The End
Green Fire
FEW and far between were the passers-by in Manhattan’s Fifty-seventh Street that rainy Saturday afternoon, but still not few enough for the purpose of the man in the tan raincoat. He loitered until the glint of brass buttons had disappeared inside the cigar store on the corner, and then pulled his hat over his eyes and strolled casually toward the glittering windows of Vanderbock et Cie., Jewelers, founded Paris 1890.
He paused there briefly, and then passed hurriedly on, leaving behind him one neatly-wrapped brick, one smashed plate glass window, and no diamonds.
As the burglar alarms let go with a nerve-paralyzing clatter, the man in the raincoat ran out into the street and leaped lightly to the side of a small shiny roadster which happened to be rolling conveniently along there, driven by what was later described as “a blonde dame with sun-glasses.” The roadster picked up speed, but then from the cigar store on the corner rushed a uniformed officer, shouting “Halt!” and fumbling with the clutch of his holster. There was the sharp dry slap of a pistol shot. Brass buttons collapsed on the wet pavement, and with a screech of tortured rubber the car rounded the corner and disappeared north toward the park.
The burglar alarms continued, and then the wail of sirens swelled the ear-splitting din. A radio car slammed on its brakes beside the crumpled figure in the gutter, but the doctor who jumped down out of the following ambulance shook his head and said “Dead on arrival.” Fifty-seventh Street drama was now only another paragraph on the police teletype.
Humanity appeared in considerable numbers, blocking the street and trampling in the broken glass outside the jewelers’ window. Precinct detectives were very busy, and then stood back as a sharp-nosed lieutenant from Uptown robbery detail took charge. And finally nothing less than a big black limousine from Headquarters appeared, from which climbed a wiry, gray little Irishman with a gold badge cupped in his right hand. The murder of a police officer in the line of duty is taken very seriously by the force.
The lieutenant, who had been staring gloomily into the looted window, now turned and saluted. “Grosskopf, lieutenant—robbery detail,” he introduced himself.
“Inspector Piper. And Sergeant Mains,” said the man from downtown, waving at the curly-headed but extremely serious youngster who had driven the car. “We’re only kibitzing, lieutenant. Go right ahead.”
“It’s simple smash-and-grab,” the lieutenant said. “Like the other cases we’ve been having. Only this time old Sam Bodley had to get blasted as they were making their getaway.”
“Some day these jewelers will learn to use safety glass,” Piper observed. “Any witnesses?”
Lieutenant Grosskopf shrugged, and pointed inside the store. “There’s the doorman at Carnegie, and a dame,” he said, making it clear that he was unimpressed with the showing. The Inspector moved toward the door, and then winced as a clear and familiar feminine voice sounded above the noise of the crowd.
“Yoo hoo! Oscar!”
The Inspector turned, as if to seek shelter, but it was too late. Pushing through the ranks of the curious, ducking beneath the rope barrier to the detriment of her somewhat amazing hat, came a lean, angular lady brandishing a black cotton umbrella. “Oscar, I simply must tell you—”
“Oh, it’s you!” muttered the Inspector, without enthusiasm, as he turned to face Miss Hildegarde Withers. “You know, someday I’m going to smash that radio of yours, so help me.”
“I wasn’t listening in on your old police calls,” snapped the maiden schoolteacher indignantly. “I was right here in the neighborhood, shopping for an apartment, and I heard the sirens…”
“All right, all right,” he told her. “Run along.” Lieutenant Grosskopf now interrupted, bearing a brick partially wrapped in white tissue paper, with festive red string and gilt stickers. “That’s what the guy used, eh?” Piper took the brick, hefted it, and then handed it into the custody of the handsome young sergeant, in spite of Miss Withers’ obvious interest. “Stop trying to act like a detective, Hildegarde,” Piper went on. “There’s no tracing a used brick.”
He passed on inside the jewelry store, intent upon finding the witnesses to the crime. The sergeant followed, with notebook in readiness, and Miss Withers, trying to look as much like the Invisible Man as possible, tagged along.
