XI
After Porky had cleared out, I leaned back in my chair and burned half a dozen Fatimas over the job. The girl had gone first with the twenty thousand dollars, and then the poet had gone; and both had gone, whether permanently or not, to the White Shack. On its face, the job was an obvious affair. The girl had given Pangburn the work to the extent of having him forge a check against his brother-in-law’s account; and then, after various moves whose value I couldn’t determine at the time, they had gone into hiding together.
There were two loose ends to be taken care of. One of them—the finding of the confederate who had mailed the letters to Pangburn and who had taken care of the girl’s baggage—was in the Baltimore branch’s hands. The other was: Who had ridden in the taxicab that I had traced from the girl’s apartment to the Marquis Hotel?
That might not have any bearing upon the job, or it might. Suppose I could find a connection between the Marquis Hotel and the White Shack. That would make a completed chain of some sort. I searched the back of the telephone directory and found the roadhouse number. Then I went up to the Marquis Hotel.
The girl on duty at the hotel switchboard, when I got there, was one with whom I had done business before.
“Who’s been calling Halfmoon Bay numbers?” I asked her.
“My God!” She leaned back in her chair and ran a pink hand gently over the front of her rigidly waved red hair. “I got enough to do without remembering every call that goes through. This ain’t a boardinghouse. We have more’n one call a week.”
“You don’t have many Halfmoon Bay calls,” I insisted, leaning an elbow on the counter and letting a folded five-spot peep out between the fingers of one hand. “You ought to remember any you’ve had lately.”
“I’ll see,” she sighed, as if willing to do her best on a hopeless task.
She ran through her tickets.
“Here’s one—from room 522, a couple weeks ago.”
“What number was called?”
“Halfmoon Bay 51.”
That was the roadhouse number. I passed over the five-spot.
“Is 522 a permanent guest?”
“Yes. Mr. Kilcourse. He’s been here three or four months.”
“What is he?”
“I don’t know. A perfect gentleman, if you ask me.”
“That’s nice. What does he look like?”
“Tall and elegant.”
“Be yourself,” I pleaded. “What does he look like?”
“He’s a young man, but his hair is turning gray. He’s dark and handsome. Looks like a movie actor.”
“Bull Montana?” I asked, as I moved off toward the desk.
The key to 522 was in its place in the rack. I sat down where I could keep an eye on it. Perhaps an hour later a clerk took it out and gave it to a man who did look somewhat like an actor. He was a man of thirty or so, with dark skin, and dark hair that showed grey around the ears. He stood a good six feet of fashionably dressed slenderness.
Carrying the key, he disappeared into an elevator.
I called up the agency then and asked the Old Man to send Dick Foley over. Ten minutes later Dick arrived. He’s a little shrimp of a Canadian—there isn’t a hundred and ten pounds of him—who is the smoothest shadow I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen most of them.
“I have a bird in here I want tailed,” I told Dick. “His name is Kilcourse and he’s in room 522. Stick around outside, and I’ll give you the spot on him.”
I went back to the lobby and waited some more.
At eight o’clock Kilcourse came down and left the hotel. I went after him for half a block—far enough to turn him over to Dick—and then went home, so that I would be within reach of a telephone if Porky Grout tried to get in touch with me. No call came from him that night.