Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol.122, No. 6, October 1, 1938

Speed! Speed! by Edgar Franklin

George Batey’s formula for success is simple: Hew to the line and let the diamonds fall where they may.

Mr. Vance Atterford — six feet, three, of him in his impeccable dinner togs, impressively gray at the temples and so very high-hat that if you were just an ordinary mortal you experienced a marked chill whenever you got within five yards of him — stepped back from his vest-pocket conservatory at the south side of the house, whither he had gone for one of his pet carnations, and into the softly-lit reaches of his baronial study.

Althea, his niece, a beautiful Schiaparellied twenty-five, was apparently just entering the study from the hall door at the far end. Mr. Atterford favored Althea with one of his dignified, iceberg smiles and then, glancing at his great desk, he started perceptibly and asked:

“What became of it?”

“Became of what?”

“The diamond, of course.”

“Is it a riddle?” Althea asked blankly.

“By no means!” Mr. Atterford rapped out. “I’m speaking of the stone I had Van Zoon send me from Amsterdam, a month or more ago. It was lying in the center of that blotting-pad a moment back.”

“Well, it’s obviously not lying there now,” Althea shrugged delicately. “You put it in one of the drawers, perhaps?”

“It’s several days since one of them have been opened.”

“In one of your pockets, then?”

“It is not, I assure you,” Mr. Atterford said, after a hard stare at the girl, “in any of my pockets.”

“You didn’t swallow it?” Althea asked mildly.

Another long, hard stare at her, and Mr. Atterford sat down rather suddenly behind his desk and addressed the empty blotting-pad — oddly, too, as if he were giving the girl all the time possible.

“Althea, a few months back, when times promised to be better, I imported that huge stone, meaning to have it made up as a tiara for my wife — for your Aunt Edith, that is — should she ever decide to return from Paris. Under present conditions, that is out of the question, and so it has been in the burglar-proof compartment of this desk, while I have tried to find some way to avoid pledging it for the two hundred thousand dollars it will bring. There is no way. Baldly, then, I am depending absolutely on that diamond to bring me nearly a quarter of a million dollars before the week is out. Failing that rather forlorn sum, Atterford & Kayle will be thrown into bankruptcy. You quite understand?”

“Well, of course I understand, but why go through all that again?”

“In case, my child,” Atterford said very quietly, “that you might have succumbed — shall we say? — to the impulse of a rather insane moment. I know that you, too, have been sorely pressed for cash.”

A second or two, Althea’s eyes flashed and she breathed heavily — and then she laughed helplessly.

“I didn’t steal your diamond, you poor, distracted idiot,” she said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? And suppose we be just a little less melodramatic, Uncle Vance? If you’re sure you didn’t swallow it and it’s not in a pocket, it must have rolled to the floor. Let’s have some light here and find it.”

She moved about the room, snapping switches until the whole place blazed with light. She stifled a giggle, too, for Vance Atterford, crawling around on hands and knees, with his nose blood-hound fashion, almost on the rugs, was a trifle less than impressive; but a full ten minutes later there was never a sign of a giggle on Althea. She and Vance Atterford were staring at each other in sheer bewilderment.

“And every inch of that floor is visible!” Atterford said, with a perceptible shake in the crispness of his voice. “I was not in the conservatory for more than two minutes at most, so that if we... er... assume the impossible and say that a sneak-thief was in here, I should most certainly have heard him moving around. Further, he’d have had to disappear somewhere, don’t you see, and there are just the two doors to this room and—”

“There’s the window,” Althea suggested.

“By Jove! there is the window!” Atterford hurried to it and drew back the curtains, and at once relaxed. “It’s tightly locked, Althea.”

“You couldn’t possibly have carried the thing into the conservatory and laid it down?”

“My dear,” Atterford said grimly, “when a man sees the firm he has labored thirty years to build, going to smash for want of a mere quarter of a million, he’s not likely to drop that quarter of a million into a flower-pot and forget it. However...”

He strode away and lights blazed up in the conservatory, too. He was back within five minutes, though, with a dismayed:

“There’s no sign of it there.” He frowned at Althea again — and then his eyes popped as he cried: “Althea! What in the name of Heaven are you doing?”

“Slipping out of my gown,” Althea said calmly and stood before him rather sensationally clad in stepins and brassiere. “No, I haven’t gone mad, Uncle; but there’s something in your eye and I know the state your poor head is in at present. I want it most definitely settled that I didn’t take your infernal diamond. Catch!” She tossed him the gown. “There are no pockets in it, you know, but shake it out thoroughly and be sure. Do you want to feel over the rest of me?”

“I do not!” Atterford puffed.

“After all, Uncle,” the girl said, and her eyes snapped again, “if the stone was here at all I must have been alone with it for five or ten seconds. Satisfied?”

