“No secretary. A dictating machine. He has a little kitchenette in which he keeps provisions—the sort of food which can be prepared without too much trouble; eggs, canned beans, chili con carne, Spanish rice, brown bread.…That’s one thing about Dean. He’s a pretty good cook and he can get by on a diet of concentrated proteins without any fresh green stuff…sometimes he’ll stay in there two or three days at a time.”
“So I take it he’s not interested in the recovery of his blowgun.”
“Of course he’s interested, terribly interested. But he wouldn’t want to know anything about it until after he comes out of hibernation.”
“Could you tell me when that would be?”
She shrugged good-looking shoulders.
I stood the blowgun in a corner. “That will be all right here?”
“Yes. However in the world did you recover it, Mr. Lam, and how did you recover it so soon?”
I said, “It’s rather a long story, but rather a simple story.”
Sylvia Hadley looked from one to the other of us. “The blowgun was stolen?” she asked.
Phyllis nodded.
“Anything else missing?” Sylvia asked. And I had the feeling there was more than casual interest in her voice.
“A jade Buddha,” Mrs. Crockett said. “The mate to the jade Buddha that disappeared three weeks ago.”
“You mean that beautiful piece of smooth, green jade carved into a Buddha contemplating nirvana, with that expression of rapt, serene concentration?”
“That’s the one,” Phyllis said. “Dean made quite a scene about it.”
“Oh, but he should. Good heavens, that’s…why, that’s one of the most beautiful pieces of carving I’ve ever seen. I’d…oh, I’d love to have even a second-rate duplicate of that. I was going to ask Dean if it wouldn’t be possible to cast that in plaster of Paris and— You mean it’s gone?”
“It’s gone,” Phyllis said.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” Sylvia Hadley said.
I glanced across at Mrs. Crockett. “Don’t you think your husband would be sufficiently interested in the return of the blowgun to make it advisable to interrupt him?”
“You can’t interrupt him.”
“Surely there’s a door,” I said. “You can knock on the door.”
“There are two doors. Both are locked. There’s a closet in between them. I don’t think you could hear a knock.”
“There’s no telephone where he is?”
She shook her head. “It’s a part of the house that he had specially designed. I tell you, it’s absolutely out of the question except for a major emergency unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he isn’t working and I can attract his attention through the window.”
I waited.
She bit her lip thoughtfully, picked up the blowgun and said, “Come with me, please.”
She left Sylvia Hadley sitting there in the thin robe, legs crossed, the robe knotted at the waist, feeding into a knot and falling away from the knot in two revealing Vs.
I followed her into a hallway. She opened a bathroom door, laughed a bit and said, “Crowd over close to the window and we’ll see.”
I moved over to the narrow bathroom window. She opened the frosted glass and leaned over so close to me that I could feel her cheek brushing mine as she pointed at a lighted window perhaps twenty-five feet across an air well and some fifteen feet higher than our level.
“That’s his place up there,” she said. “Sometimes he has the drapes closed and— No, this time he hasn’t got the drapes closed.…Sometimes he’s dictating to a dictating machine, and then he sits in one place. Sometimes he’s thinking and then he walks the floor. If he walks the floor back and forth past the window, we can signal him with a flashlight.
“Just a minute,” she said, and stepped from the bathroom.
She was back in seconds with a five-cell flashlight.
“If we see him walking, I’ll signal him,” she said. “But I’m not going to be responsible for the consequences. We may get a terrific tongue-lashing. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s up there.”
“I take it your husband is a man of highly individual tastes,” I said.
“You can say that again.”
She pushed close to me, then said, “Look, this is an awkward position. I’m crowded in between the john and the wall… Here.”
She shifted her position with a lithe wriggle of her body, put her left arm around my neck and up close to me. “There,” she said, “that’s better—I was being crowded.”
“If your husband happens to look out and see us now,” I said, “he’ll perhaps give us two tongue-lashings. We must look rather intimate from up there.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “How can two people make love in a bathroom with their heads sticking out of a bathroom window?”
“You’ll admit we’re rather close.”
“Of course we’re close. Good heavens, what is that, a fountain pen in your inside pocket?”
“A pencil.”
“Well, for Heaven’s sake, take it out and switch it to the other side.”
I took the pencil out and dropped it into the side pocket of my coat.
“I don’t believe he’s walking around.…” She lowered her voice. “Didn’t you say something about that jade Buddha?”
“I said I was about to recover the jade Buddha.”
“Oh, I thought you said you’d recovered it.”
“I guess I wasn’t speaking very plainly.”
“Oh, don’t bother to apologize. It’s my ears. Sometimes I hear and sometimes I don’t.…Well, Mr. Lam, this has been a very enjoyable experience in one way, but from the standpoint of husband communicating, I guess it’s— Oh, well. I’m going to take a chance.”
She put on the flashlight and directed it against the plateglass window.
“There’s an open window to the right of that,” I said. “Where does that lead?”
“That leads into the little closet I was telling you about. There are two doors in the closet. One into his place and one into the main house. The closet separates the two doors. He keeps them both closed and both locked.”
