The Seven Sinister Sombreros

Chapter VII. The Curved Angle.

Edward Beaver, his beady eyes glistening with enthusiasm, said: “I think the committee has done itself proud in picking you as the winner, Miss Wahine. That’s one of the best hulas I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Job Wolganheimer said: “Oh, hell! If you’re going to give her the prize, go ahead and give it to her and nix on this malarkey.”

Io Wahine turned from the undercover man, walked over to Wolganheimer, and said:

“I am from a friendly race. I love well, but I do not hate well. Instinctively I know how to love. I have never learned how to hate. I would not like to have you make me begin.”

“Now listen, baby,” Wolganheimer said. “If you—”

Beaver moved aggressively forward. “You,” he said, “can—” He stopped as imperative knuckles sounded on the door.

Wolganheimer stiffened to apprehensive attention. Beaver, without taking his eyes from Wolganheimer, said:

“That’s probably Mr. Leith coming back to see me. Open the door, will you, Miss Wahine?”

She flung open the door.

Karl Bonneguard and Emil Bradercrust pushed their way into the room.

Wolganheimer said to Bonneguard: “Well, it’s about time you showed up. I’ve been expecting you for an hour. Did you get my message?”

“Yes, I got your message,” Bonneguard said.

Wolganheimer pushed forward. “Well, what the hell’s the idea of searching my room and having your men grab me and go through me with a fine-tooth comb? Who the hell do you think you’re kidding?”

“I’m making sure, that’s all,” Bonneguard said.

“Well, that’s a great way to do it.”

“It’s my way.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t care whether you do or not.”

“Well, you’re sure now,” Wolganheimer said, with something of a swagger, “and I know who put the ideas into your head. Now it’s my turn. I’ve got something to say about him!”

“I’m not so certain he’s sure now,” Bradercrust remarked.

Wolganheimer whirled on him, but Bonneguard said:

“That’ll be enough of that, Bradercrust. We want to talk with you, Wolganheimer.”

“Go ahead and talk,” Wolganheimer said irritably, “and talk fast.”

“Not here,” Bonneguard said.

“Where?”

“Out at our headquarters.”

Wolganheimer considered the invitation with knitted brows. “I don’t know just what I’m getting into,” he said thoughtfully.

“You’re in it now,” Bonneguard said.

“I’ve got a dame here,” Wolganheimer protested.

“She’ll keep,” Bonneguard told him.

Wolganheimer looked at the police undercover man, and said bitterly: “That shows all you know about it.”

“Get your hat,” Bonneguard said. “Where’s your car?”

“Down in the parking lot.”

“Get it,” Bonneguard said.

“That’s O. K. I’ll ride out with you,” Wolganheimer told him.

Bonneguard’s voice was ominous. “I said get your car.”

“Oh, all right,” Wolganheimer surrendered, with a shrug of his shoulders. “If you’re going to be like that, let’s go ahead and get it over with.”

He turned to Io Wahine. “Well, baby, I guess this is the end. I’ve given you about all the presents you can reasonably expect. I know what that means.”

The Hawaiian girl said proudly, “One does not buy my friendship.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Wolganheimer remarked. “That don’t keep one from paying for it.”

He marched out of the door, with Bradercrust and Bonneguard falling into position, one on each side.

The door closed.

Io Wahine raised dark, limpid eyes to Beaver. “Thin men,” she said, “are inclined to be nasty. Don’t you think so?”

Beaver, with the assurance of his two hundred odd pounds of brawn, placed a friendly but not particularly platonic hand on her shoulder, and said patronizingly: “Thin guys are the bunk, baby. Now this first prize is a solid gold surfboard studded with diamonds.”

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a representative of the press here when you present it?” she asked. “A photograph would make excellent publicity.”

Beaver nodded. “Sure,” he said. “We aren’t in any hurry, are we?”

She smiled up at him.

Suddenly a look of worried preoccupation clouded the spy’s eyes. He said: “You wait here just a minute. I’ve got to run downstairs and see about my car. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

“You’re pinched if you’ve left it parked near the curb,” she warned. “There’s no parking—”

“It’s all right. I can square it,” Beaver said hurriedly. “You wait right here.”

He dashed out of the door, caught an elevator flashing past the floor, yelled, “Down, six,” and saw the cage come back to a stop as the door slid open. Beaver jumped in the car.