“Perfectly!” Atterford said. “Put on your clothes!”

He turned his back while she did so and stepped over to the corridor door. There were just the wide, empty basement stairs of this old-type house in the upper Sixties and there was the corridor itself, with not so much as one yard of drapery that might have concealed a mouse.

“Althea, before you came in here, how long were you out there in the hall — within sight of this door, I mean to say?”

Althea thought for a moment.

“All of two minutes — maybe three. I came down from my room and stopped before the long mirror there to look things over.”

“And which of the servants passed, going up or down?”

“Which of them? None of them. Nobody at all passed.”

“Then... er... well, when you came in here, did you happen to be looking in the direction of this desk?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m all out of cigarettes and I had some idea of stealing one from your silver box, which usually stands just by the blotting-pad. Uncle, your diamond was not there,” Althea said, suddenly compassionate. “You’ve simply put it somewhere else and—”

“I put it nowhere else!” Vance Atterford shouted, and one of his own circle must have been utterly horrified at the complete absence of his usual frost-bitten repression. “It lay there, I tell you — right there in the center of the blotting-pad!” he cried wildly, stabbing at the pad itself with a long forefinger. “It lay there when I went in for that damned carnation, and diamonds don’t walk off by themselves and they don’t evaporate. That stone was stolen!”

“It wasn’t, of course, unless a ghost came in and stole it,” the girl said mildly, “and — good gracious! don’t smash that bell, ringing for Paynter, Uncle! At least he couldn’t have taken it, you know; he’s been below stairs for half an hour.”

Mr. Atterford, lips tight, merely drummed on his desk until the chunky form of his elderly butler hove into sight.

“Paynter!” he said. “I’ve lost something — a valuable diamond, in fact. Nobody is to leave this house, for any reason whatsoever, until it has been found. I said, nobody!”

“Nobody, sir. Quite so. Thank you, sir,” Paynter murmured imperturbably.

“And now,” Mr. Atterford gritted and dabbed the beads of sweat from his brow, “the house is going to be searched!”

Breakfast was over and Sugar, lovely bride of that rosy-cheeked and capable young private detective, George Batey, had melted into his arms for the score or so of farewell kisses.

“Georgie, do you really like the cigarette case I got you for your birthday?” Sugar purred.

“Do I like it?” Mr. Batey said indignantly. “Am I a nut? Why, that’s something a king could be tickled pink to be carryin’, always supposin’ any king has the price of a pack o’ stinkies left these days!” He got it out and polished it even again; and it was, no kidding, something any king could be proud of, all shiny gold, with “G. B.” carved up in one corner. “Well, I gotta get goin’, baby. I’m hittin’ the front page this evenin’.”

“Those stolen Ewing bonds, George?”

“Them Ewing bonds, absolutely. Around three this afternoon I’m puttin’ the finger on the slug that lifted ’em.”

“And there’s no women mixed up in this, Georgie?” Sugar asked anxiously.

“Not a skirt in a carload!” Mr. Batey chuckled comfortably, “and the reward is one grand and the same as in my pocket at this minute. And, listen, kid! We will now trade in the old jaloppy and use that wad to buy you that crate you’re so dippy about.”

“Not the blue one, with all the shiny stuff up front?” Sugar cried rapturously.

“With hot and cold runnin’ upholstery and also have ’em put in one o’ them television sets, baby. And when you get that picked out and ordered, go do a little house-hunting, know what I mean?”

“House-hunting, Georgie?”

“Oh, we been very comfortable in the little dump here,” Mr. Batey said condescendingly, “but now I think we gotta have somethin’ with a doorman as well as an elevator, and an extra room I can use for a study, on account of I’ll be havin’ some extra homework and—”

“What’s the matter with you this morning, George?” Sugar asked quickly and laid a hand on his forehead.

“Well, I wasn’t goin’ to spill it yet, baby, but the old prune has been hintin’ lately,” Mr. Batey grinned happily. “Y’ see, the Chief now has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and he ain’t the man he once was, and he knows it. So puttin’ this and that together, what he’s been savin’ lately, we’re gonna have an assistant manager. I mean, that’s what he’ll be called, only he’ll practically run the shop.”

“You, Georgie?” Sugar gasped.

“Well, who else?”

“Oh, Georgie, you’re wonderful!” Sugar cried, and threw her arms around him.

“At that,” George Batey admitted modestly, “I am.”

And at that, he reflected complacently as he strolled to the subway, he was. Not that he was kidding himself, understand, or throwing any bunches of peonies where they could fall on him; only when a guy is a very high-class operative and extra good in every way, he knows it himself and — well, it was like that with George Batey. Yeah, and it was very lucky for the agency that things were breaking this way, too. What he meant, just a few weeks now and the old prune could go sit on his porch, up there in Westchester, and smoke his pipe till they got ready to blow taps over him, while George Batey sort of reorganized the works and... oh, it seemed he had already reached the office.