“Let’s try that open window.”
The beam of the spotlight was powerful enough to go through the open window, penetrate the late afternoon light and illuminate a section of the wall showing a shelf littered with half a dozen objects which couldn’t readily be identified.
Abruptly she switched off the light. “I’m frightened,” she said. “Come on, let’s pass it up. I’ll tell him as soon as he comes out of hibernation. He’ll be very, very thrilled, Mr. Lam, that you have recovered that blowgun. Could you tell me how you did it?”
“Not now,” I said.
“Why?” she pouted.
“It might interfere with getting back the jade idol.”
She lowered the window, which placed a pane of frosted glass between us and the penthouse apartment across the air well. I tried to move out of the corner. She twisted and stood facing me very close, her body pushed up against me.
“You know something, Donald?” she asked in a low voice.
“What?”
“You’re nice,” she said. And then suddenly she had her arm around my neck, pulling my head down to the hot circle of her lips. The fingers of her other hand came up and stroked my cheek, then slid around to the back of my neck and tickled the short hairs just above the neckline.
After a moment she broke away. “Oh, you’re wonderful!” she sighed. And then, instantly practical, said, “Here. Here’s some cleaning tissue. Wipe off the lipstick. I don’t want Sylvia to know I…I…became impulsive.”
She laughed, whirled toward the bathroom mirror, took out a lipstick and deftly started making up her mouth with the aid of the lipstick and her little finger.
“All right?” she asked.
I surveyed my image in the mirror. “I guess so. A little short of breath,
but all right.”
She opened the bathroom door and walked casually out to the studio, saying, “No go, Sylvia. We couldn’t raise him.”
She turned to me, cool and languid, and said with a casual manner of dismissal, “Well, I guess there’s no use, Mr. Lam, I’ll let him know that you’ve recovered the blowgun.”
“And are on the trail of the idol,” Sylvia Hadley said.
“And are on the trail of the idol,” Phyllis Crockett echoed.
I hesitated a moment.
“Well,” Phyllis said brightly, “I guess the recess is over, Sylvia. Let’s get to work.”
Without a word, Sylvia arose lightly from the chair, untied the cord, tossed the robe over the back of the chair, walked up to the modeling platform and resumed her nude pose with the manner of a professional.
Phyllis Crockett picked up her smock, put it back on, ran her thumb through the hole in the palette, selected a brush and said over her shoulder, “Awfully nice of you to come, Mr. Lam.”
“Don’t mention it,” I told her.
She put the brush to the paint, then started making brush marks on the canvas.
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“Okay,” she called, her eyes still on the canvas. “Don’t mention it.”
“Glad I met you, Miss Hadley,” I called. And then couldn’t resist adding as I put my hand on the knob of the door, “Hope I get to see more of you.”
She smiled at that one, and I gently closed the door.
Chapter Ten
At nine-thirty in the morning I rang up Crockett’s place. The well-modulated tones of Melvin Otis Olney came over the phone. “Who is this talking, please?”
“Donald Lam, Olney.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Lam.”
“I recovered the missing blowgun.”
“You what!” he shouted into the telephone.
“Recovered the missing blowgun. Didn’t Mrs. Crockett tell you?”
“I haven’t seen Mrs. Crockett.”
“Well, I recovered it and left it with her.”
His tone was coldly formal. “I am afraid you shouldn’t have done that. The property should have been returned to Dean Crockett.”
I didn’t like the dignified manner in which he tried to rebuke me.
“Crockett was closeted in his hibernating room. He wouldn’t come out. He has no telephone in there; no one else was home, and so I left it with Mrs. Crockett. What’s wrong with that? It’s community property, isn’t it?”
“I— Yes, I suppose so.”
“Okay, I left it with her. Now I have the jade Buddha. What do I do with that?”
“You have what?”
“I have the jade Buddha,” I told him. “What’s the matter with your connection? Can’t you hear?”
“My ears hear,” Olney said, “but it’s hard for me to believe what they hear. I— Well, Lam, this is incredible.”
“What’s incredible about it?”
“Recovering both articles like that.”
“That’s what we were hired for, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I know, but…and in such a short time. It’s absolutely, utterly incredible. Mr. Crockett simply won’t believe his ears when I tell him.”
“Well, perhaps he’ll believe his eyes when he sees the jade statue. Now, what do I do about delivering this jade Buddha?”
“You come right up with it.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’d better talk with Mr. Crockett himself. You didn’t like the idea of me leaving the blowgun with Mrs. Crockett, and, unless Crockett is there—”
“He’s here.”
“In circulation?”
“He will be. He told me to be here at nine o’clock, prepared to discuss a matter with him, and he wanted his secretary here, prepared to transcribe some records that he has been dictating.”
“He’s there?”
“I tell you, he will be by the time you get here. Come on up.”
“Mrs. Crockett didn’t tell you about the blowgun?”
“Not me. This is the first I’d heard.”
“You might ask her where it is,” I said.
“I think we’ll let Mr. Crockett handle that end of it, Mr. Lam. When will you be up here?”
