The Count of 9 Read online

  The article gave Crockett quite a build-up; his travels, his big-game hunting, his adventures, his two previous marriages, a picture of his present wife—a sultry combination of eyes and blonde hair on a curved chassis; the penthouse apartment and the story of the gate crashers who got in on the other party. It described Crockett’s loss of various trinkets taken by souvenir hunters, and, in particular, the loss of the carved jade Buddha some three weeks earlier.

  This party, the article said, was to be guarded by the wellknown detective agency of Cool & Lam. Bertha Cool, the senior partner, was going to be on the job personally and woe betide any gate crashers who tried to get in, or anyone who tried to make away with any articles from the priceless collection of Dean Crockett the Second.

  The article went on to state that Melvin Otis Olney, Crockett’s public relations man and social secretary, had carefully screened the list of guests. It would be necessary, as always, to show invitations before the elevator would go from the top floor to the penthouse.

  There would be entertainment by musicians, followed by a showing of the films Crockett had made on his recent trip into the interior of Borneo.

  The newspaper article was illustrated not only by the agency picture, but by a photograph of Crockett holding a pygmy blowgun with poisoned darts, and a photograph of his “globe-girdling yacht.” It was quite a write-up.

  I read the paper and asked Elsie Brand, “How’s Bertha taking it?”

  “She’s a ham,” Elsie said. “She’s eating it up. She left word to have the papers brought to her as soon as they came out. She’s proud as a peacock.”

  “How about the file clerk?” I asked.

  “She has a date tonight with the photographer.”

  “Fast worker, eh?” I asked.

  “Who?” she asked. “The file clerk or the photographer?”

  “You think it was both?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s put it this way: It was a case of an immovable force meeting an irresistible body.”

  “I hadn’t noticed the irresistible body,” I said.

  Her eyes lowered demurely. “I don’t think you look around as much as you used to, Donald.”

  “I don’t have to,” I told her.

  Elsie blushed.

  “I notice,” I said, “that Bertha was quite willing to be the exclusive representative of the firm in the department of public relations. She didn’t care about having her partner in the picture.”

  “On interoffice matters,” Elsie Brand said firmly, “I maintain a discreet silence.”

  “A damn good technique,” I said.

  “Are you going out to the party, Donald?”

  “Not me,” I said. “It’s Bertha’s show. She made the arrangements; she got the publicity; she can stand up there at the elevator and watch the gals go by in the low necklines and peer over once in a while to see if any jade Buddhas are among those present.”

  Elsie laughed.

  I walked down to Bertha Cool’s private office, knocked, walked in and said, “Congratulations, Bertha.”

  “On what?”

  “The picture; the publicity.”

  “Oh…a little publicity now and then doesn’t hurt any detective agency.”

  “That’s what I was trying to point out,” I said.

  Bertha picked up the newspaper which had been opened to the account of the Crockett party and studied the picture carefully.

  “Hussy,” she said.

  “The file clerk?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “The public relations man said we had to have cheesecake,” I said.

  “That’s not cheesecake,” Bertha snapped. “It’s anatomy.”

  “Well, you showed out all right,” I said. “You look thoroughly competent.”

  “I am,” Bertha said grimly.

  I let it go at that.

  Chapter Three

  I got in about midnight, showered, crawled into bed and was just turning out the light when the phone rang.

  I picked up the phone, said, “Hello,” and Bertha Cool’s voice came blasting at me like a gust of wind hitting a pile of dry leaves. “Donald,” she screamed, “get over here!”

  “Where’s here?” I asked.

  “The penthouse apartment—Dean Crockett the Second.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Hell’s to pay! Don’t argue with me!” she screamed. “Get over here. Get the lead out of your pants. Start moving.”

  “Okay,” I told her, “I’ll be over.”

  I dropped the phone into place, got up, dressed and drove over.

  I was familiar with the setup from what Bertha had told me and the information which had been in the papers. The entrance was on the twentieth floor of the apartment house. A special elevator had to be taken to reach the penthouse. This elevator ran up and down from the penthouse to a vestibule-like room which opened out from the twentieth-floor hallway.

  When Crockett was giving a party, or on special occasions, this vestibule would be open and there would be an operator at the elevator. Otherwise, the elevator was on automatic. Anyone who wanted to see Crockett had to telephone from the desk. If Crockett wanted to see them, he’d have someone come down in the elevator, open the vestibule door and wait for them on the twentieth floor. If he didn’t want to see them, there was no way on earth they could get up unless they had a key which fitted the door of the vestibule. Once inside the vestibule, a panel would slide back, disclosing a button which could be pressed and which brought the elevator down to the twentieth floor. Also, if a person knew where to look, there was a concealed panel which slid back to disclose a telephone. This telephone had a direct connection with the Crockett apartment.

  The door which opened from the twentieth-floor corridor into the vestibule or anteroom looked exactly like the door to an apartment. It bore the number 20-s.

  When I got up to the twentieth floor, the vestibule door was open and an attendant was in the elevator. I gave him my card, but even that didn’t do any good. He said, “Wait here,” and slid the elevator door shut in my face. Then he went on up and evidently checked with Crockett himself because when he came back down he seemed apologetic as he said, “Sorry, but I was only following instructions. It’s all right. I’m to take you up, Mr. Lam.”