“Morning, Georgie,” the Chief’s secretary sighed, in the outer room.

“Good mornin’!” George Batey said stiffly and looked her over. In maybe another week she could lay off that “Georgie” stuff and make it “Mr. Batey.”

“The Chief is inside, huh?”

“He’s out of town for the day. Mr. Lavery—”

“I gotta get them Ewing warrants out o’ the old pill’s desk,” George stated and hurried on to the inner office — and stopped short, on account of he could feel the eyes bugging out of his face, like they were about to roll down his cheeks!

What he meant, maybe you can go into Buckingham Palace and lie down for a nap in the King’s bed and get away with it, only for anybody but the Chief himself to be sitting behind the old prune’s desk was the same as stabbing your mother to death with a nail-file!

Yeah, and the front on this guy in the Chief’s chair, like he owned the whole shop! He was long like a string-bean, dressed very nifty and with black hair slicked back, but it was the eye on him that got you. The way he looked at you down his long nose, you might think you were something the cat had just dragged in.

“You’re another of the operatives?” he said.

“The name is Batey,” George Batey said, finally catching his breath, “and who the hell are you?”

“The name is Lavery, lately of the Dykfeld Agency in Chicago, and any more of that language from you and you’ll be fired on the spot — and you’re three minutes late, by the way. I’ll make a note of that,” said this long one, if you could believe your ears. “Your Chief... ah... met my terms and brought me on here to be his assistant manager and whack the place into some kind of shape. Here! Read this, my man.”

“Listen!” George Batey wheezed. “One more o’ them ‘my mans’ and you’ll get a slap in the puss that’ll start your back teeth droppin’ down through your lungs.”

“Not really?” Mr. Lavery sneered, and you could tell right off that they were going to be great pals. “Well, one more crack like that out of you, and I’ll kick your pants through that window so hard they’ll be mopping you up on the other side of the street! I told you to read that notice.”

Three times George Batey swallowed; then, no matter if the typewritten lines were doing the shag and jumping this way and that way, it seemed that he was reading them, and it was like something you’d run across in a nightmare.

“To all operatives;” it said. “Be advised that Mr. George B. La very is now assistant manager of this agency and in full charge, at any time, in my absence. You will take any and all instructions, of every description, from him and follow them to the letter, exactly as if they were my own.”

And, believe it or not, whether the old earache had taken to puffing marijuana or somebody had hypnotized him, the Chief had signed his name to that one; and maybe for the first time in his life George Batey was struck absolutely dumb. The string-bean was sneering.

“Got it, Batey? I didn’t know if you could read or not. Now listen to me!”

And still George Batey was struck dumb. What he meant, suppose the dump had to have an assistant manager, why the hell — well, what had got into the string-bean now? He was walking up and down in jerks and waving his arms and snapping his fingers as he talked, like one of these violent cases you see in the booby-hatch.

“Too much dead wood around here, Batey! I’m cleaning it out. Let you know in a day or two if I’m keeping you on or not. Meanwhile, there are probably a lot of things about the business you don’t understand. Batey, what’s the very essential of a good detective — or don’t you know?”

Maybe ten seconds, looking at this St. Vitus case, George Batey felt that he was about to make a power-dive, belt the dome off Mr. Lavery in one hunk and then pick the rest of him to pieces like when you take a daisy and start saying “he loves me — he loves me not.” Then, suddenly, he was calm again. What he meant, even supposing a clot of cheese had worked its way into the old Chief’s brain and started this Lavery thing, there are times when a person draws a percentage by keeping his shirt on.

“Why, findin’ out things, Mr. Lavery,” George said sweetly.

Lavery paused and stared at him for an instant.

“That, of course, but before that — speed! Speed! You hear me? Speed!”

“Yes, Mr. Lavery,” George Batey said.

“Here! An example of what I mean! You’re questioning a client about the case. Well, give it speed! Make it snap like a machinegun! Let him see he’s hiring a live wire and not a hophead, Batey! Cut your questions short and shoot every one of ’em right through him. Another example! You’re searching a place for clues. Give it speed! Store or bank or whatever it is, tear it to pieces! Don’t leave so much as an envelope unturned! Let the customer see he’s getting his money’s worth. In a word, Batey,” Mr. Lavery said, slowing down a little and favoring George with his mean smile, “always put on a good show! Get the idea? And always speed! Speed!”

