Rogues on the River
Page 8
The headwaiter turned us over to another waiter.
“Table thirteen,” he instructed.
“Table thirteen,” complained Jack. “Can’t you give us something besides that?”
“Monsieur is superstitious?”
“Not superstitious, just cautious.”
“As you wish, Monsieur. Table two.”
Table two was at the far end of the room, next to the kitchen door and somewhat apart from the other diners. A large potted palm partially obstructed our view.
“I think no matter what table number we’d asked for,” Jack muttered after the waiter had gone, “this is still the one we’d have ended up with. Have you ever felt more like something that cat had just dragged in?”
“Well,” said Flo, looking around the room, “at least this place didn’t turn out to be a speakeasy.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Jack asked.
“No one is drinking anything but tea,” Flo pointed out.
“Order a pot of tea,” I told Flo. “I dare you to try and make it through the whole thing without getting spifflicated.”
“Oh!”
I was about to say something reassuring to Flo about how the daughters of upstanding ministers of the gospel weren’t supposed to know how speakeasies worked when I spotted him.
“That short, dark-haired man over by the door—the one sitting alone,” I whispered to Jack. “Florence and I followed him here.”
“The one that’s wrestling with the lobster?”
“Yes, don’t stare at him, Jack. He’s watching us.”
Our waiter arrived with glasses of water and menu cards. Scarcely an item was priced at less than a seventy-five cents, and even a modest meal would cost a large sum. I wondered what exactly came inside the three-dollar pot of oolong, but I was too chicken to find out.
“I’m not very hungry,” Florence said helpfully. “I’ll take the soup-du-jour.”
“So will I,” I said.
“Three soups,” ordered Jack breezily, “with plenty of crackers.”
The waiter gave him a long glance. “And your drink, sir?”
“Water,” said Jack. “Pure, cool, refreshing water, preferably with a small piece of ice.”
“No tea for the party, sir?” the waiter asked. “Perhaps a nice pot of Orange Pekoe? We got a new shipment this morning.”
“No,” said Jack. “I’ve sworn off tea.”
“And for the ladies?” the waiter persisted. “Perhaps a pot of Earl Gray?”
“No, nothing. Just the soup, thank you,” I said.
This clearly displeased the waiter, but he went off to the kitchen to put in our order. I hoped he wouldn’t spit in the soup.
I noticed that the headwaiter kept an alert eye upon the entire room, but he seemed particularly fascinated by our table.
Our waiter returned shortly with three bowls of soup. We ate as slowly as we could, but it was clear we should have ordered more than little bowls of French onion.
“What time is it, Jack?” I asked.
“Ten after nine,” he answered, looking at his watch.
I craned my neck to see around the palm tree, keeping watch on the entrance to the dining room.
At 9:15 a young man entered and was greeted by the headwaiter.
“That’s Fred Halvorson,” I hissed.
“And exactly on the dot of 9:15,” added Florence. “He must be the person who lost that wallet.”
Chapter Twelve
Fred Halvorson walked directly to a table at the other side of the dining room. He spoke to the stranger who had arrived in the green taxi.
“The plot thickens,” said Jack. “Obviously our friend and Fred Halvorson had an appointment together.”
“This is certainly a shock to me,” I said. “I’d made up my mind that Fred had nothing whatsoever to do with the dynamiting. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“He must be the saboteur,” Florence said. “We picked up the billfold along the river, and it undoubtedly was his.”
“He categorically denied it,” I said. “However, when I spoke of the Green Parrot, I noticed that he seemed to recognize the name. Oh, dear.”
“Now don’t take it so hard,” Jack told me. “The best thing to do is to report what we’ve seen to the police and let them draw their own conclusions.”
“I suppose so, but I had hoped to help Anne and her husband.”
“You wouldn’t want to protect a saboteur?”
“Of course not,” I said, but I was still unwilling to accept that Fred Halvorson was capable of blowing up a bridge or planting a bomb in the car of an unsuspecting female no matter how much he hated his former employer.
Our waiter was at Jack’s elbow, presenting the bill. “
“Howling cats,” Jack muttered after the waiter had discreetly withdrawn. “Will you look at this.”
“How much can it be?” I asked. “We only had three little bowls of soup and ice-water.”
“Two dollars cover charge. Three bowls of soup, one dollar and a half. Tip, fifty cents. Grand total, four dollars, plus sales tax.”
“That’s highway robbery,” I said. “I wouldn’t pay it, Jack.”
“I can’t pay it,” he admitted, “Not unless you two are carrying that kind of cash. I only have three dollars in my pocket. Not to mention I’ll have to buy my hat back from the checkroom girl.”
“Florence and I have hardly any money either,” I told him. “Thirty-eight cents to be exact.”
“Thirty-three,” Flo corrected me. “Remember the nickel we spent calling Jack from the phone in the drug store.”
“Tell you what,” said Jack. “You girls stay here and hold down the chairs. That should keep Sven or Anton or whoever that behemoth is out front at bay. I’ll go down to the drugstore and telephone Shep. He’s still at the office. I’ll have him bring me some cash.”
