She turned her thoughts toward her next job. It was going to take place in the South of France, and it would be a challenge. Gunther had told her that the police were looking for a gang. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
In his hotel room in Paris, Daniel Cooper was reading the reports Inspector Trignant had given him. It was 4:00 A.M., and Cooper had been poring over the papers for hours, analyzing the imaginative mix of robberies and swindles. Some of the scams Cooper was familiar with, but others were new to him. As Inspector Trignant had mentioned, all the victims had unsavory reputations. This gang apparently thinks they’re Robin Hoods, Cooper reflected.
He had nearly finished. There were only three reports left. The one on top was headed BRUSSELS. Cooper opened the cover and glanced at the report. Two million dollars’ worth of jewelry had been stolen from the wall safe of a Mr. Van Ruysen, a Belgian stockbroker, who had been involved in some questionable financial dealings.
The owners were away on vacation, and the house was empty, and—Cooper caught something on the page that made his heart quicken. He went back to the first sentence and began rereading the report, focusing on every word. This one varied from the others in one significant respect: The burglar had set off an alarm, and when the police arrived, they were greeted at the door by a woman wearing a filmy negligee. Her hair was tucked into a curler cap, and her face was thickly covered with cold cream. She claimed to be a houseguest of the Van Ruysens’. The police accepted her story, and by the time they were able to check it out with the absent owners, the woman and the jewelry had vanished.
Cooper laid down the report. Logic, logic.
Inspector Trignant was losing his patience. “You’re wrong. I tell you it is impossible for one woman to be responsible for all these crimes.”
“There’s a way to check it out,” Daniel Cooper said.
“How?”
“I’d like to see a computer run on the dates and locations of the last few burglaries and swindles that fit into this category.”
“That’s simple enough, but—”
“Next, I would like to get an immigration report on every female American tourist who was in those same cities at the times the crimes were committed. It’s possible that she uses false passports some of the time, but the probabilities are that she also uses her real identity.”
Inspector Trignant was thoughtful. “I see your line of reasoning, monsieur.” He studied the little man before him and found himself half hoping that Cooper was mistaken. He was much too sure of himself. “Very well. I will set the wheels in motion.”
The first burglary in the series had been committed in Stockholm. The report from Interpol Sektionen Rikspolis Styrelsen, the Interpol branch in Sweden, listed the American tourists in Stockholm that week, and the names of the women were fed into a computer. The next city checked was Milan. When the names of American women tourists in Milan at the time of the burglary was cross-checked with the names of women who had been in Stockholm during that burglary, there were fifty-five names on the list. That list was checked against the names of female Americans who had been in Ireland during a swindle, and the list was reduced to fifteen. Inspector Trignant handed the printout to Daniel Cooper.
“I’ll start checking these names against the Berlin swindle,” Inspector Trignant said, “and—”
Daniel Cooper looked up. “Don’t bother.”
The name at the top of the list was Tracy Whitney.
With something concrete finally to go on, Interpol went into action. Red circulations, which meant top priority, were sent to each member nation, advising them to be on the lookout for Tracy Whitney.
“We’re also Teletyping green notices,” Inspector Trignant told Cooper.
“Green notices?”
“We use a color-code system. A red circulation is top priority, blue is an inquiry for information about a suspect, a green notice puts police departments on warning that an individual is under suspicion and should be watched, black is an inquiry into unidentified bodies. X-D signals that a message is very urgent, while D is urgent. No matter what country Miss Whitney goes to, from the moment she checks through customs, she will be under observation.