“Yes, Mr. Lavery,” George Batey agreed, “so now if you’ll move over and lemme get into that second drawer, there’s a couple o’ warrants I gotta have for—”

“For that Ewing case? Don’t bother; I’m taking that over myself. I have all your reports. You’re to go to this address here — wealthy party named Atterford thinks he’s lost a diamond and—”

“Hey, wait a minute, punk!” George Batey cried, and it appeared that his shirt had suddenly come off. “Them bonds are my meat! There’s a one grand reward for—”

“That’s why I’m taking it over,” Lavery said. “Now skip along to this Atterford and, remember, speed! Always speed, and always a good show. You may go.”

“Says you!” George Batey thundered. “Look! I been workin’ on them bonds since last—”

“ ‘...and follow them to the letter, exactly as if they were my own,’ ” Lavery quoted from the Chief’s bughouse document. “How’d you like to be fired for questioning orders, Batey?”

“How’d you like to go to hell?” Mr. Batey shrieked, as he departed.

There are at least two kinds of mad.

You get ordinary mad and slap the other party a couple of swift ones on the snoot and then you get glad again. Or you get crazy mad, and in that case are in great luck if some slug does not speak out of turn and win you a ticket to the hot seat for tearing the spine out of him and breaking it over your knee like an old stick — and George Batey at present was crazy mad. What he meant, even by this time the kid had on her glad rags and was picking out a new car and probably ordering a radio set for it and a couple of extra horns, saying nothing about how she’d be renting five-and-two-baths before he could catch her; and the jack to pay for all that had been sopped up by this bad smell named Lavery!

And you had to obey the half-starved mug to the letter, no less! You had to put on speed — speed! Okay, then! Mr. Batey bared his teeth as he looked up and down the four stories of Mr. Atterford’s elegant old home. Mr. Batey then jammed one finger into the button and kept it there, hammered on the heavy glass pane and kicked hard on the panel below, until—

“God bless my soul!” Paynter gasped, as he dragged open the door. “Is there a fire or—”

“Out o’ my way!” Mr. Batey snapped, dashing in. “Atterford! Where is he? Quick! Make it snappy!”

“Why, Mr. Atterford is — is back in his study, but—”

“Okay!” George Batey said and thudded down the corridor; and it seemed he must be putting on some quite good sound effects with his speed, too, on account of this swell-dressed party, who looked like a Duke, was scrambling out of his chair and yelling:

“I say, there! What on earth’s the row? Who the devil are you and why—”

“Batey — detective! You sent for me. You’re Atterford?”

“Naturally, but—”

“You had a diamond stole?”

“Either that or — at least, it’s missing and—”

“Where was this diamond when last seen?”

“What? It was right there!” Atterford puffed and stabbed at the blotting pad again. “I had stepped into the conservatory and—”

“When was this?”

“Last night, of course, and—”

“Okay! What time last night?”

“About twenty minutes past six, I should say, and—”

“Just where was you when this diamond was stole?”

Mr. Atterford’s lips tightened.

“Mr. Batey,” he said, “will you kindly be a trifle less spasmodic and allow me to finish at least one sentence? I assume that this is an act, but I find it most annoying.”

George Batey glanced at his watch.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Atterford, but I’m workin’ under instructions and usin’ speed. Get it? Speed! So gimme all the circumstances and don’t take no more’n a minute, on account of we’ve wasted a great deal o’ time already.”

“I’ll take as long as I damned well please,” Mr. Atterford stated, and settled back.

At that, George Batey observed, the guy was trying to make it snappy himself — and giving nothing at all you could tie to. He drilled a neat hole through Mr. Atterford with his left eye.

“Cuttin’ out the comedy, brother, how much did you have this rock insured for?”

“What’s that? It wasn’t insured at all, worse luck,” Atterford said sourly. “If it had been, one of the company’s — presumably sane — detectives would be here now instead of you, you—”

“Leave that lay! I gotta see your niece at once.”

“She happens to be standing right behind you,” Atterford snapped. “Althea, this is Mr. Batey, the... the alleged detective I sent for and—”

“Listen, lady!” George Batey exploded, as it were, under her nose. “We got no time to be polite. Why did you lift this rock?”

“Well, you blithering jackass!”

“Okay. Then we got that settled, too. You didn’t lift it, either. Now I gotta see your butler. Make it snappy!” He walked back and forth, breathing hard, until Paynter appeared. “You! Where was you when this diamond was stole?”

“If it happened between six and six-thirty, sir, I was below stairs. But I’d like to say—”

“Okay. You got other servants here. Who are they?”

“Well, we’re under-staffed at present, sir. There is only Mary, the chambermaid, and Felice, Miss Atterford’s personal maid, and Anna, the cook and myself. But if I may say—”

“Where was all these parties when the diamond was stole?” George Batey pounded on.

“The two maids were upstairs, sir, and Anna, naturally, was in the kitchen, but if I may be allowed—”

“Which o’ these parties left the house after six-twenty last night? Quick! Come clean!”