“In about twenty minutes.”
“Very well. We’ll be expecting you.”
I got in the battered-up agency heap and drove up to the apartment house.
This time it wasn’t necessary for me to be announced. They treated me at the front desk as though I had been an honored guest with an engraved invitation and their job was to roll out the red carpet.
“Good morning, Mr. Lam,” the clerk said, all smiles. “You’re going up to the Crockett penthouse. They’re expecting you. You know the way. Just take the elevator to the twentieth floor. They’ll meet you with the elevator to the penthouse.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I went on up to the twentieth floor, walked down to the door marked 20-s, which, from the outside, looked exactly like the door to any other apartment. The door was unlocked. I opened this door and found myself in the anteroom. The concealed slide was open to show the telephone and a printed sign over the telephone saying, “Press button and pick up receiver.”
I pressed the button, picked up the receiver, and a man’s voice said, “Yes, who is it, please?”
“Mr. Lam— Who is this? It isn’t Olney.”
“No, sir, this is Wilbur C. Denton, Mr. Crockett’s secretary. I am sending the elevator down for you, Mr. Lam.”
“Very well,” I said.
I hung up the telephone and waited.
A minute or so later the elevator came down and I went on up.
I wondered if I was being X-rayed. I presumed I was.
I stepped out of the elevator, and a tall, droopy individual extended a limp hand. “I’m Mr. Denton, Mr. Crockett’s secretary, Mr. Lam. I’m glad to meet you.”
I let go of the hand as soon as I could, and said, “Where’s Olney?”
“Mr. Olney is on the telephone.”
“All right. Where’s Crockett?”
“Mr. Crockett will be here momentarily.”
“What do I do? Sit down and wait?”
“It will only be a moment, I’m certain.…Mr. Crockett is getting out a very important matter this morning and asked me to be here in readiness. However, I know that Mr. Olney feels the nature of your business is so important, Mr. Crockett wouldn’t want anything to interfere with seeing you.”
Denton smiled a watered-down version of Olney’s cordial manner and led the way into a part of the house I hadn’t been in before. It was a room fixed up as a transcribing office, with an electric typewriter, a transcribing machine, some filing cases and four or five fairly comfortable chairs.
“Just have a seat,” he said. “I’ll go right on with my work, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
Denton fitted earplugs into his ears, held his long, bony fingers poised over the keyboard of the typewriter for a moment, and then came down on the keyboard like a piano player putting on a speed exhibition.
I sat there and watched him, absolutely fascinated. The staccato of the keys was broken only by the tinkle of the bell as the carriage reached the end of its run. The way the guy was typing it seemed that the carriage went from right to left just about as fast as the electric return whipped it back from left to right.
No time at all and the guy had reached the end of the paper and was feeding another sheet into the typewriter.
The door opened, and Melvin Otis Olney came in, all smiles and diffusive cordiality.
“Well, well, Lam,” he exclaimed. “The demon detective— you’ve certainly hung up a record for efficiency, speed of operation and satisfactory services. How are you?”
He grabbed my right and pumped it up and down. His left hand was patting my back.
Denton never looked up from his work, his eyes watching the typing, his fingers banging the keyboard.
&
nbsp; “You’ve met Denton?” Olney asked.
“I’ve met him.”
“Well, come on in. Mr. Crockett wants to see you.”
He led me through the office into a private office and tapped gently on a door at the back of the private office. It looked like a closet door.
There was no answer and he knocked again.
When there was still no answer, he pressed a bell button, an ingeniously concealed button somewhere in the wall. Even watching him, I couldn’t see where the button was. It was a cunningly contrived bit of inlay that could probably have been found with a magnifying glass, but if a person didn’t know where it was, he certainly couldn’t put his thumb on it. I only knew it was there because I heard the sound of muted chimes as he pushed his thumb.
Olney looked at his wrist watch and said under his breath, “That’s strange.”
I said nothing.
A woman’s voice said, “What seems to be the trouble, Melvin?”
I turned and saw Mrs. Crockett, attired in a filmy negligee, standing in back of us. The light was coming through the doorway behind her and her figure was silhouetted with disconcerting frankness. She didn’t seem to give it a thought.
Olney’s voice was coldly formal. “Nothing is the trouble, Mrs. Crockett.”
She saw me then and said, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Lam.… Oh, I guess I’m a little visible here in the doorway, am I not?”
She laughed and pulled the negligee a little more tightly around her, which didn’t change the visibility too much.
“Where’s Dean?” she asked.
“In his private study,” Olney said. “He told me that he would be ready for work at nine o’clock this morning and wanted me to be sure that Wilbur was here. He said he had some important documents to get out.”
“When did he tell you?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“I thought he was locked up in his study all day.”
“He was out for about half an hour. I think you were in your studio.”
Olney pressed the button again, and again the chimes sounded.
“There’s an emergency key somewhere,” Olney said. “I think we’d better look in. There’s just a chance that—”
“No, no, no,” Mrs. Crockett exclaimed. “He’d never forgive anyone for that. When he’s in there, his privacy must be held absolutely inviolate.”
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