Left to ourselves, Flo and I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, but I was very conscious of our waiter’s scrutiny. Every time the man entered the dining room with a tray of food or a fresh teapot, he glanced suggestively at the unpaid bill.
“I’d feel more comfortable under the table,” I said. “Jack has been gone for ages. At least a half an hour.”
“Perhaps he can’t find a telephone.”
“He knew there was one at the drugstore.”
“Maybe Shep has gone home already, and Jack couldn’t reach him.”
“If he couldn’t get a hold of Shep, Jack would have asked one of the other boys from the pressroom to bring him some money. They can’t all be gone for the evening.”
“Something is keeping Jack. We’re becoming conspicuous,” Flo said. “If this carries on much longer, I think I shall be overcome with a sudden urge to use the powder room.”
Flo and I made a show of examining the contents of our purses and sipped our water as slowly as possible until the tumblers were empty. Twenty more minutes passed, and still, Jack did not return.
After a while, Fred Halvorson’s companion left the dining room. Fred waited until the older man had vanished, and then called for his check. If the bill was unusually large, he did not appear to notice, for he paid it without protest and likewise left the dining room.
“Florence, I don’t want to stay here any longer. I can’t understand what’s keeping Jack.”
“Why not act like we’re going out to visit the powder room? We can go out through the foyer and see if he’s there.”
“A good idea if we can get away with it,” I said. “I suspect though, that if we so much as move a foot away from this table, the waiter will pursue us with the bill.”
“Couldn’t we just explain?”
“We can try, but I don’t like to think what happens to patrons who don’t cough up payment in a place like this.”
Florence was looking pale again.
“Anyway, it will certainly be interesting to see what will happen,” I said, trying to make a joke and missing by a mile.
I chose a moment when both our waiter and the headwaiter’s attention was occupied elsewhere before making a beeline for the foyer.
“That wasn’t half as hard as I thought it would be,” I said, once we were standing in the entrance-way.
“I don’t see Jack,” Flo pointed out.
The foyer was deserted. Not even the bouncer in black was guarding the entrance door. I pointed to a stairway which I assumed led to a sub-basement.
“Maybe Jack didn’t go to the drugstore to telephone,” I suggested. “Perhaps there’s a lounge downstairs with telephones.”
We started down the stairs, but after the first landing, we descended into semi-darkness. We were clearly in a part of the building not intended for the general clientele.
“I’m certain we’re not supposed to be down here,” Florence murmured, holding back.
“If anyone questions us, just insist you were searching for the powder room.”
“But there are clearly marked signs in the foyer pointing the way to—”
“Wait!” I hissed at Flo, grabbing her arm and pulling us both against the wall.
At the far end of the dingy hall, I had glimpsed a moving figure. For just a second, I thought that the young man might be Jack. Then I saw that it was Fred Halvorson.
Fred Halvorson paused at the end of the hall and knocked four times on a closed door. A circular peep-hole shot open and a voice muttered: “Who is it?”
Fred was admitted, and then the hallway became silent again.
When someone touched me on the shoulder from behind, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled around to face the headwaiter.
“So sorry, Mademoiselle, to have frightened you,” he said. “You have taken the wrong stairway.”
“Why, yes,” I said. “We were looking for powder room.”
“This way, please. You will find the ladies’ lounge just off the foyer. Please follow me.”
We had no choice but to trail the headwaiter back up the stairs.
“We were waiting for our friend,” Florence as we reached the foyer.
“The man who escorted you here?” the headwaiter asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He went to telephone, and we haven’t seen him since.”
“That man left here some minutes ago.”
“He left?” I said. “But the bill wasn’t paid.”
“Oh, I assure, it was,” said the headwaiter, as if were unthinkable that anyone should be allowed to leave the premises with bill unpaid and all his digits intact. “The gentleman settled the bill before he left.”
“You’re sure he left the—” I cast about for what to call the establishment and settled on, “—café?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“And didn’t he leave any message for us?”
“I regret that he did not,” the headwaiter replied. “As ladies without escorts are not permitted at the Green Parrot, I suggest that you leave at once.”
The headwaiter conducted us to the exit, bowing as he closed the door in our faces. Sven had still not returned to his post.
Rather bewildered, Flo and I huddled together on the stone steps. Rain had started to fall once more, and the air was unpleasantly chilly.
“If you ask me,” said Flo, “it was a shabby trick for Jack to go off and leave us. Especially when he knew we didn’t have the price of a taxi.”
“I don’t believe that Jack did desert us.”
“But he disappeared, and the headwaiter told us that he left.”
“Something happened to Jack when he went to telephone—that’s certain,” I said.
“Then you believe he was forcibly ejected?”
“No one could have tossed Jack out of the Green Parrot without a little opposition.”
“Jack’s quite a scrapper when he’s hotted-up, but we didn’t hear any altercation. What do you think became of him?”
“I don’t know, and I’m worried,” I confessed. “The thing for us to do is to get home and tell Dad everything. Jack may be in serious trouble.”