  I got in the elevator and went up.

  The door slid back and I was in a reception hallway furnished with Oriental rugs, a crystal chandelier, a line of chairs, and commodious closets, the doors of which could be opened so as to form a private hat and coat checking room.

  There was a girl standing behind this checking counter now who wore a skirt reaching to the top of her knees. She looked pretty much beat up. She took my hat and coat and gave me the benefit of a forced smile.

  A door opened and Melvin Otis Olney came hurrying out. He was wearing a tuxedo and an expression of abject defeat.

  “Come in, please,” he said.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Please come in.”

  I followed him into a room that was furnished with an eye to comfort, but with distinct Oriental overtones.

  The people in the room were gathered in a tight little group and it seemed as though everyone was trying to talk at once.

  I recognized the tall man in the center of the group as Dean Crockett the Second. His pictures frequently graced the various weekly illustrated magazines, the sporting and hunting magazines, as well as the social columns.

  Bertha Cool seemed glad of an opportunity to get away from the group. She came over and grasped my arm, her fingers digging in as though I’d been a life preserver and she had found herself sinking in a hundred feet of water. Her make-up wasn’t thick enough to cover the mottled purple hue of the skin. There were little beads of perspiration on her forehead, and she was fighting mad.

  “Sonofabitch!” she said.

  “Me?” I asked.

  “Him,” she said.

  “That’s different,” I
told her. “What happened?”

  She said, “Come over here and I’ll tell you.”

  “Mrs. Cool,” Crockett called with a voice like the crack of a whiplash.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bertha Cool said. “This is my partner. I want a conference with him.”

  “Bring him over here. I want to meet him—now.”

  Bertha hesitated, then took me over.

  Crockett was a professional he-man.

  He stood six-feet-two, with naturally broad shoulders that had been accentuated with padding so as to minimize the waist. He looked like a human triangle.

  Looking at him, I remembered a remark that had been attributed to one of his tailors who was reported to have complained, “Hell, the guy doesn’t want a tailor. He wants a landscape gardener.”

  Crockett looked down at me and pushed out a bronzed hand.

  The guy made it a business to keep his skin brown. He had sun-bathing for pleasant weather; quartz lamps for cloudy weather, and he kept enough brown on his skin so that when he walked into a restaurant people looked. He wanted people to look.

  “So you’re Bertha Cool’s partner,” he said.

  He tightened up on his hand and I could all but feel the bones crunch in mine.

  “Glad to know you,” I said.

  “Well, this is a hell of a mess,” he told me.

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody stole the other jade Buddha and my pygmy blowgun, right under the alert nose of your partner. God knows what else is missing.

  “I don’t know how much experience you folks have had in this sort of work, but evidently they’ve pulled the oldest racket in the business. Somebody showed his invitation to the elevator operator, got upstairs, then sent the invitation back down to a gate crasher. The gate crasher used the invitation for the second time and walked right past Bertha Cool. Apparently Mrs. Cool neglected to check off names on the guest list as the guests went up. I’m going to have to take an inventory to find out what’s missing, but I know the blowgun is gone and so is the other carved jade Buddha. That’s the mate of the one that was taken by a gate crasher the last time.

  “My God, I might just as well go in the business of distributing priceless curios like confetti—I didn’t feel so bad last time, but this time I’m paying for a guard and I stuck my neck out with all this newspaper publicity. I don’t dare notify the police now and have this get in the papers. It would look like hell after the way I had hurled defiance at the potential gate crashers, showing them how I had protected myself against them.”

  The blonde who came forward had curves, cleavage and courtesy. “Now, Dean,” she said, “it wasn’t their fault.”

  “Don’t tell me it wasn’t their fault,” he said. “My God, I paid them money, didn’t I? I had this woman standing right there by the doorway inspecting all the invitations. And it turns out she didn’t even take the routine precaution of checking off the invitations presented against the name list of the guests.”

  “When I saw your signature on the invitations that was enough for me,” Bertha said.

  “Sure, you saw the signature,” he said, “but how many times do you suppose you admitted Joe Doakes? It was easy enough for some guy to come up, check in and send his invitation down to a gate crasher who then came back in as Joe Doakes.”

  “You mean he took the invitation down himself?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Crockett said, looking at me witheringly.

  “He sent it down by one of the caterer’s assistants. That sort of thing happens all the time. Someone slips a waiter ten dollars, and the waiter, going back and forth with food and dishes, manages to slip the invitation to the person who is waiting outside with some signal that can’t be missed, such as an unlighted cigar in his mouth or something of that sort.”

  I glanced at Bertha.

  Her face was red, her eyes angry. “Well, by God,” she said, “they may have slipped a ringer in on me if they doubled up on invitations, but nobody walked past me with any blowgun. I’ll tell you that!”

  “I feel certain that you’ll find the blowgun somewhere, Dean, dear,” the blonde said. “You must have placed it somewhere. It would be impossible for anyone to walk out with that.”

  “My wife,” Crockett said shortly, by way of introduction.