There wasn’t too much to be got from the witnesses. John Asch, doorman at Carnegie Hall, had heard the alarms and the shot, and had looked down the street in time to glimpse the departing roadster, which he thought was a 1938 Ford coupe. “It all happened so quick!” he complained. “A blonde dame with goggles was driving.”
Miss Marcia Lee Smith, who admitted that she was late of Savannah, Georgia, and now in New York to take up the study of violin, was making the most of her adventure. “I was jus’ walking along the street, to save taxi fare, you know, and I heard a great tremendous crash and the alarms and everything. I looked up and there was a man—a great, tall, dark man, sort of foreign-looking—and he ran out into the street and jumped in the car and away they went. Ooh, was I scared!”
Marcia Lee’s round young shoulders shivered deliciously to indicate how scared she had been. She was doubtful about the make of the car, but very positive about her description of the bandit. “He was awful tall—taller even than this gentleman heah,” she insisted, looking up at Sergeant Mains and letting her lashes fall across her dimpled cheeks.
“Okay, folks. Leave your names and addresses with the Sarge, and then you can go.” Inspector Piper turned away, then suddenly confronted Miss Hildegarde Withers. “Now what are you sleuthing at?” he demanded. “I thought I told you—”
“Nothing, Oscar. Nothing at all,” she insisted. Which was mostly true. It had occurred to her that the sergeant ought to be taking Marcia Lee Smith’s address and telephone number down in his official notebook instead of in the little red address book which he had produced from an inner pocket, but that was nobody’s business but his own.
The last witness to be interviewed was the Vanderbock in charge of the store, a dapper, narrow-shouldered young man in spats, who had been the only one in the place to have even a fleeting glimpse of the bandit, and who seemed very vague about that.
“I was in the rear of the store with the staff, making plans for the anniversary sale tomorrow,” he admitted. “I heard the tinkle of glass, and looked up to see a man—a man with a hat—grabbing things out of the display window. Then he was gone.” Vanderbock shrugged. “Anyway, the most valuable piece in the window, a flawless 25-carat emerald ring, was overlooked by the thief. And the diamonds he took were fully insured.”
“Funny he left that 25-carat hunk of green ice,” said Piper worriedly. “Okay. Make out a complete list and description of the missing stones.” He turned. “Hey, Sarge!”
“I’ll be glad to take down the list,” Miss Withers hastily offered.
The Inspector’s temper was short today. “Relax, Hildegarde!” he ordered, gesturing toward the door with his thumb. “Sergeant!”
“But Oscar, I’ve something—” the maiden schoolteacher tried to continue.
“Later, Hildegarde! Run along now.” And the Inspector turned his back on her.
Miss Withers sniffed, shrugged, and marched toward the door.
“Sergeant, if you’re through with the witnesses, will you take down this list of stolen property?” the Inspector was saying. Then he was interrupted by a policeman, who brought word that the Commissioner was on the phone.
“There it starts!” moaned Oscar Piper. He looked around, thinking fast. “Oh—tell him I’ve just left.” And he started for the door, pausing only long enough to tell the sergeant that he would be at the drug store up the street, and that no, it would not be necessary to drive witness Marcia Lee Smith home in the Headquarters limousine.
The Inspector caught Miss Withers on the sidewalk, a very ruffled Miss Withers indeed. “Okay, Hildegarde,” he apologized. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee to make up for throwing yo
u out. Only it makes us all short-tempered to have anything like this happen. A cop shot down in his tracks—and we don’t know a thing about the guy who did it.”
“No, Oscar?” Only slightly mollified, Miss Withers sank down on a stool in the drug store. “How about the witnesses?”
“Worthless,” he told her. “You know yourself that nine witnesses out of ten make up a long story about the tall dark foreign-looking man…” She nodded, and he went on. “So we start from nowhere.”
“Knowing nothing about the bandit,” Miss Withers said thoughtfully as she looked into her coffee cup, “nothing except that he is a man between thirty and forty years of age, about five feet six inches tall, wears a light tan raincoat and a dark hat, is an experienced crook known to the police, and is new to the jewel racket. And that he is an egomaniac with a twisted sense of humor. That’s all?”
The Inspector’s cup clattered in its saucer. “What?”