“None of them left it, nor did anybody else, and it happened that we had no visitors last night,” Atterford put in energetically. “And I’d like to say, Mr. Batey, that unless you can calm down I shall phone your office and have another man—”

“The rock has not left the house. Consequently, it is still in the house. Consequently, I gotta search the house,” Mr. Batey deduced in his speedy way. “Kindly get away from that desk, brother; I’m startin’ there.”

“You’re doing nothing of the sort! This house has been searched from top to bottom and—”

“Not professional, it ain’t been searched,” George Batey said, and suddenly whirled on Paynter with: “What’s that you’re concealin’ in your hand?”

“I... I... God bless me, I’m concealing nothing, sir,” Paynter said dizzily. “But, if you’re really a — a detective, I’m trying to show you this cigarette butt, which I found just inside the front door early this morning. It may mean nothing at all, but I’m positive it was not there when I locked up last night or—”

“Okay... okay! Give it here!” George Batey said, and snatched it and peered hard at it. “Some guy that has his monogram printed on ’em. A. K. Who is A. K.?”

It seemed that, in some very funny way, something had started here. You could feel it in the air; you could get it from the way this Atterford suddenly scowled, and the way his niece started and then froze up again. Then, whatever the answer might be, Atterford addressed Althea directly:

“What was Adrian Kester doing in this house last night?”

“He wasn’t in the house last night; you know that perfectly well,” the girl threw back at him, angrily. “He has not been in this house for months.”

“That’s the butt of one of those filthy fat Turkish cigarettes he smokes.”

Crazy mad as he was, George Batey was getting quite interested. What he meant, the way these two very high-hat parties were giving the eye to each other, like somebody’s ear was about to get bit off. The doll was now pulling herself up till she looked like a frozen telegraph pole.

“Adrian gave me a hundred of them long ago, because I like them, Uncle,” she said. “I was smoking the last one last night; I’m sure I don’t know how I came to drop the end on the floor.”

“If memory serves, Althea, you were complaining weeks ago that your supply had given out.”

“I found one in the back of my des’.”

“Well, begging pardon, Miss,” Paynter persisted, “but this was not on the floor at midnight when I locked up, and you’d retired an hour before that.”

And now the doll’s nostrils were getting large and round, as her eyes poured ice-cubes all over the fat butler.

“Paynter,” she said with difficulty, “I could not sleep and I was smoking it when I came downstairs to look for a book, about two o’clock, it must have been. Must I furnish an affidavit and produce witnesses, or something of that sort?”

“I humbly beg your pardon, Miss, but—”

“Okay! Okay! We’re wastin’ more time,” George Batey interrupted. “Just one question to you, lady: what brand rouge and face powder and lipstick and mascara do you use?”

“What?” Miss Atterford stared at him and then laughed shortly. “Well, if you’re really interested, you little idiot, I’m a freak of nature. I use no makeup of any description. What has that to do with the disappearance of a diamond?”

“Maybe nothin’, lady; you never can tell,” George Batey said, and thrust the cigarette butt into his vest pocket. “I’m searchin’ the house now, beginnin’ with that desk.”

“You lay one finger on that desk—” Atterford started, quite hot.

“Listen, Mr. Atterford,” George Batey said, dumfoundingly, “I’m workin’ under instructions I gotta follow to the letter. I don’t wanna get tough, only I’m a much younger man than you and if you get in the way you might see the inside of the accident ward. And as for you,” he added to the pale butler, “try and stop me!”

It seemed they both got the idea. Paynter was trying to back out through the wall; Atterford was white and stammered:

“Look out for him, Paynter! Man’s deranged, of course. I’ll get his agency on the wire and have this attended to and—”

“When I’m through with your desk, brother,” George Batey snapped impatiently and yanked out the top drawer and dumped it on the floor — and the second and the third drawer as well and then, passing to the other side, dumped three more drawers and looked over the result. It was quite good; maybe five hundred filing cards kicked around every which way, and a few dozen letters and a ream of stationery and some fountain pens. Mr. Batey rose with a satisfied grunt.

“No diamond there!” he said swiftly. “I’m startin’ at the top floor and workin’ down. It’ll take some time to search this floor, with all the rugs and cushions and curtains that have to be tore up and down.”

“You won’t get far!” Atterford thundered, and from the face on him you might think he was going to have a stroke. “I’ll have your agency remove you and — keep your distance from him, Paynter, but go with him!”

“Which is the servants’ rooms, punk?” demented George Batey demanded as Paynter wheezed behind him to the top floor.

