Carolyn Banks - The New Black Mask (№6)

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Probably over in a desk drawer, where we keep the hold-for-arrival mail. We get a lot of that.”

“Madame, you are to lock those packets in your safe immediately. You are not to deliver them to anyone. Do you hear? Not to anyone. If the lady comes back... But I have no fear of that. After what she heard, she’s not likely to come back. No, she surely won’t come back, madame. Good-bye, madame.”

When he hangs up, his eyes look wild. He wipes his brow. He slumps down on a chair.

“If I could only put my hands on that jackass of a cashier!”

And Torrence, who has understood none of it, asks, “What’s going on?”

“We had her in our grasp! While I was on that phone, she was there in the lobby of that hotel. She had just come in from Paris, by taxi! A few seconds more and she would have claimed the mail that was being held for her. All we had to do was have the cops come in and pinch her. I knew I wasn’t on the wrong track, that I couldn’t possibly be on the wrong track. It just had to be a hotel near the border. Do you get it, Torrence? Simple as how-do-you-do. After each burglary, the jewels went off in a small packet, not even by registered mail, addressed to one Madame Olry. They went to a hotel right near the Belgian border. That way, in case of any misstep...”

He takes a cigarette from his case, but as usual, he forgets to light it. He is calming down, little by little. He even ends up breaking into a smile.

“She really must have wondered how I was able to...”

It was at one and the same time an agreeable and an exasperating feeling: the feeling of having struggled against someone who was very strong, of having met one’s match.

And, in this case, nobody lost!

To be sure, Emile had located the jewels, and that was all that the insurance companies wanted. But then Dolly... Was she Dolly?... Or was she Denise?... In a word, the girl, by now, had had time to make it across the border.

He would probably never see her again.

How would she remember him?

How would he remember her?

“What do I do now, Boss?” Torrence wants to know.

“You’d better phone the insurance company. Ask them to have someone go to Dunkerque with you. You will tell them that... well, that last night, thanks to your personal modus operandi and the unparalleled organization of Agency O, you discovered—”

“The head of the Criminal Division will want to know what became of the girl.”

“Well, just tell him the truth. Tell him you haven’t the foggiest!”

At that moment, the doorbell rings. Barbet is still staking out the Majestic, so he isn’t there to answer. Emile himself goes to open the door, forgetting that he is still wearing his tuxedo.

“You want to see the boss? Who shall I say is calling? Just have a seat. I’ll go in and see if he is free.”

In Part One, Nick and Nora return to San Francisco from New York to find a welcome-home New Year’s Eve Party in progress at their house. The party is interrupted when the body of the former gardener for Nora’s family is mysteriously deposited on the doorstep. Later that night, Nick and Nora visit her Aunt Katherine for dinner. There they find Nora’s cousin Selma distraught over the disappearance of her husband, Robert Landis, and Nick is browbeaten by Aunt Katherine into trying to locate him. Nick and Nora go to a known hangout of Robert’s called the Li-Chee, managed by Dancer, where they find Robert in the company of Polly Byrnes, the club singer, whom, he tells them, he plans to marry.

Soon afterward Robert, who is very drunk, leaves with Polly; they are followed by Phil, who is described as Polly’s brother. Outside, Robert meets David Graham, long enamored of Selma, and accepts a bribe to leave her. He agrees to go home for the last time to pack his clothes.

When Robert arrives home, Selma protests his leave-taking and pulls a gun. As he walks into the foggy night, he is shot to death. David arrives out of the fog, takes the gun, and throws it into the bay. Back at the Li-Chee, having gotten word of Robert’s murder, Nick has arranged to have the police meet him in Dancer’s apartment.

Dancer’s apartment — at the Li-Chee. Nick is lying on the sofa, as before. Lum Kee is sitting in the corner, reading a book. In another chair, Polly is sitting, manicuring her fingernails. Dancer is sitting astride a chair, chewing a toothpick and looking angrily at Nick. Nick is in the middle of an apparently long and pointless anecdote.

Dancer spits toothpick out on the floor and says angrily, “Listen, we’re putting up with you, but do we have to put up with all this talk?”

Nick sits up and looks at him in surprise, saying “But I thought I was entertaining you.”

A Chinese waiter opens the door and says, “Mr. Caspar here—”

Caspar comes in. He is a little man, almost a dwarf, sloppily dressed, with bushy hair, and is addicted to Napoleonic poses. He comes into the room bowing and smiling to everyone and saying “Well, well — what is it?”

Dancer, grouchily. “Do I know? So a guy comes in and buys a drink. He goes out and somebody kills him. What are we supposed to do, give the customers insurance policies with the drinks?”

Nick says, “Wouldn’t be a bad idea — with the kind of stuff you’re serving.”

Caspar advances toward Nick with his hand out, saying “I didn’t recognize you for a moment, Mr. Charles. You remember me — Floyd Caspar?”

Nick says, “Oh, yes,” and pats his pockets as if to make sure he hasn’t lost anything.

Caspar goes on, “A man killed! Surely you don’t think these people—” he looks at the three others in the room as if they were saints, “—would have anything to do with a thing like that!” He puts a hand on Dancer’s shoulder and says, “Why, I’ve known this boy since he was—”

Dancer pushes the hand off roughly and says, “Save it for the district attorney. What’re you wasting your voice on this gum-heel for?”

Through the closed door comes the sound of men arguing. Then the door is swung open by Lieutenant Abrams, pushing a Chinese waiter against it. Two other detectives are with Abrams. He looks very tired and very dissatisfied with all the people in the room. When he sees Caspar, he groans and says, “I knew it would be like this. I knew there would be some shyster around to slow things up.”

Caspar draws himself up to his full five feet and begins pompously, “Lieutenant Abrams, I must ask you—”

Abrams pays no attention to him, walks over and sits down on the sofa by Nick, asking not very hopefully, “Is it right you know something about what’s been happening?”

Nick says, “A little.”

Abrams says, “It can’t be any littler than anybody else seems to know. Do you want to say it in front of them — or do we go off in a corner?”

Nick says, “This suits me.”

Abrams asks, “Is this the dame Mrs. Charles was telling me about — that lives in Dominges’ apartment and was with Landis tonight?”

Nick says, “Yes. She sings here, but she took time off to see that he got home all right.”

Abrams says gloomily, “She certainly did a swell job.” Then he asks Polly, “And what did you do after he got home?”

Polly says, “I came back here. I work here.”

Abrams says, “When did you find out he was killed?”

Polly says, “After I came back — maybe half an hour. Dancer told me. I guess Mr. Charles told him.”

Abrams says, “Never mind guessing... I guess you know your landlord was killed this afternoon?”

Polly exclaims, “What!”

Nick says, “I told her earlier tonight, but she seemed to think it had to do with some fellow named Peter Dufinger, or Duflicker, or something.”