“Elementary, my dear Oscar. Who else but an egomaniac would wrap the brick as a gift, with ‘Happy Birthday’ stickers on it, just because it was the jewelry store’s fiftieth anniversary? He was an experienced crook because of the neatness and swiftness of the job. Wanted by the police—or else he wouldn’t have been desperate enough to shoot his way clear. A first offender asks for mercy and a light sentence. And the bandit is new to the jewel trade, or he wouldn’t have missed the big emerald. See?”
Piper nodded slowly.
“Shrewd guessing. But the rest of it—his height and age and so on…”
“I know that,” Miss Withers confessed, “because I looked. I came around the corner just as the killer jumped for his car. Oh, don’t look at me that way, I tried to tell you. Anyway, no man over forty is spry enough to jump as he jumped. I didn’t see his face, or the driver’s, because they were headed the other way. But I saw his height, and he was no giant.”
“Not bad, Hildegarde, not bad at all,” Oscar Piper was forced to confess. “Now if you could work out a trap to catch him…”
“Why not an officer in every jewelry store—or staked out across the street?”
Piper shook his head. “They’d scare him off. I don’t just want to stop this series of robberies, I want to get the man who shot Sam Bodley. He’ll probably strike again—at some one of the big jewelry stores of upper Fifth or Madison or this street.” Suddenly the Inspector snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! The really important jewelry stores are all within a ten-block area. Tiffany’s, Black, Starr & Gorham and so forth—all of them. Each store has alarm wires to the protective association. We’ll reroute those wires straight to the radio dispatcher at Headquarters. Plant men in radio cars, motorcycle units, and stakeouts so that thirty seconds after the next smash and grab alarm we have a police cordon drawn tight around the whole section. Nobody gets out, nobody gets in. We tighten the cordon, search everybody, watch for a known crook or somebody acting suspicious.” He grinned. “It’s a sort of dragnet.”
“Or a grab-bag,” said the schoolteacher. “There’ll be complaints.”
“But we’ll nab the killer of Sam Bodley.” Pleased to think that at last he had something concrete to suggest to the Commissioner, Oscar Piper borrowed a nickel from Miss Withers and headed for the nearest phone booth.
He was less pleased next morning when he picked up the paper and read the story beneath the banner head,
“COP-KILLER STILL AT LARGE.”
It was not that the newspaper story was in error. They had everything, from the photograph of old Sam Bodley face-down in the street to an artist’s recreation of the killer, from Marcia Lee Smith’s description. They poked fun at the bandit for taking the diamonds and missing the more valuable emerald. But the story ended with a complete explanation of the “dragnet,” which the police were planning to try.
His cigar suddenly went stale in his mouth. A lot of good the dragnet would do, with the quarry forewarned. Oscar Piper shook his head. It was the first time his old friend and sparring-partner had let him down. So Hildegarde had to go and talk in front of the reporters!
He reached savagely across his desk and tore off the top sheet of his calendar pad, on which he had written “call Hildegarde re: dinner.” The rest of the day Piper devoted to perfecting the dragnet plan, for lack of a better idea. When, toward five, Miss Withers called on the phone, he sent word that he was tied up.
A rare thing it was for the normally sunny Inspector to carry a grudge overnight, but this one grew and flourished. Over his desk was pinned the picture of Sam Bodley lying dead in the gutter, and that didn’t help. Nor did his temper take a turn for the better when two days later, dressed in unaccustomed black, he sat in the funeral parlors with a delegation from Headquarters and heard the last prayers for Sam Bodley. During a lull in the ceremony a well-meaning captain—old Judd from Missing Persons—leaned over and whispered, “If you’re still stymied on this case, why don’t you call in that schoolma’am pal of yours? She was a ball of fire on that last job.” Piper nearly bit him.
On Monday, four days after the shattering of the jewelers’ window, Miss Withers marched down Fifty-seventh Street again. She noted in passing that Vanderbock’s window was repaired, and that again its glittering treasures tempted the public, even to the big green emerald ring in the center of the display.
But she had other things on her mind besides trying to help a stubborn, pig-headed Irishman out of his muddle. If he wanted to play that way, so be it. She was determined on the business in hand, which was to find an unfurnished apartment within her means and near the Sixth Avenue subway.