“Get to the lobby just as quick as you can, operator. Pass up all stops. It’s a matter of life and death.”

The cage shot downward. Beaver, running out through the door, ran to the sidewalk and almost collided with Sergeant Ackley and Captain Carmichael.

“What is it, Beaver?” Sergeant Ackley asked, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the parking lot.

“I’ve got something, sergeant,” the spy blurted.

“Well, go ahead and spill it fast,” Ackley told him. “We’re waiting for Bradercrust to drive out of that parking lot. When he does, we’re going to follow him. We’re just about ready to spring our trap. He’s got the dough and—”

“He hasn’t got it at all,” Beaver said hastily. “It’s Wolganheimer.”

“Bunk,” Sergeant Ackley retorted easily. “You’re always going off half-cocked with goofy theories, Beaver.”

The spy said, “Very well, sergeant, I just thought I’d report,” and turned back toward the office building. It was Captain Carmichael who stopped him.

“Let’s hear about it, Beaver,” he invited.

The undercover man turned back.

“It stands to reason it was Wolganheimer,” he said. “I see the whole thing now. When Leith first became interested in the case, he looked at a photograph of the house on Wilmeier Avenue. I noticed that he put his thumbnail over the picture of the window. It didn’t occur to me at the time what he was doing. I’ve been thinking it over, and now I realize he was measuring the bars on that window.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Captain Carmichael asked.

“Everything,” the spy said. “I remember noticing it at the time, and yet I didn’t notice it. It’s one of those things that you see, and it sticks in your memory, but you just don’t understand or appreciate why it sticks until later on when it flashes through your mind all at once and then—”

“Never mind that,” Carmichael said. “We’re going to have to tag Bradercrust in a minute. Give me the dope fast.”

“Well, Wolganheimer is a thin man. He’s the only one in the crowd who could get through a real narrow opening. You notice the bars on that window on this side of the door of that house, and you’ll see they aren’t spaced exactly uniformly. The lower left-hand corner is oblong, and the space is just a bit larger than any other space in between the bars in any of the windows. It’s a cinch that space was left purposely. Bonneguard wouldn’t have done it, because he’s so big it wouldn’t have done him any good, but Wolganheimer could have done it.”

“But Wolganheimer was with Bonneguard all the time that job was being pulled off,” Sergeant Ackley said, his voice showing contemptuous disgust.

“No, he wasn’t either,” Beaver said, “because the job wasn’t pulled when everyone thinks it was. Just because the guards went to sleep on the job, it’s a natural assumption that the safe must have been cracked while a guard was sleeping. You naturally figure that that’s why the guards were doped. That isn’t so. The guards were doped just as a cover-up.

“Wolganheimer and Bonneguard went in the room to lock up. Bonneguard put the dough in the safe. Wolganheimer went around locking the windows. He could have left that one window unlocked. He went out, took Bonneguard to the lawyer, doubled back in the car, slipped over the fence, spoke to the dogs, reached through the bars, raised the window, squirmed in through that opening, opened the safe by using the combination, took out the cash, then knocked out the dial, and punched back the spindle.

“Bettler was keeping guard in the outer corridor all the time, but Wolganheimer didn’t care because there was a locked door between him and Bettler, and Bettler didn’t even have a key. Wolganheimer slipped back out and went and picked up Bonneguard. He told Bonneguard he’d been out with his Hawaiian girl. Nobody cared enough about it to check him on it because no one figured it made any difference where he’d been.”

“But how did Bettler get drugged, and afterwards how did Bradercrust get drugged?” Captain Carmichael asked. “As Sergeant Ackley has pointed out, those facts indicate that Bradercrust must have been the one who administered the drug.”

“No, it was a cinch,” Beaver said. “When Wolganheimer left the first time, he coated the glass tumbler below the spigot of the water cooler with some tasteless opiate. Bettler took a drink. Half an hour afterward, he became groggy. He telephoned Bonneguard. Bonneguard, Wolganheimer, and Bradercrust dashed up there. They took Bettler and left Bradercrust. While they were there that time, Wolganheimer coated the inside of the glass with more dope. This time he made a better job of it, because he knew he hadn’t given Bettler quite enough. This time he almost got too much. Bradercrust took a glass of water, drank some, saw the dog was thirsty, poured the rest out for the dog, then added more water to it by-refilling the tumbler from the spigot. The dish the dog drank the water from was too big to go under the spigot. It had to be filled by using the tumbler.”