Chapter Thirteen
Flo and I went up to the street and waited for a bus until we concluded that it had grown so late that the buses had ceased running. Finally, as a taxi cruised past, I hailed it, knowing I could get cab fare when we reached home.
I gave the cab driver my address, and a few minutes later the taxi drew up in front of our house. Lights burned in the living room, and I was greatly relieved to glimpse of my father reading in a comfortable chair by the fireplace.
“Dad, I need a dollar and five cents for cab fare,” I said, bursting in upon him.
“A dollar and five cents,” he protested, reaching for his wallet. “I thought you and Florence were at a picture show. What have you been doing in a taxicab?”
“I’ll explain just as soon as I pay the driver. Please, this is an emergency.”
My father gave me the money, and I ran outside with it. In a moment I came back with Florence.
“Now, Jane, suppose you explain,” my father said. “Has it ever occurred to you that Bouncing Betsy might not be the most reliable form of transport when you have to keep resorting to cabs after she leaves you stranded at all hours of the night?”
“Dad, Bouncing Betsy is sitting safely in the garage, which you would have noticed when you returned home if you had cared to exercise your powers of observation. Florence and I never made it to the Pink Lotus Theater. We’ve been at the Green Parrot.”
“The Green Parrot?”
“Oh, we didn’t go alone,” I said when I saw the expression on my father’s face. “We telephoned Jack and had him meet us outside.”
“And we didn’t order any tea,” Flo emphasized, just in case word got back to her mother. “I swear we drank nothing but pure ice water.”
“How did you learn the location of the place?”
“We heard a man give the address to a taxi driver and followed in another cab. Dad, we saw Fred Halvorson there.”
“Interesting, but it hardly proves that he is a saboteur.”
“He arrived at exactly nine-fifteen. After he talked with that man whose cab we followed, they both left the dining room, though not together. We saw Fred go downstairs and knock on a door which had a peephole.”
“How long did he stay there?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Just as things were getting interesting the headwaiter came and politely but firmly escorted us out of the building.”
“Why didn’t Jack bring you home?”
“That’s what I’m getting at, Dad. Jack disappeared.”
“What do you mean, Jane?”
I told Dad exactly what had happened at the Green Parrot. My father promptly agreed that it would not be like Jack to hoof it without an explanation.
“Something dreadful may have happened to him,” I insisted. “Dad, why don’t you call the police right away? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the Green Parrot is a meeting place for saboteurs. There’s no telling what they may have done to Jack.”
I realized I was being a trifle over-dramatic, but even my father was showing signs of alarm.
He headed for the telephone in the kitchen, but before he could take down the receiver, the bell jingled. As he took the incoming call, a peculiar expression came over his face. After he hung up the receiver, he said, “That was Jack.”
“Jack? But I don’t understand, Dad. Is he being held at the Green Parrot?”
“Jack is at home. He called to confirm that you and Florence arrived safely.”
“Well, of all the nerve!”
“Not so fast,” my father said. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding. After Jack left the dining room to telephone, the headwaiter told him that you girls had decided not to wait.”
“But later the waiter told us that Jack was the one who had
gone,” Florence said. “It’s obvious that he lied to us all, but I don’t understand why?”
“Because he was desperate to get rid of our entire party,” I said. “All the time we were at the Green Parrot, that headwaiter had his eye trained on our every move. Dad, what did Jack do about paying the bill?”
“He was told that he need not settle it—that he could pay later.”
“Well, it’s all very peculiar,” I said. “The Green Parrot struck me as the sort of place where they don’t take defaulting on your debts lightly. I’m glad Jack is safe, obviously, but I still maintain we were hustled out of that place.”
“No doubt you were,” Dad said. “I’m curious to see the inside of this Green Parrot—especially that door with the peephole.”
“I’ll take you there,” I said.
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
I drove Flo home in Bouncing Betsy, but after I returned home, I stayed up discussing every angle of the strange affair with my father.
“Why do you think Fred Halvorson was at the Parrot? Would you say he’s one of the bombers?”
“I have no opinion whatsoever,” my father responded somewhat wearily.
I did not allow my father to forget his promise to visit the Green Parrot. The following morning I got up early. At the breakfast table, I reminded Dad that we had an important appointment.
“I should be at the office,” my father said, glancing at his watch. “Besides, an establishment like the Green Parrot doesn’t open its doors until the sun goes down.”
“The manager should be there, Dad. You’ll be able to talk to him and really look over the place.”
“We can ask a few questions—that’s all,” my father corrected. “One can’t walk into an establishment and start executing a search. Not without an officer of the law and a signed search warrant.”
“Let’s go anyway,” I pleaded.
To please me and because he feared I’d go back on my own if he didn’t cooperate, my father agreed to make the trip, but he insisted that we take his car. He said he had no faith in the road-worthiness of my beloved Betsy.
With me at the wheel of Dad’s car, we drove to the street where the Green Parrot was located. I parked not far from the entrance to an alley, and we walked the remaining distance.