Experiment in Crime (13 page)

Two nights after New Year's, Professor Burke was recognized. His duties had taken him back to the Club Egret. As "Mr. Skeat," he had been there on several occasions. He had caught glimpses of Miss Maxson and yearned to speak with her. It had been out of the question.

This evening, he went out to dinner alone. Harmon said that one of his men--

Cleves, from Tacoma, Washington, whom the professor now knew--would join him later.

"Mr. Skeat" saw nobody save the night club habitués. He had finished his dinner and was smoking a cigarette--another addition to his disguise and one he, as a pipe-and-cigar-smoker, did not enjoy--when the lights went down and the same comedian appeared, with a joke that dated back to a situation in a comedy by Terence.

The professor was listening rather idly when a girl's voice said, "Your slip's showing, darling."

Connie Maxson was standing in the luminous gloom.

He pretended not to know she had spoken to him.

"May I sit? After all--I'm a sort of hostess."

He beckoned with his cigarette. He did not rise. He glanced at the nearer tables.

Nobody was interested. She laughed softly. "What magnificent publicity you've been getting!"

"How did you--?"

She leaned forward and spoke quietly. "You dope! I've been watching for you for over a week!"

"Watching for me! I'm--dead."

Connie chuckled. "You don't look it. You look pretty sporty."

"What gave me away?"

"Remember the night your dear old Bedelia asked for protection--and Bill sent it?

Well--naturally Dusty and the boys told Bill that you'd made it back. Nobody else. And naturally Bill told me. And nobody else. So we knew you were somewhere, and we expected you'd be doing--what you evidently are. Acting as eyes for--people. And looking quite different. When you came in and took this table by the wall, tonight, I began to think it was you. And when you didn't laugh at Benny's joke, just now, I took a better look. The spotlight shows up your profile. And a girl gets to know the profiles of the men she's kissed."

"I've wanted to see your uncle. To thank him. To ask him to forgive me for spreading around so much of the confidential information he gave me. I was careful--

always--to shield him."

Connie nodded her high-piled, wheat-colored hair. "He noticed it. And appreciates it. How's it going?"

"So-so."

"I better not stay long."

"No," he said wistfully.

"I suppose you know how Bill will feel if you pull off what you must be trying?"

"Sore at me, I guess. I spilled a lot of beans."

"Sore at you!" Her voice dropped still farther and she leaned closer to him. He could smell the perfume. He was used to such perfumes, now. "Bill's having a tough time.

It's a big season. But those people are muscling in. They have some sort of an inside track Bill can't figure. He's afraid he's going to have to close up. He won't cut them in--and that's all there is to that." She rose, patting his hand. "It was nice seeing you. And don't worry. I doubt if anybody else on earth--including your own best friend--would realize."

She left and he felt lonely. He found his imagination introducing her: "This is Mrs. Burke." She would be a sensational professor's wife. But he would be a sensational professor--too sensational. Even granted that this interminable impersonation ended, that everything ended well, his career would be a wreck. Who would want, on a dignified faculty, such a character as he had become--not just by newspaper allegation, but in fact?

He smoked a cigarette and watched the tango act.

Her penetration of his disguise made him vaguely uneasy. It was true that she had known he was alive. True that she had been expecting him to appear in a disguise of some sort. But he had come to think of his changed appearance as impenetrable. Chuck, for example, had looked straight at him and shown no sign whatever of recognition.

He put out his cigarette, paid his check, and strolled into the gambling room. He bought a few two-dollar chips and took a stance at a roulette table which gave him a view of the dice tables, too. Harmon had told him that men of the sort for whom he was searching would be more likely to shoot dice than to play roulette.

He began winning. He had been uncommonly lucky in the occasional gambling he had done during his undercover travels through the nighttime world of Greater Miami and of Broward County, to the north. Harmon had wanted to pay all his expenses--with government funds. The professor had insisted on using his own money--the eight hundred dollars from his first night's try at roulette. There was, in this process, an irony that amused him: the world of gambling, corruption and vice, the world about which he had once so innocently lectured, was paying for an investigation of itself.