“That one is mine and the next Mary’s and the next Felice’s, and the one at the rear is Anna’s, sir, but—”

No kidding, only he was crazy mad, George Batey would have been in stitches, looking at the results you got by using speed like this. Maybe fifty seconds and he had Mary’s room taken to pieces, drawers dumped on the bed, dresses and shoes hurled to the floor, while George Batey crawled around in the closet itself, finally coming out of the wreckage with a sigh of “No diamond here, mug!” and passing on to Felice’s room. One more minute and Felice’s bed-chamber looked as if a cyclone had just passed through; George Batey climbed out of the ruins and plodded on to Anna’s room.

This cook dame, it seemed, ran to jewelry, mostly the five-and-ten stuff. Mr. Batey hauled out a dozen bracelets and rings and chains, snarled over them, dumped more drawers on the floor and, this time even tore the clothes from Anna’s bed before taking the closet to pieces. Then, mopping his brow, he slowed down.

“Listen, you,” he said to Paynter. “I had no breakfast and I gotta have a bite to eat before I go on wreckin’ this house.”

“Why, yes, sir; wouldn’t a spot of food possibly quiet you down a bit?” the butler asked eagerly. “Something in the stomach, as it were.”

“Lead me to it and make it snappy!” George Batey puffed.

Atterford was at his study door when they got downstairs.

“That’s enough of you!” he shouted. “Get out of this house, Batey! Your chief’s out of town and nobody in your hellish agency.” He gulped. “Where the devil’s he heading now, Paynter?”

“To... to the kitchen for a bite to eat, sir. He thinks it might quiet him, like.”

“He... he—” Vance Atterford dabbed his moist brow. “Very well. Take him down and come back here at once. Anna can look after herself.”

Well, he had the right dope on that, anyhow, George Batey observed a moment later. The jane was maybe thirty-five and good-looking and she might weigh an ounce under two hundred, mostly muscle; but it was the grin on her fat face that got you. You looked at this dame and for no reason started to laugh and she also started to laugh. George Batey relaxed and sprawled in a wooden chair.

“So you’re the guy that’s raising hell upstairs?” Anna chuckled and looked him over approvingly. “I bet they call you Pinky, you’re that pink and white, like a baby. Okay if I call you Pinky?”

“Anything is okay, so long as you feed me, beautiful,” George Batey grinned. “What’s to eat?”

“How about them little cakes for their five o’clock tea?”

There were four dozen or so of these little round cakes, with frosting. George Batey sampled one and started; they were like something an angel would be baking. He sampled three more, and finally drew out his cigarette-case with:

“Smoke, pint-size?”

“I’ll get fired if Paynter catches me, but—” She took a cigarette and then beamed at the case. “Some ease!”

“They don’t come no better,” George Batey grinned and tucked it back in his pocket. “Listen, are you tellin’ me them upstairs put down all them cakes with their tea?”

“What a chance!” Anna laughed. “Nix! Harry gets eight or ten for the kids.”

“Harry?”

“That’s my brother, that ain’t worked for a year till this week. And I think today he gets the cold chicken and the spinach, too.”

“And how come you don’t get the air for takin’ ’em to him?” Mr. Batey yawned.

“I don’t take ’em, Pinky,” Anna chuckled richly. “He stops off here to see me on his way home from work, with his plumber’s kit — and there’s no tools in it. Get the idea? Say, listen, would you like half a dozen for your dinner? I think I’ve got a box. How long you going to be here?”

“Well, I have to wreck the house upstairs first, but...”

The fat doll was laughing her head off as she bustled around and found a flat box. Six little cakes she fitted into it and put it aside and then she looked thoughtfully at George Batey.

“Pinky, you look like a swell little guy. How’d you like a real break on this diamond thing?”

“What’s that?” George Batey asked, sitting up.

“Ssssh! I’m only putting two and two together and maybe that makes nothing and maybe it doesn’t. Look, this frostbitten dame upstairs. She’s that way about a guy named Kester, an artist. I don’t know which is nuttier about the other, but I think it’s her; these icebergs are always the wildest, once they get going. He ain’t got a dime and she ain’t got much more. They were getting married, anyway, only Atterford got wise and gave him the boot, weeks ago, see? Well, around twelve o’clock last night,” Anna whispered, with a cautious eye on the door, “she was phoning Kester — I heard her while coming from the top floor bath. I couldn’t get the half of it, but it was something about having the price to elope. Then I lost a lot of it and then she was telling him she had it and he should come and get it — and I lost it again. And then it seemed they were talking about somebody named Stringle — some such name.”

“Stengel?” George Batey said, breathlessly.

“Stengel it was! You wouldn’t know any Stengel?”

“Says you!” George Batey hissed delightedly. “He’s a fence!”

“A what, Pinky?”

“He buys hot diamonds and other stolen stuff. Go on.”