There was a remodelled brownstone just around the corner from Fifty-seventh which had caught her eye just before the shriek of the sirens had led her astray the other day. Now she retraced her steps, came up past the neatly lettered sign, “Unfurnished apartments—newly decorated—agent on premises.” The door was open, and the lower hall disclosed a jumble of painters’ ladders, wallpaper rolls, kegs and tubs and buckets of paint, and all the canvas, plaster, plumbing equipment which could be imagined.
In the midst of all this stood a young girl. She and Miss Withers spoke together, in one voice: “I’m looking for an apartment—are you the agent?” They stopped, blinked, and smiled. Then the girl cocked her head. “Why—I remember you!”
It was Marcia Lee Smith, the star witness who had actually seen the jewel bandit in the act of departing. They discussed the coincidence of meeting like this. “After all,” Marcia Lee said, “it’s the only attractive building around here with any vacancies. I was out looking the other day, when it all happened.”
She had been waiting here some time, hoping for the rental agent to show up. There was a sign on the door, “Gone to lunch, back in half an hour,” but it didn’t say half an hour from any set time. “Anyway,” said Miss Withers, “I don’t need a rental agent to tell me whether or not I like an apartment. I’m going upstairs.”
Marcia Lee tagged along. She was living now at the Martha Washington, but she hoped to find an apartment where she could entertain. “Entertain good-looking young detective sergeants?” Miss Withers pressed, and struck home, because the girl came as near to blushing as girls ever come nowadays. They poked through the second floor apartment, praised the new Venetian blinds, the wide fireplace, the big shining refrigerator which, Marcia Lee pointed out, would make sixty-four ice cubes at once.
The schoolteacher liked everything except the walls, which were a somewhat glaring shade of ivory. “It should be a rather quiet apartment, too,” she pointed out. “Set well back. …”
It was not a quiet apartment at the moment, because the sirens were howling again. A radio car went up the street screaming bloody murder. From farther off other sirens took up the sound, like hounds on a scent. …
Miss Withers, who had started to leap toward the stairs like a firehorse at the first alarm, now held herself in check. “Let them shriek,” she said. “I’m not going to mess into it.”
“But—” Marcia Lee said. “I
t’s—it’s—”
Evidently the girl was more impressed and thrilled with the activities of the force than was Miss Withers. “I used to feel that way, too,” she confessed. “But I’ve decided that the police are a lot of nincompoops.”
“Not all of them!” Marcia Lee said definitely. She edged toward the stair, started running down so fast that she tripped and slid the last few steps, spilling her handbag and vanity on the floor. The schoolteacher helped her up.
“And the sergeant may not even be on this case!” pointed out Miss Withers. But Marcia Lee was gone. Miss Withers waited, using all her self-control to keep from rushing after the sirens.
Finally the rental agent, a baldish, gumchewing young man, put in an appearance.
“My name is Leach, Al Leach,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but on my way back from lunch I stopped to see the excitement up on Fifty-seventh.” Miss Withers waited. “Oh, it wasn’t much,” he continued. “Some fellow just smashed a window at Vanderbock’s and grabbed an emerald ring.”
“Imagine!” said Miss Withers. “Did they catch him?”
Leach shook his head. “He ducked around the corner, so a man told me. But everybody says that the police have drawn a sort of dragnet around the whole section. When you leave you’ll have to be searched.”
“Will I?” gasped the schoolteacher.
“Now about the apartments,” he continued. “The painters and decorators will be finished in a day or so. I phoned the agencies to send every man they could dig up. The rent’s eighty-five on a year’s lease—and if you want any special shade on the paint now’s the time to say so.” Miss Withers hesitated, and he cocked his head. “I could let you have the top floor a bit cheaper—say seventy-five? It’s had a first coat in a slightly darker tone.”
Miss Withers hadn’t thought about going that high. But it was worth looking into. “You go right ahead,” he said. “I got to stay here a minute and give those painters hell for taking so long for lunch.” He headed for the front door where outside a truck was backing up.
The Cases of Hildegarde Withers Page 8