  The blonde beauty smiled at me.

  I remembered she’d been a beauty contest winner somewhere before Crockett had married her. She really had what it takes, and she seemed to be a good kid to boot.

  “How about that jade Buddha?” Crockett asked. “I suppose you think that was misplaced, too. Somebody smashed that glass case and—”

  “I’ll agree with you there, Dean,” she said, putting a conciliatory hand on his arm. “But, after all, you can’t hold Mrs. Cool responsible for that. She was hired only to see that gate crashers didn’t get in. If you had wanted her to guard the curios, you should have made it plain that you wanted her to take that responsibility. And then, of course, she’d have had someone up here to keep an eye on things.” She flashed me a sultry smile and said, “Her partner, Mr. Lam, perhaps.”

  Crockett looked down at me again.

  Bertha said, “All you had to do was to have told me you wanted that Buddha watched, and it would have been there right now. Donald could have checked the invitations. I’d have stood up there and watched that Buddha, and if any of those babes had tried to slip it down the front of their dresses when I was around, I’d have stripped them to the waist if I had to. But I’d have been damn certain they didn’t get away with anything —not while I was watching.”

  Crockett snorted contemptuously, turned on his heel and strode away.

  “You mustn’t mind him, really,” Mrs. Crockett said. “He’s upset, of course, but he’ll cool off and forget it. He takes things awfully hard—at first.”

  “What’s the value of the jade Buddha?” I asked.

  “Several thousand dollars.”

  “And the other thing—the blowgun?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and the gesture directed attention to the low neckline. “It isn’t worth one plugged nickel,” she said slowly, and with the emphasis of feeling. “Confidentially, Mr. Lam, I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to pitch that thing out of the window. If I could only have been certain I wouldn’t have hit some passing pedestrian on the head and hurt somebody, I’d have thrown it out long ago. It’s a great long contraption that catches dust, and spiders crawl inside of it whenever you turn your back—Heaven knows how spiders can get into a place like this, but they do. And those darts are downright dangerous. They’re tipped with poison and I understand that if a person gets even a scratch from one of those darts it could well prove fatal. I don’t dare to let any of the housekeepers do the dusting in his curio room. I have to do it myself.

  “Understand,” she said, giving me the benefit of a dazzling smile, “I wouldn’t want to be quoted on this, but I’ll be very, very glad if that pygmy blowgun with the darts never shows up again. I’d like to put an ad in the paper offering a reward—not for its return but to give the person who stole it a bonus.”

  “Was it jointed or in one piece?” I asked.

  “No, it’s in one piece. My husband thinks it’s a masterpiece of engineering for a primitive tribe to get a limb or small trunk of a tree, or whatever it is, and then get a hole through it that is so absolutely straight—I guess they straighten the limb by fire or steam or something—and then burn a hole through it. Then they must spend hours polishing the inside of that hole. It’s a hard wood of some kind, and that hole is just as smooth as glass.

  “I’ve seen Dean put that to his mouth and send a dart through it at such speed and with such force that it’s uncanny.”

  “One of the poisoned darts?” I asked.

  “No, no,” she said. “He keeps those in a special container; sort of a dark quiver or pouch. But he has made up some darts out of a very light wood…balsa wood, I think it is, and then
tipped them with metal and put feathers on the end and wound yarn around the dart so as to make it a tight fit in the blowgun. It’s surprising how hard he can shoot them.”

  “And were those darts stolen?” I asked.

  “Those exhibition darts?” she asked. “Heavens, I don’t know.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In a drawer in a table in his den. Please don’t feel upset about this, Mr. Lam, and please don’t pay any attention to what Dean says. He’s excitable and he gets all worked up when something like this happens. But I can assure you, by tomorrow he’ll be looking at it in an entirely different way—after all, he’s had things stolen before. He keeps his curios insured, and when a man gets in his position—well, you just have to expect something like this.”

  She smiled at Bertha, then impulsively gave me her hand. “You won’t feel bad, will you, Mr. Lam?”

  “ I won’t feel bad,” I said.

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” she said. “The real reason my husband is so angry is that he hates to lose. He deliberately baited a trap tonight. That’s why he’s so terribly angry. It also explains why he wanted all that publicity. He was just daring the thief to try and get away with something tonight.

  “You see, he’s been losing valuable pieces for some time now, and he decided to catch the thief. All this ballyhoo about the detective checking guest invitations was to cover up the fact that he had put in an X-ray elevator.”

  “An X-ray elevator?” I asked.

  “Yes. He put it in two weeks ago. Perhaps you’ve been in classified defense plants where they put you in a cage and turn on X-rays. A concealed watcher can see right through you, see everything in your pocket, whether you are carrying a gun or a knife.”

  “I’ve seen them in prisons,” I said.

  “Well, every guest who left here tonight was X-rayed. The articles simply couldn’t have been taken away…and yet they’re missing all right.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and pour oil on the troubled waters.”

  She turned and walked back to join the group in the center of the room, her hips swinging seductively.

  “Damn it to hell!” Bertha said to me. “Get your mind off that woman’s fanny. We’ve got to get down to business.”