It’s Barnhall. He’s—he’s doing something to me—something I can’t guard against.”
Blane regarded Helene with sympathy. His concern possibly stemmed from his fear that she could not or would not follow through as a part of his case. But a personal concern also seemed to be present.
“If you could tell me exactly what—”
“But I can’t! I don’t know!”
“I’m sure you’re in no personal danger, Mrs. Justus.”
“That’s not the point. I feel terribly guilty about not telling my husband. I—”
“I think Fletcher handled that wrong—in asking you to carry the whole burden alone. But now it would be better to leave things as they are.”
“But that’s not all of it. I’m afraid of Barnhall. As I told you, there are gaps in my day—or I get that feeling—things I should remember that I don’t.”
“Perhaps it’s just tension?”
“Perhaps. Exactly how was Mr. Fletcher killed? I saw nothing in this morning’s paper.”
“That brings up another point. Have you any idea what he could have wanted from John J. Malone? Malone is a friend of yours, I believe.”
“John J. Malone! What on earth has he got to do with this?”
“I don’t know. Fletcher’s reports do not mention him. I’m just trying to pick up loose ends. Fletcher was shot by a hired gun outside Malone’s hotel. We haven’t questioned Malone. I’m certain he didn’t have anything to do with Fletcher’s death. The Chicago police withheld word on the murder—kept it from the public press at our request.”
Helene threw up her hands in despair. “The thing gets crazier and crazier!”
“Cases of this type can always seem complicated until they straighten themselves out. It’s our job to—”
“Not my job! I’ve had it.”
“You mean you’re going to withdraw, Mrs. Justus?”
Helene came close to screaming out, “Yes!” But she held it back, gripping her lower lip in her teeth. Then, after long moments, she said, “No. I started it and I’ll finish it.” Her sudden laugh was quick and mirthless. “I never thought I’d get into a situation where fending off a determined wolf like Kent Fargo would be the very least of my troubles. But he will ask me to come to his apartment again.”
“For what reason?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Has he given any indication that he’s involved with DuBois?”
“He knows DuBois. That’s all I can tell you.”
Blane weighed his words. “Don’t go to his apartment if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to, but I’ll go. There’s no point in cutting corners at this stage.”
“I’m sure you know how much we appreciate your help.”
“I can only hope something comes of it,” Helene said….
After Blane left, Helene sat staring at her coffee cup. John J. Malone. How did he fit into this nightmare? She wandered for a time in the mental maze, and gradually something began to clarify.
Perhaps clarify wasn’t quite the word. She began seeing things dimly, but unfamiliar things that made no sense; monsters standing off in the mists of her mind, shaping and reshaping like things out of a dream she couldn’t quite recall. Desperately, she struggled to concentrate.
Confetti. It meant something. Yellow ribbon. It meant something else. And there was another word she couldn’t recall, but she knew it was there. Confetti, it seemed, always reminded her of appointments with Dr. Barnhall; of a great urge to see and talk to him. Whenever she heard the word, his soft, reassuring voice alwa
ys came into her memory; his firm voice directing her and telling her that everything would be all right.
But none of it tied together. It was all like a nightmare where time and distance mean nothing. If she could only define the gaps. And it seemed that defining them—if they’d actually been there—should be so simple. If there were hours in a person’s day that couldn’t be accounted for, the person should at least be able to tell what hours they were.
But Helene couldn’t because she really didn’t want to. She was afraid. That seemed to be a part of it. Each time she came close to grasping it, her mind was pushed away. It was as though her mind were a child that had been ordered to stay away from a fascinating place and did not dare defy the order.
All crazy and mixed up.
But Malone! Where did he fit in?
Malone awoke rested and refreshed, but sleep had not brought peace of mind. Someone wanted him killed, a situation that made for tension and a disturbed outlook. He sat up and reached for the phone, and when the desk answered, he said, “Malone. Send me up a paper and some coffee.”
He left the door unlocked and was in the bathroom when it opened. He came out to find a morning paper on his bed table: that and a container of coffee. The Wells Hotel was no place to expect frills such as coffee in a pot or a cup.
He opened the paper, anxious to know the identity of the man who had stepped out of the alley. There it was—at the bottom of page one:
HOODLUM FOUND DEAD IN GANG KILLING
So the guy had been a known hood. Malone read on, but the more he learned, the more confused he became. When he put the paper down, he was too preoccupied to bother with the coffee.
The body of a well-known but small-time racketeer had been found among the rocks at Jackson Beach. He had been identified as one Herman (Toothy) Spaatz. He had died from two bullet wounds in the back of the head.
Malone pondered this. It was not too surprising—after pondering. With Toothy goofing up the contract, his quick trip across the Styx would follow as the night the day.
But what about the guy in the alley downstairs? The one Toothy had shot instead of Malone himself. The paper featured a body found on Jackson Beach and ignored a man gunned down in the Loop? That made very little sense.