It was about ten when the man entered the gambling room. He knew a lot of people, waved at them, stopped to chat. He congratulated one or two winners over their heaps of chips and frowned with pleasant sympathy at those who complained of bad luck.

His hair was as slick and shiny as the fender of a new black car. The comparison came to mind because the man made the professor think of cars.

It was Solo. The man who, twice, had picked up loads of "passengers" from the silent plane.

The professor went on playing. Among the people to whom Solo had spoken was a middle-aged woman in a scarlet evening dress who was recklessly distributing chips on the numbered geometry of the table. He moved, presently, to her side. She had looked, several times, at the stalwart back of Solo, who was now watching one of the dice games.

An overweight female, flushed from too many cocktails, and talkative--a type with which the professor had become familiar.

When he approached, she said, "Welcome, partner!"

He waited until she stole another look at Solo. The croupier was calling the spin.

"Handsome egg."

The woman turned. Her eyes glittered over her puffy cheeks. "You said something!"

"Who is he?"

"The Tip? He's the assistant manager of this joint." She leaned to place a chip and turned to watch the little ivory ball dance in its hypnotic vortex.

The professor felt coldness enter his veins.
The Tip.
"I know a man," Chuck had said, while the plane winged toward Cuba, "who only uses the tip of his knife." And Chuck had demonstrated.

The woman had just said, furthermore, "He's the assistant manager of this joint."

That meant--if it were true--that Double-O had an associate who also belonged to the Maroon Gang. He thought of Connie's words: "They have some kind of an inside track that Bill can't figure."

They did have--unless. . . .

The woman nudged him, "What's the matter? Can't you dream up a number?" He started and put a chip on six.

Unless Mr. Sanders and his niece were subtler than he thought. Subtler and--

something else. Unless Mr. Sanders was
still
associated with the Maroon Gang. He had once worked for them. Could it be that he belonged? That, knowing an intense, secret investigation of the Maroon Gang was being made, he hoped the field would soon be cleared of them, and open to himself?

It was possible.

That was the trouble. It was possible. And it was not only possible, but it sounded very much like any of fifty schemes, stratagems and double crosses with which Mr.

Sanders himself had filled in the sickening history of the Maroon Gang. He and French Paul could be feigned antagonists, but actual associates. Yet Double-O could be planning not to warn French Paul and his immediate associates but to let the law take them. In order to clean up afterward.

Gangsters--gamblers--criminals,
the professor thought bitterly.

The Tip--Solo--whatever his name was--may have felt the stare that was boring into his back. He may have tired of watching the dice roll. He turned quickly. His eyes met those of "Mr. Skeat."

And, in the new dubiety about his incognito, the professor's eyes did the wrong things. They tried to look back casually; but they faltered and showed self-consciousness.

The Tip inspected the professor for a moment--in the way of a man who remembers a face and cannot place it. Then he shrugged a little and turned to make a laughing comment to one of the men at the table. Soon afterward, he sauntered from the room. The professor went on playing, automatically. His mind seethed. It was his duty to go quickly, unobtrusively, to a phone and call a certain number. Not Headquarters, but a private house.

It was his duty to invite the woman who would answer to join him later--at another place. He would also tell her where he was. She would decline and he would hang up. An F.B.I. agent would appear shortly-and thenceforward the third man to be identified by "Mr. Skeat" would be relentlessly pursued, checked, shadowed and investigated.

That was his duty.

If Double-O did not know his assistant manager was a member of the Maroon Gang, Connie's words about the "inside track" were now clear--and Double-O had a very treacherous employee. He should be told.

That, in such a case, was also an obligation: Professor Burke felt his debt to the gambler intensely.

But if Double-O
knew who The Tip was. . .
?

The dangers of that situation were too numerous and varied for quick reckoning.

Not the least of them would be his own danger at this moment. At every moment from now on.