“No kiddin’!” Anna said and her eyes opened wide. “Well, here’s the rest of it. Maybe one o’clock, Althea went downstairs, I think in her bare feet, making hardly a sound. I heard the front door open and about two minutes later, I heard it close again — and this morning Paynter found one of those funny Turkish cigarettes Kester was always smoking around here. So — could it be she pinched that diamond so her and Kester had the price to elope? Or what, Pinky?” Anna frowned.

George Batey drew a deep breath and ate another cake.

“Listen, baby,” he said, with great feeling, “sometimes I had to work like a dog on cases and once or twice they got laid on my lap; only nobody ever done for me what you’ve done this last five minutes.”

“You mean, you got to trail Kester till he goes to see this Spingel, or whatever his name is?”

“Day and night, kid — day and night! I’m sneakin’ out of here now by the basement door and — hey, is Kester in the telephone book?”

“Sure. His first name is Adrian and he lives in West Seventy—”

And just there, in the most singular way, the conference ended, for the kitchen door opened with a bang and two able-bodied policemen moved in quickly; and behind them was Paynter and behind him Atterford; and the one red-headed harness-bull had grabbed George before he asked.

“This is the guy?”

“That is he!” Atterford stated icily. “Take him out of here and lock him up until I can get in touch with his employer and decide what to do.”

And now the other harness-bull was hauling at George Batey, too, and Mr. Batey was saying mildly: “Take it easy, pal. I’m goin’ quiet.”

“And now, Mr. Batey,” Vance Atterford said with a rather terrible smile, “your connection with this case is at an end.”

“Well, I gotta admit,” George Batey answered, and picked up a final cake in passing as they dragged him unceremoniously toward the basement door, “it almost looks like you were right.”

Unaccountably at liberty, George Batey appeared at the rather humble studio of Adrian Kester a little before one — a nice young guy, he observed, but he looked like he could do with a haircut and a square meal.

“From Smith’s,” George Batey explained. “We got just the polo pony you want, Mr. Kester.”

“What on earth do I want with a polo pony?” Kester asked amazedly.

“Well, ain’t you Mr. Arthur Kester?”

“I’m Adrian Kester and I’ve — no more use for a polo pony than—”

“Say, am I dumb!” George Batey cried. “I got the wrong address out o’ the telephone book. I beg your pardon,” he said, backing out.

Just as unaccountably, a few minutes before five, he materialized at the foot of the Atterford basement stairs, as Paynter descended. He clapped one hand over Paynter’s mouth. After that there was utter silence until, in another ten minutes, Mr. Batey climbed the stairs and entered the Atterford study: and you might have thought he had smallpox, from the face on Atterford and — oh, it seemed the old Chief was there, too.

“Batey!” he roared. “In all the years I’ve been in business, no client ever before had to call the police to throw out an operative or—”

“Well, Chief, you never had an operative just like me,” George Batey beamed. “And listen, Chief. They serve tea here at five, so maybe we could sit down and talk this over quietly, huh?”

Atterford made noises in his throat. The old Chief looked like he had just burst three blood vessels — and at that, Paynter, shaking all over, was tottering in with a tray and a pot and cups and little plates and a big silver plate full of cakes and—

“Confound it, Paynter, what’s gone wrong with you?” Atterford forced out. “Pass those cakes! Don’t dish them out on the little plates!”

“I’m s-s-sorry, sir!” Paynter mouthed, but still he set the one small plate in front of Atterford.

“So now eat your cake, Mr. Atterford,” George Batey added breezily. “What I mean, will you kindly eat that cake?”

“He’s gone wrong in his head,” the Chief said quietly, and gripped George Batey. “I’ll get him out of here, Mr. Atterford.”

“Only first he has to eat that cake, Chief!”

“Well, maybe you’d best humor him and eat it, sir,” the old Chief choked. “It ain’t so good to cross ’em when they’re like this.”

Atterford was snow-white now. Yeah, and he was biting into his cake at last, looking at George Batey — and now he was yipping quite loud and choking and trying to spit out something! And now he had it on his plate at last and he was gibbering like an idiot, for which you couldn’t strictly blame him, on account of this thing he’s just got rid of was a diamond, all wet crumbs, of course, but still a diamond big as a hickory nut!

“Speed, says this louse of a Lavery, and I gave ’em speed!” Mr. Batey rasped at his employer. “And always a good show, says this Lavery — and if that ain’t a good show, what t’ hell is a good show?”

So now they were riding home in the old Chief’s car and it seemed the old Chief was quite subdued.

“What’s in the box, Batey?” he grunted.

“Huh? Cakes,” Mr. Batey said. “You heard. She said if I was good enough to get her, I’d ought to have ’em anyway. They’re swell, Chief!”

“And — ahem! — how much was that check Atterford gave you?”

“Why, that was for twenty-five hundred bucks,” George Batey said cheerfully. “That was just a little personal testimonial; you heard that, too. I’m buyin’ the kid a new car with it.”

