by Otto Penzler
“All five of them, sir.”
“Pass them over. And you might help Mrs. Crane out of the chair.”
The undercover man approached the chair, heaved and tugged. Slowly the inertia of the thickly folded flesh was overcome and the woman got her thick legs under the fat body. Her eyes and lips were smiling.
“Cheer up, big boy, you’re goin’ to have lots of this to do.”
“Show Mrs. Crane into the adjoining apartment, Scuttle—and arrange to have half a gallon of whipping cream delivered every day. And order a twenty-five-pound case of assorted chocolates.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then I’ll want a social secretary, Scuttle. I think I’ll go into the side-show business—not in a commercial way, but as a social activity.”
“That’ll be great,” beamed Sadie Crane. “Gimme a week an’ I can put on twenty pounds. It’ll seem good to get back into the game. You goin’ to get a human skeleton?”
“Perhaps. Have you any suggestions?”
“I’d like to help pick ’m. Poor Jim was sort of sandy complexioned. If you could find another like him—”
Lester Leith nodded. “You shall have the sole selection.”
The woman waddled slowly from the room.
The valet escorted her to the corridor. As he closed the door and indicated her apartment entrance, he leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“Find out just what he wanted?”
The fat woman’s lips mouthed a succession of words, but no sound came from the throat.
The police spy puckered his forehead.
“Huh?” he said.
The puffy lips again went through the motions of speaking—silent words that conveyed no intelligence.
“What’s the idea?” he asked.
She gurgled a laugh that rippled the folds of her loose garments.
“Clam-talk,” she said.
And with ponderous dignity she opened the door of the apartment and side-swayed herself through the entrance.
—
Lester Leith, stretched before the wide open windows, listened to the distant voice of the city as it droned through the hot afternoon.
“I think, Scuttle, that we’ll give Miss Louise Huntington a position. I regard her discharge as being rather an unwarranted act on the part of Mrs. De Lee Demarest. The salary, Scuttle, will be twice her former one. I have asked her to call, in a telegram which I dispatched in your absence.”
The valet gulped.
“Think she can tell you anything about the robbery?”
Lester Leith regarded the man with cold eyes.
“I should hardly ask her, Scuttle. There’s a knock at the door. You might answer it. I believe Miss Huntington is answering the telegram in person.”
The police spy regarded his employer with smoldering eyes.
“You’ve got some clue on that Demarest affair. I believe that slick mind of yours has doped out a solution. You’re just sittin’ back an’ laughin’ at the police, and getting ready to hijack the swag—”
“The door, Scuttle!”
The big valet caught himself, gulped, turned, and pussyfooted to the outer door.
“Mr. Lester Leith?” asked a remarkably sweet voice.
Lester Leith himself came to the entrance hall and greeted the young woman.
“Miss Huntington?”
“Yes. I received your telegram. I’d like a position most awfully right now, but it’s only fair to tell you the police are hounding my footsteps. There was even a shadow following me here.”
She was beautiful, both of face and figure, but there was a sad-eyed expression to the face which spoke of recent worries.
Lester Leith smiled. “Please sit down. A police shadow is rather annoying, but not the least bit of an impediment to such activities as you’d have in my employ. Tell me, do you know anything about side shows?”
“Side shows?”
“Yes.”
“My gracious! No!”
“That’s fine. I always like a social secretary to start with no preconceived notions. Have you, perhaps, a good memory for names?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you recall the names of the invited guests to Mrs. De Lee Demarest’s reception?”
“I think so.”
“That will be fine. I’d like to have engraved announcements of the side show sent to the same list of names—and there’ll be some cards to have printed. Fattest Human in the World. And Skelo, the Human Match. You understand, Miss Huntington, that the side show would be educational, but quite entertaining. And then I’d want to exhibit the most perfectly matched diamond necklace in the city.”
The late social secretary of Mrs. De Lee Demarest regarded Lester Leith with eyes that were pools of suspicion.
“Are you trying to kid me?”
“No. I am serious.”
“Is this job on the level?”
“You are to be the sole judge of that. I shall give you a week’s salary in advance. You may quit at any time.”
The girl settled back in the chair and crossed her knees in the position in which the newspaper photographer had snapped her. She was beautiful, judged by any standards, and something about Lester Leith’s tone caused the sadness of her eyes to vanish into a twinkle of humor.
“If you’re on the up-and-up I’m going to like this job,” she said. “Maybe, after you get to know me better, you’ll tell me what it’s about.”
Leith nodded gravely.
“I am telling you now. I think the Garland Printery will do excellent work on the invitations.”
The police spy bent forward, his eyes lighting up.
“The same company that engraved the Demarest invitations!” he blurted.
“The same, Scuttle. Miss Huntington, does the Garland Printery do hand lettering as well as printing and engraving?”
The girl was studying his eyes with eyes that were singularly searching.
“So I understand.”
“Very well. You might get in touch with Mr. Garland. You placed your order with him personally in the Demarest affair?”
She nodded assent.
“Your salary is twice what it was in your former position. I’d like to have you take one of the vacant apartments in this building, so you’ll be available. I have already made arrangements with the owner. The rent is paid. It’s only necessary to select your apartment.”
