“Don’t move. I’m aiming a gun at where you are and I’m nervous. If your hands are empty stick them out beyond the edge. If they’re not empty –”
A sound came from behind the cartons that was something between a moan and a squeal. I let my right hand fall and stepped forward with a grunt of disgust and put the light on him, where he was flattened against the pile of cartons.
“For the love of Mike,” I said, absolutely exasperated. “What the hell are you scared of?”
He moaned, “I seen him.” His eyes were still rolling. “I tell you I done seen him.”
“So did I see him. Look here, Arthur, I have no time to waste arguing with you about primitive superstitions. What are you going to do, stay here and moan?”
“I ain’t going back up there – don’t you try it – don’t you touch me, I’m telling you –”
“Okay.” I laid the light on a carton, returned the pistol to my holster, and put on my coat and hat. Then I retrieved the light. “I’m going out the back way to see that no one escapes. The best thing you can do is stay right where you are.”
“I mean don’t I know it,” he groaned.
“Fine. Have you got the key for that door?”
“They’s a bolt, that’s all.”
“What’s outside, a court with a high fence around it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any door in the fence?”
“No, sir.”
Overhead, namely on the floor of the office directly above, I heard the tread of dozens of heavy shoes on heavy feet. The company had come. I even thought I detected the sound of Inspector Cramer’s number twelves. As I moved, I had a piece of luck; the beam of my light passed over a boy’s-size stepladder standing by the shelves. I went for it, arranged for a diversion by warning Arthur to yell for help if he heard anyone else coming down, found the rear door and unbolted it, and skipped through with the stepladder.
The court was fairly large, maybe 30 x 40, and paved with concrete, and the solid board fence was two feet over my head. There was plenty of light from the windows of the buildings. I trotted across to the rear, leaned the ladder against the fence, mounted, and looked over into the adjoining court. It was the same size as the one I was in, with a miscellaneous clutter of vague objects scattered around and one object not so vague: a bulky person dressed in white, including an apron and a chef’s cap, apparently doing breathing exercises from the way he stood there and puffed. Ten feet back of him a blaze of light came from a door standing open.
I grabbed the top of the fence and pulled myself up and perched there, teetering. At the noise he looked up, startled, but before he could start screeching I demanded:
“Did you see that cat?”
“What cat?”
“My wife’s cat. A yellow, long-haired fiend. It got loose and jumped out a window and climbed this fence. If you –” I lost my balance and toppled over and landed flat on the concrete on his side. As I picked myself up I cussed appropriately. “If I find the little darling I’ll strangle the damn thing. If you’ve been standing here you must have seen it.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“You must have. Okay, then you didn’t, but it came here. It must have smelled the grub in the restaurant –”
I was on my way and kept going. He started after me, but with slow acceleration, so I went through the open door unimpeded. It was a large room, full of noise, cookery smells, and activity. Without coming to a stop I inquired above the noise, “Did a cat come in here?” They stared at me and a couple shook their heads. There was one with a loaded tray, in waiter’s uniform, headed for a swinging door, and I got on his heels and followed him through. At the other end of a pantry corridor another swinging door let us into the restaurant proper – purple and yellow leather, gleaming chromium, gleaming white tables – with waiters fussing around waiting for the evening’s customers. One of them blocked me and I snapped at him, “Catching a cat,” and went on around. In the foyer the sucker usher gave me an astonished look and the hat-check girl started for me instinctively, but I merely repeated, “Catching a cat,” and kept going, on through two more doors and then up to the sidewalk.
I was, of course, on 49th Street. My impulse was to hoof it around a couple of corners to 48th Street and get the roadster, but it was parked only a few yards from the entrance to Miltan’s, so I voted unanimously for discretion and hopped into a taxi. On its cushion, bumping along downtown on Park Avenue, I maintained the discretion by not attempting to explore my overcoat pocket, considering that if things got complicated and aggravating enough the taxi driver might be asked questions about what he had seen in his mirror. So I just sat and let him bump me down to 35th Street and cross-town to the number of Wolfe’s house.
As I passed through the front hall I tossed my hat on a hook but kept my overcoat on. In the office, Wolfe sat at his desk, and in front of him was the metal box that was kept on a shelf in the safe, to which he alone had a key, and which he had never opened in my presence. I had always supposed that it contained papers too private even for me, but for all I knew it might have been stuffed with locks of hair or the secret codes of the Japanese army. He put something into it and shut the lid and frowned at me.
“Well?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “No soap. I might have been able to bring her if I had had a chance to exert my charm, but on account of circumstances beyond my control –”
“Circumstances forcing you to return here alone?”
“Not exactly forcing, no, sir. You may remember that on the phone I mentioned a bird named Percy Ludlow who said that your daughter was getting his cigarettes out of his coat at his request. Well, somebody murdered him.”
Wolfe glared. “I am not in a mood for buffoonery.”
“Neither am I. I ruined my coat falling off of a fence on purpose. At two minutes after six, Miss Lovchen and Miss Tormic were upstairs giving fencing lessons and various other people were doing other things. Miss Tormic was supposed to be giving a lesson to Percy Ludlow. I was downstairs in the office with Mr. and Mrs. Miltan. We heard yells and ran up two flights into a commotion of assorted people. In the fencing room at the end we found Percy Ludlow on the floor with an épée running through him from front to back and eight inches beyond. Miltan stayed there on guard and his wife went to the office to phone for the police and I took charge of the front door. The first two cops on the scene were radio patrol, the next three were precinct bums, and the homicide squad arrived around 6:24.”
“Well?”
“That’s all.”
“All?” Wolfe was as nearly speechless as I had ever seen him. “You –” He sputtered. “You were right there, inside there, and you deliberately ran away –”
“Wait a minute. Not deliberately. A cop relieved me at the door and another one took me with him to the office, where the inmates had gathered. I happened to be standing near the rack where I had hung my coat and I noticed that the pocket was bulging open on account of something in it. When I had hung the coat up the pocket had been empty. Maybe someone had merely mistaken it for the wastebasket. On the other hand, there was a murderer in the room, and Miss Tormic had presumably been fencing with the victim, and I was there as the representative of Miss Tormic. The attitude that might be adopted by the homicide squad in face of those facts would certainly be distasteful, in case there was a general search and the object in my pocket wasn’t wastepaper. So I descended to the basement and left by the back door and fell over a fence and took a taxi.”
“And what was the object?”
“I don’t know.” I removed my coat and spread it on his desk. “I thought it would be more fun to look at it with you. To the tips of my fingers it felt like a piece of canvas.” I was widening the mouth of the pocket and peeping in. “Yep, it’s canvas.” I inserted fingers and thumb and eased it out. It was rolled tight. As I unrolled it, it became a heavy canvas gauntlet, with reinforced palm, and a little metal dingus slid off onto the desk.