Sergeant Ackley said, “You’re all wet, Beaver.”

“I’m not so certain he is,” Captain Carmichael said thoughtfully. “And what do you suppose is holding them up in the parking station? Let’s go take a look.”

“That will be tipping our hand,” Sergeant Ackley warned.

“Well, maybe it’s time to tip it,” Carmichael remarked. “Come on, Beaver.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” the spy said, “I’m working on another angle of this case. I’m working on Io Wahine. I think I’m going to be able to worm it out of her that Wolganheimer didn’t come to see her at all the night of the burglary.”

“Good work, Beaver,” Captain Carmichael complimented.

“But in order to do that,” Beaver went on desperately, “I’ve got to get in strong with her. I’m giving her a prize on behalf of the Hawaiian-American Aesthetic Art Association which Lester Leith organized for some purpose or other. I don’t know exactly what was back of it, but I figured that it was because he wanted to get on the good side of her and find out about Wolganheimer himself. Now, let’s beat him to it.”

Captain Carmichael nodded. Sergeant Ackley let his eyes narrow. The cigar in his mouth assumed a less rakish angle, but the jaw muscles below his ears were taut as he bit into the soggy tobacco.

“Here’s what I want,” Beaver went on hurriedly. “I want some newspaper we can count on to send a man down to 613 Moronia Building to cover the presentation of this prize I’m awarding. That will make me the fair-haired child, and give me a chance to make her come across with the information I want.”

Captain Carmichael said: “Ring up the Planet. Ask for Joe Ashe, the managing editor. Tell him that I told you to ring him up. Tell him what you want. Tell him it’s for me, and in connection with some work we’re doing. He’ll co-operate with you to the limit. Come on, sergeant: let’s go around and see what’s holding up the procession.”

Beaver turned to dash for the nearest public telephone. Sergeant Ackley and Captain Carmichael, marching shoulder to shoulder, with the air of two tough cops who are ready for anything that may break, rounded the corner and entered the parking lot.

A little knot of figures was engaged in hectic argument.

“I tell you that ain’t his car,” Bonneguard said. “I know the license numbers.”

“I don’t care a hoot about the license numbers,” the exasperated service station attendant said. “This is the number that’s on his ticket. This is the number that’s on his car, and this is his car. A skinny, bow-legged fellow with a Hawaiian girl came in here and parked that other car. A skinny, bowlegged fellow with a Hawaiian dancer came in and got that other car. It was a ’36 Ford when they brought it in, and it was a ’36 Ford when they took it out. This is this guy’s car. I don’t know what kind of a flimflam you’re trying to work, but so far as I’m concerned, it’s no soap. See?”

Bonneguard said ominously: “Now listen, brother. We don’t want any of your lip. This car is important. We’ve searched this guy, and we’ve searched his room. We’re looking for something. We want to search his car. Now then, it ain’t going to do us no good to search the wrong car.”

Wolganheimer took a deep breath. “You guys are nuts,” he said quietly. “This is my car. It’s the car I brought in, and it’s the car I’ve been driving. I didn’t recognize it at first.”

The service station attendant nodded. “Sure, it’s his car,” he said.

Bonneguard and Bradercrust exchanged puzzled glances.

Captain Carmichael said in a low voice to Sergeant Ackley: “Looks as though you’ve had us barking up the wrong tree, sergeant. Now, where do you suppose Leith is? We’ve let him slip through our fingers, and it begins to look as though he was the one we wanted.”

“Not until he gets in touch with Bradercrust,” Sergeant Ackley said doggedly.

Captain Carmichael stepped forward, and said to the parking attendant:

“A man came in here a few minutes ago, all dressed up in cow-puncher togs, and—”

“Yeah, I know, driving a ’36 Ford, same model as this one,” the attendant said. “He went out a minute ago. What do you want?”

“Which way did he go?”

The attendant jerked his thumb, and said: “I don’t think he went far either. I noticed his right rear tire was going flat as he pulled out. I yelled at him two or three times, but he didn’t hear.”

Captain Andrew Carmichael said, “Thanks,” and nodded significantly to Sergeant Ackley.