Her voice was tonelessly level.
“There’ll be only one key?”
Lester Leith smiled. “At the end of a week you may know me better.”
The puzzled eyes swept his face.
“That still won’t be very well—a side show, a human skeleton, a fat woman, the most perfectly matched diamond necklace in the city—are you crazy?”
And then something in the lazy drawl of Lester Leith’s voice and in the idea of a side show brought laughter to the lips of the girl.
“I think,” she said at length, “I’m beginning to get the idea.”
—
A hot week of dreary monotony passed.
Sadie Crane, attired in vivid silk shorts and a scanty jacket, practiced fainting. She did it with perspiring good nature, the valet looking on, tugging at her arms as she arose from each fall.
Double mattresses were placed in the corner to cushion her falls. The eager eyes of the valet followed her every motion.
Louise Huntington tapped at a typewriter, addressing envelopes. Lester Leith came and went, his comings marked by casual comments of appreciation, his goings marked by police surveillance.
The police found out nothing. The strange routine of the apartment proceeded uninterrupted. The human skeleton, picked by Mrs. Crane, flitted in and out, surveying the tumbling performance with mournful eyes. He spent his evenings squiring the fat woman. Between the two was a fast friendship. He was a chronic pessimist. The woman preserved the unruffled calm of a jovial disposition and an indestructible optimism.
The mattresses became d
ented with deep furrows where the falling body banged itself a dozen times an hour. The face of the valet became haggard. His surreptitious reports to Sergeant Ackley were interspersed with querulous complaint.
The woman achieved skill at falling sidewise, rolling on her back, straightening her muscles and becoming rigid, an immovable mountain of flesh.
“Will you tell me why you’re doing that?” asked Arthur Spinner, the human skeleton.
She turned toward him a flushed face on which the sweat had left shining streaks. The clacking of the typewriter in the corner abruptly ceased, proof of the interest of Miss Huntington in the question. Scuttle paused with a handkerchief halfway to his forehead, his ears attuned for the reply.
The fleshy throat convulsed with muscular effort. The smiling fat lips mouthed a silent reply.
“More clam-talk!” rasped the human skeleton.
Sadie Crane laughed. The tapping fingers of the social secretary once more sought the keys, and Scuttle groaned.
It was at that moment that Lester Leith inserted his latchkey, entered the apartment, and surveyed the strange assortment of humanity. His eyes were glinting. In his right hand he carried a black bag.
“Ladeez and gentllllemen!” he intoned. “Step forward and observe the most perfectly matched diamond necklace in the city. Note the purity and fire of the stones. Note the wonderful workmanship of the clasp. Observe one hundred thousand dollars in scintillating, sparkling, coruscating gleams of imprisoned fire!”
The two freaks crowded forward. The police spy raised himself so that his coal-black eyes could gaze over the heads of the others. Louise Huntington regarded the opened bag with open mouth and wide eyes.
The black bag lay wide open. White cotton backed a necklace which seemed to snatch pure fires from the air and send them out in glittering brilliance.
It was Louise Huntington who broke the silence.
“I’m quitting my job,” she said.
Lester Leith arched his eyebrows.
“Personal reasons, or anything that might be remedied by an increase in salary?”
“Personal. If anything should happen to that necklace, I’d go to jail for the rest of my life. The police suspect me of one robbery already—and, of course, there’s the added fact that you’re as mad as a March hare.”
Leith indicated an inner room where he had fitted up a combined den and study.
“Perhaps,” he said gravely, “the time has come for us to talk,” and he led the girl into the room, and closed the door.
There ensued nothing save the rumble of cautious tones. Scuttle’s ear, plastered against the doorknob, heard nothing. Yet the effect of that conversation was magical.
The girl came from the room, smiling, vivacious. She went back to her typewriter with eager fingers. From time to time she glanced at Lester Leith as he busied himself with hat, coat, and stick. The moment Leith slammed the corridor doors, the valet pounced upon the typewriting girl.
“What…”
She kept her fingers busy on the machine. Her smiling lips parted in a most tantalizing manner, and then she began to form words which carried no sound.
The valet scowled in anger.
“Clam-talk,” said the girl, and lowered her eyes to the work in the machine.
The rippling laugh that floated across the room came from Sadie Crane, the “fattest woman in the world.”
Two days later the valet spy took it upon himself to question Lester Leith.
“The fat woman faints almost perfectly. I’ve eliminated the mattress, sir, and she makes—er—perfect landings.”
“Very good, Scuttle.”
“And what, may I ask, sir, is holding up our—er—circus side show?”
Lester regarded him with judicial gravity, then lowered his voice.
“Scuttle, can you keep a secret?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Promise?”
“On my word of honor, sir.”
“Very well, Scuttle, I am waiting for another ambulance robbery.”
“Another ambulance robbery!”
“Precisely. You see, Scuttle, if my theory is correct, there will be another robbery within a few days in which an ambulance will figure. The ambulance will bear a large sign painted upon it, identifying it with Proctor & Peabody. It will make the ambulance so distinctive that it will seem impossible for it to vanish.