The Tip left the room with a sense of frustration. He had a memory for faces and he had seen that face. He had seen that face and, he vaguely felt, hated or feared it. Light had been reflected up into it from the green baize and the light had filtered down upon it from overhead. He had seen that face before--in a funny light.

He stood in the foyer. The dance band was playing. Dinner was over for most of them, but not drinking. The bar was crowded. Big night for Double-O. The Tip moved up beside one of the men in tuxedos who seemed to live in that foyer, close to the curtained entrance of the gambling room.

"Guy in there at the cheap table, Al. Tinted specs. Light hair--crew-cut--dark complexion--medium size. Who is he?"

Al went through the curtain and came back back shortly. "Fellow named Ralph Skeat. Been around here a little."

"For how long?"

"Last ten days or so."

"Where from?"

"Don't know. Tourist. Never saw him, other years. There's millions like him, Tip."

The Tip walked out on the porch. The doorman and the parking attendants spoke deferentially.

He went down the broad steps. "Think I'll take a breather. Off my feed. Nice night."

They said it was a nice night.

The Tip walked toward Collins Avenue. He was thinking. Maybe it wasn't important. But he disliked not to know a face--especially when his related sensations were of alarm and hatred. On the sea side of Collins Avenue, near the Club Egret, was a vacant lot. A path led through it and The Tip followed the path to the edge of the sea. The shore at this point curved out a short distance, displaying the long arc of neon-flaming hotels down Miami Beach to his right and the spectacular new hotels at his left, to the north.

It was another calm evening. He reflected on the meaning of that fact.

Who in hell was the guy?

He lingered, staring over the starlit sea, recognition barely eluding him.

Somewhere, a fish splashed.

"Great--!" he whispered shakily.

"Mr. Skeat" cashed his chips.

If the most dismal of his theories was fact, it might not even be safe to use a phone in the Club Egret. Double-O might have them tapped. The idea seemed ridiculous.

It seemed so ridiculous that he began to feel--not to think logically--that if he could have been so mistaken about Connie and Double-O there was no use trying to understand humanity, to live, to believe, to work for anything.

He went to the foyer. He addressed one of the men there. "Is Miss Maxson still around?"

"You know her, Mr. Skeat?"

"Slightly. She's talked with me a little."

"She might be."

The professor offered the man a twenty-dollar bill: "Would you see? And if she's here, ask her if she'll have a drink with me?"

The man was going to refuse the bill. When he saw its denomination, he changed his mind. "Thanks."

He came back soon. "She says, go to the bar."

Connie leaned over her drink.

"You shouldn't have asked for me!"

"Can you get out of here for a while?"

"What's the matter?"

"It's important! The man you call The Tip also works for--" he whispered--

"French Paul."

"I don't believe it!" Her violence reassured him. Her blue eyes were panicky. "I'll get a hat."

She went. Minutes passed.

She came back wearing a hat.

The professor escorted her to the door. When it closed, the warmth of the evening enveloped them and the dance music became only a drum pulse. He gave the doorman his check. His rented car was brought around.

He went slowly among pretty, pastel-colored houses. He told her what he knew about The Tip.

Once, she said, "He drove for them on Christmas Eve and Christmas Night? That could be. The Club was closed. The raid!" She laughed without pleasure. "You ought to remember."

"I do."

"We didn't open till two days later. There were repairs for one thing. They made a mess of the office--those cops--looking for the money that you and I had."

"Connie! I've got to take you back, now! I took a terrible chance--as it is. For a moment, I was afraid. . . ."

"That we knew!"

He said desperately. "I've got so I hardly trust myself."

"Oh--Martin!"

Another of her kisses began.

He did not interrupt the kiss. But, when she let go of him, he said, "I have work to do."

"I know. Please be careful." She sighed unevenly. "All my life, Martin, I'll remember you.
You're something!"

He drove back toward the low, white building where the people danced and the little white ball danced, too.

The Tip had returned--his face so pale that the doorman had said he surely must be off his feed. He had looked for "Mr. Skeat" and learned of his departure with Connie.