Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

He searched all the papers again, this time for obituaries. There was no mention of Arthur Gilbert.

At noon he went out to buy the noon editions, again for the late afternoon editions, and later for the evening papers. There was still no mention of the robbery and no obituary item on Arthur Gilbert.

By then he was so puzzled, he would have been tempted to drive over to Manhattan and drive past the liquor store to see if Gilbert was still in evidence, except for one thing; he couldn’t have gotten there before nine-thirty p.m., and he knew the store would be closed. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

Saturday morning he bought all the papers again. When there was still no report of the robbery, he searched through each paper item by item to see if there was mention of Arthur Gilbert’s death, for he could conceive of no other reason that it hadn’t been reported. He didn’t find an obituary on the liquor store proprietor, but he did find something of interest in the personal column.

The item read: “If N.B., who visited my liquor store at closing time Thursday night will phone Circle 1-62006, he will learn something of great financial advantage. —A.G.”

“N.B.” could stand for nose bandit, Cannon reflected. “A.G.” could be Arthur Gilbert. Checking the other papers, he found the same ad running in all of them.

In the hallway outside his room there was a pay telephone, and on a small table next to it was a stack of telephone directories. He checked the Manhattan liquor store, and there it was: Circle 1-62006. He returned to his room to think the matter over.

It was evening before he came to the decision to phone the number. By then his curiosity was so aroused that he couldn’t resist. But, in the event that it was some kind of police trap, he took the subway to Grand Central Station and phoned from one of the booths there. He made the call at 8:45 p.m.

When a pleasant voice said, “Gilbert’s Liquor Store,” Cannon said tersely, “I saw your ad.”

There was a swift indrawing of breath, then Arthur Gilbert said with a peculiar mixture of relief and eagerness, “There’s no one else here, so we can talk.”

“Then start talking.”

Gilbert said, “You noticed there was nothing in the papers about our—ah—meeting, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t report it. As a demonstration of good faith in case you saw the ad. I have a business proposition for you.”

“Yeah? What kind?”

“A job for you. No risk, and the take is twenty thousand. We split fifty-fifty. Interested?”

Cannon was silent for a moment. Then he said, “This is a new one. A victim wanting to go partners with the guy who knocked him over.”

In a reasonable tone the liquor dealer said, “You’re the only person in your—ah—profession I’ve ever had contact with. If I had known how to contact someone with your talents, I would have done it long ago, because this plum has been waiting to be plucked for some time. I risked forgetting the amount you took the other night in the hope that I could get in contact with you. It was a real risk too, because it’s going to take some fancy bookkeeping to cover the shortage.”

There was another silence on Cannon’s part. Then he said, “Why didn’t you mention this job the other night?”

Gilbert said dryly, “You have a reputation for being rather trigger quick. I thought of it, but I’m a cautious man. I thought it probable that if I tried to shift the subject of conversation, you’d put a bullet in my back before you understood what I was getting at.”

“I might have,” Cannon admitted. “I like people to listen and not interrupt when I’ve got a gun on them.”

“I was still thinking of it five minutes after you left, and regretting that there was no way to get in touch with you. Then, just as I was reaching for the phone to call the police, I thought of placing a personal ad.”

Cannon said abruptly, “We’ve talked enough for now, in case you’ve got cops tracing this call. I’ll phone you Monday.”

He hung up.

Back in his room Cannon considered the conversation from all angles. If the police were using Arthur Gilbert to set a trap, it seemed a rather far-out scheme. Cannon had never heard of a case where a victim was employed in an attempt to gain the confidence of a stickup artist.

The more he thought about it, the more he was inclined to believe that Arthur Gilbert actually was prepared to finger some job. Trying to put himself in the liquor dealer’s place, he was unable to find any illogic in the man’s actions. Convinced that all men were as basically dishonest as himself, it didn’t seem in the least odd to Cannon that a seemingly law-abiding merchant would make himself accessory to armed robbery providing he had to take no personal risk. Cannon sincerely believed that fear of consequences was the only thing which prevented many ostensibly honest men from employing his own method of making a living.

Perhaps Arthur Gilbert had often daydreamed of how easy it would be to knock over the twenty grand he was now prepared to finger. He wouldn’t have the guts to do it himself, of course, or, as he had pointed out over the phone, the underworld contacts to pass on his information to anyone who could use it. The thought of all that easy money would merely lie in the back of his mind, awaiting an accidental encounter with a real pro to give it concrete substance.

It was worth checking out in any event, Cannon decided. Providing he could make contact with Arthur Cannon without risk.

Turning his thoughts to this problem, it didn’t take him long to work out a plan for making safe contact. If it was a police trap, by now Gilbert would have reported to the police that the Nose Bandit had promised to phone again Monday. The fuzz would expect no further attempt at contact before then, and they certainly wouldn’t expect it in any way other than a phone call at the store.

The only defect he could see in his plan to make contact was that it involved letting Arthur Gilbert see his face without disguise, something no other victim had ever done. But there was a solution to that. Once their business was finished, he could make another call at the liquor store some night and dispose of Gilbert.

He tabled the matter until Monday morning.

Though Cannon knew what commuter train Arthur Gilbert took home in the evening, because he had once followed him home and had sat two seats behind him on the train, he didn’t know which train he took in the morning. It couldn’t be a very early one, though, as the man didn’t arrive at the liquor store until noon.

To be on the safe side, Cannon was parked at the station on Long Island at nine-thirty a.m.

When Cannon had followed the liquor dealer home, Gilbert had climbed into a parked station wagon when he got off the train. Lacking a car to follow him the rest of the way, Cannon had to content himself with checking the phone book. As only one Arthur Gilbert was listed on Long Island, he knew the man’s address, but on the chance that Gilbert’s home was under police surveillance, he thought it safer to wait at the train station rather than attempting to trail him clear from his home.

It seemed that Gilbert caught the ten a.m. train, for it was nearly a half hour before Cannon spotted his station wagon pulling into the parking area. The man was alone, and, since no other car followed him into the area, he didn’t seem to be under surveillance.

Cannon reached the gate a step behind the liquor dealer. He was on his heels as the plump man entered a car. When Gilbert took a rear seat next to the window, Cannon sat next to him. The liquor store proprietor gave him a casual glance, then opened a morning paper.

As the train started to move, Cannon studied the other nearby passengers. At this time of day there were as many women as men, most of them having the appearance of housewives off on shopping trips. The men all appeared to be businessmen, and none so much as glanced at Gilbert. By the time the conductor had come by to collect Cannon’s fare and punch Gilbert’s commuter ticket, Cannon was satisfied that no police officer had the liquor dealer under observation.