“Acting upon that theory, the police will comb the neighborhood in a house-to-house, garage-to-garage canvass. And that’s all the good their search will do. The ambulance will have vanished as completely as though it had never existed.”
“And then?”
“Then, Scuttle, we’ll have our circus side show.”
And Lester Leith, possessing himself of a polished cane, hat, and gloves, strolled out for an afternoon constitutional in the park.
The valet, after taking due precautions against being followed, oozed to a drugstore, telephoned Sergeant Ackley, and arranged for an appointment in an out-of-the-way parking station. Here he crawled into the red roadster and unburdened himself of many conjectures, reports, surmises, and facts.
Sergeant Ackley mouthed a cigar with a tempo which gradually increased until he whipped a damp newspaper from the rear of the car. “Haven’t seen the Record, have you, Beaver?”
“No, why?”
Sergeant Ackley handed it over. Across the top of the front page was a screaming headline.
Phantom Ambulance Again Figures in Crime.
“Good gosh!” ejaculated the spy. “How did he dope that out?”
Sergeant Ackley’s eyes were narrowed. He spoke with the manner of one who weighs his words carefully.
“He’s smarter than the devil, Beaver—there’s no getting around that. From the very first time you told him about the Demarest robbery he knew the answer. You can gamble on that. He wouldn’t have tied up all that money in the preparation he’s making if he hadn’t been certain.
“Every time he’s worked on a case, he’s been able to get something from the newspaper clippings that the police missed completely. I’ve tried to figure out what it could be this time, but it beats me.”
Beaver grunted.
“Well, I’ve still got the original clippings. I’ll sit up tonight and study ’em. And I’ll study the account of this last robbery in the Record. Maybe I can find out what he had in his mind.”
“Think you’re brighter than I am, eh, Beaver?”
“No. It ain’t that. It’s just that I thought maybe—”
“Well, forget it. I’ve covered that ground thoroughly. But we’ll do one thing. We’ll start shadowing this guy as though he was studded with diamonds in platinum settings. Eventually he’ll lead us to the chaps we want. Then, maybe, we’ll hook them for robbery and him for hijacking.”
Beaver nodded slowly.
“And there’s just a chance I can pump some information out of him. He’s been acting sort of confidential lately. Gimme that paper and I’m going to be the one to break the news to him. That’ll give me a break. He’ll see those headlines, an’ maybe he’ll talk.”
—
Scuttle was sitting facing the door when Lester Leith returned, and he thrust the folded paper forward before Leith had even deposited his hat and stick.
“There you are, sir.”
“Where am I, Scuttle?”
“Right there on the front page. The mysterious ambulance figures in another robbery. This time it was shorter, quicker action. They got away with a bag from a bank messenger. The traffic police were notified by a prearranged signal. But the ambulance disappeared. The police have narrowed it down to a district of not more than forty square blocks. They’re making an intensive search of that district.”
Lester Leith took the paper from his valet, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it, unread, into the black cavern of the cold fireplace.
“Well, gang, we’re ready to start.”
“But aren’t you interested in the account of the ambulance
, sir?”
Leith shook his head.
“Scuttle, cover both depots, find out every train that leaves after ten o’clock this evening and before eleven thirty. Get me a drawing room on each one of those trains where such accommodations are available. You might mention when you get the tickets that they are for a woman whose weight is somewhat above the average. Scuttle, I want no slip-up in the reservations.”
The valet’s eyes glinted with the light that comes into a cat’s eyes when the cat hears the faint sound of motion just back of a mouse hole.
“Yes, sir. Where shall I get the tickets to, sir?”
“Any place, Scuttle, just so it’s at least four hundred miles away. Pick out various cities, depending upon the direction in which the train’s going.”
“Yes, sir, but there might be fifteen or twenty such trains, sir. It’s the time when most of the crack trains leave.”
“I would estimate the number at somewhere around that figure, Scuttle. Please get me a drawing room on each one of the trains.”
The valet sighed. “Yes, sir.”
“And at precisely nine-two tonight I shall have an errand for you to do, a most important errand.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I shall want you to take these diamonds, the best matched necklace in the city, and show them to an artist in order to have a black and white drawing made. I shall want you to take Mrs. Crane with you. I shall want Mrs. Crane to have a suitcase all packed, ready to travel.”
Sadie Crane regarded him for a minute with a puzzled frown. But she said no word.
The valet fairly oozed eagerness.
“Yes, sir. Your instructions will be obeyed to the letter. At nine-two, sir? May I ask why you fix that particular minute?”
Lester Leith lit a cigarette, blew a smoke ring.
“Because, Scuttle, that happens to be the exact time I wish you to be at the place I am going to send you.”
And Lester Leith walked into his den, stretched himself out in an easy chair, and sent spiraling clouds of blue smoke drifting upward from the end of his cigarette. His eyes followed those twisting spirals of smoke with deep concentration.
Only Louise Huntington, the social secretary, showed no concern or excitement. Her face did not even change expression.
The valet took advantage of the first opportunity to get a telephone. In a guarded tone he apprised Sergeant Ackley of the latest developments.