Then the old Chief cracked and asked almost humbly:

“Batey, how in the name of seven devils did you ever break it?”

“Why, I tell you, Chief,” Mr. Batey said, and stretched his legs and puffed one of the Chief’s cigars, “it probably would ’a’ been impossible for one o’ these third-string punks, like Lavery for instance, but it was very simple for a high-class operative like me. Look! How it lay, it had to be this Althea dame that lifted it. Okay! He said she took off her clothes and all that, so she didn’t have it on her; but he also said how just before that he was huntin’ through the conservatory. So I figured she might have hid it somewhere while alone and maybe picked it up later and I’d find it by turnin’ the house inside out.

“Only then I searched them servants’ rooms, meanin’ to put on that act and then take Althea’s room down inch by inch — and, Chief, you could ’a’ knocked me down with a postage stamp when I opened that locket in the cook’s room and seen that picture o’ Altoona Red, the gem crook. Well, his moll is Laughin’ Kate Ryan and extra good herself, and while I never seen Kate I beat it down to the kitchen and let the fat dame gimme some finger-prints on my cigarette case.

“Then I started lookin’ at them little cakes. Chief, that doll is an artist, whatever she does! Every cake was absolutely smooth and perfect, except this one she had a little to the side, and that had a small finger-mark on the icing, and also there was a touch o’ lipstick on that cigarette butt — and she was wearin’ the same color lipstick!

“Well, when she started tellin’ me how she was sendin’ out some o’ these cakes by her brother, I started tryin’ things together and... well, you heard her when the bulls brought her up and made her sing. She’d been on this cookin’ job only three weeks and she was only there on account of her Altoona was after that stone. They had it fixed he was to come in and crack the box tonight, only when the rock disappeared that way she had to change her plans quick. She snuck up the back stairs whilst they were dinin’ and went over the study and found the rock in one o’ them bronze bowls over the fireplace — and did you see the face on Althea when she spilled that, after her gettin’ the idea Kester had been in and took it, and tryin’ to cover him on the cigarette butt! Well, it seemed Kate already stole about half o’ Althea’s cigarettes, so she doped out that little frame-up for Kester, in case they called in the cops or somebody like me. I always heard, Chief, that Laughin’ Kate is very, very slick.”

“You ain’t so bad yourself, Batey,” the Chief admitted. “Go on with the bedtime story.”

“Go on to where?” George yawned happily. “The bulls yanked me out before I could heft that one cake and, I gotta admit, I was on pins and needles till we got back and I dug it out o’ the box she had packed with food; and, Chief, compared to the others, it weighed a ton, so I seen I guessed right, like I always do. At that, we stuck a plainclothes guy outside the house, first off, so nothing could get took away, and when we finally come back by the basement door, very quiet, to make the pinch—”

“Well, in Heaven’s name, Batey,” the Chief demanded hotly, “why didn’t you grab this cake in the first place, get out the rock and give it to Atterford, instead of—”

“On account of I was followin’ Mr. Laverv’s instructions to the letter, like you said, and puttin’ on a good show!” Mr. Batey replied just as hotly. “And any more instructions this nut give me will also get followed to the letter, and what’s more—”

“There’ll be no more!” the Chief snapped. “Lavery muffed that Ewing job this afternoon and I canned him.”

“Oh, yeah?” George Batey said, brightening. “Then, supposin’ we have to have an assistant manager, give yourself a break and—”

“We don’t! Go on!”

“There’s nothin’ else,” Mr. Batey sighed, as he deflated, “except I gave Kester the once-over to make sure he ain’t one o’ these babies that uses lipstick. That was while they were checkin’ up the fingerprints down to headquarters and — hey! This is my corner!”

And so, George reflected as he entered the three-and-bath whistling all is well that don’t end otherwise, as the feller says, and in a couple of days the kid could be riding him home in her new crate. It seemed she was staring at the box he carried.

“Just a few cakes I picked up,” Mr. Batey beamed.

“Well, Georgie, don’t I make nice enough cakes for you?” Sugar asked and her eyes filled. “I baked a surprise cake for your birthday.”

“In that case,” Mr. Batey grinned, “chuck ’em in the garbage pail.”

“No! You spent money for them.”

So it seemed he now had the cue to gather the kid into his arms and get this one squared. George Batey chuckled — and then ceased his chuckling, on aсcount of it looked like something funny was going on here. What he meant, the kid was about to have a fit! She had picked a small piece of wrapping-paper off the cakes and was reading something on it, and she had turned bright red.

“Who is Pinky?” she demanded. “Is there somebody that calls you Pinky?”

She was now not more than six inches from him and about to burst into flame.

“ ‘To Pinky from Anna, in case he gets back,’ ” she hissed, reading from the paper. “So who is Anna?”