CHAPTER 1
There are few streets in America down which a man wearing a mask can walk without attracting undue attention. Broadway, Manhattan, is one of those streets; Broadway has carried sophistication to the point of naivete.
The man in the mask had stepped out of a car parked just around the corner from Broadway, on a street in the upper Fifties. Many people must have seen him leave the car, but it didn't matter. Even if the police, afterward, had traced him back to that car, it still wouldn't have mattered. It was a stolen car, and one whose theft would not be reported for several hours to come.
His bright red costume would not have been noticed at all in December. Now, under a sweltering August sun, it drew casually curious glances from some of the people he passed. A few went so far as to turn their heads after him and to wonder slightly why there wasn't an advertising placard on his back. Surely he must be advertising or selling something. No one in his right mind would wear a hot flannel Santa Claus suit in August unless he was advertising or selling something.
But even if the man in the Santa Claus suit and mask wasn't in his right mind, that didn't matter to the casually curious. They knew it was a gag of some sort, and only suckers get curious about things that don't concern them. Pretty soon he'd turn into a doorway and start spieling—and then it would turn out that he was selling Santa Claus soap, a quarter a bar, guaranteed to wash the skins off potatoes so you wouldn't need a knife to peel them.
But the man in the Santa suit didn't stop to spiel or to peel. He kept on walking, not rapidly, but with the businesslike stride of a man who knows where he is going.
As a disguise, it was perfect. The scarlet suit and the plump cheeked, cheery false face gave the lie to his actual height and build so successfully that he would not have needed a pillow tied to his midriff to have induced many to swear that he was short and fat. Afterward, the police would locate a dozen or so of the thousands of people who had passed him, and their reports would be conflicting to the point of absurdity. To the orthodox among them, he'd been fat and dumpy. To a few, the agnostics, he was tall and would have been skinny except for the pillow. Or had it been a pillow?
Height: short or tall. Build: fat or thin. Color of eyes: not known. Distinguishing features: Are you kidding?
That was the sum total of description, then, that the police obtained, and they did not find it helpful to them. They did, however, trace his route from the upper Fifties to the lower Fifties. And, after the murder, back again to the upper Fifties. But we get ahead of ourselves.
The man in the Santa suit went into a building in the lower Fifties. An elevator whisked him to the third floor, and he walked along the corridor to an office and opened a door marked simply ARTHUR D. DINEEN.
There was a railing across the room just inside the door. Beyond the railing a stenographer sat at a typing desk. She looked up as the Santa suit entered, and her eyes widened a little.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Dineen,” said the voice behind the mask.
“You—uh—” The eyes of the stenographer whisked from the clock on the wall to the memo pad on her desk and then to the smiling, apple-cheeked mask. She said, “Your name, please?” with the smug air of one who is not to be taken in.
“Johan Smith,” said the man in the red suit. “Mr. Dineen is expecting me at ten-fifteen.”
Yes, that was the name on the memo pad, and he couldn't have read it from where he stood outside the railing. The girl at the desk said, “Yes, Mr. Smith. You may go in.”
He walked through the gate in the railing and toward the door marked PRIVATE leading to the inner office.
The girl's eyes followed him speculatively. A screwball? Well, it wasn't her worry if he was. The boss himself had made the appointment. She remembered now that it had been made by telephone the previous afternoon. An actor, of course, but why would he wear a costume to the interview unless he was a screwball?
The man in the red suit didn't look back. He walked through the door and closed it after him, quietly.
The man seated at the desk in the inner office looked up. He saw the costume and said, “What in hell—?”
At the tone of his voice, there was a growl from the far corner of the room. A big Doberman pinscher who had been curled up in the shaft of sunlight from the open window was now on his feet. There was an ominous buzz saw in his chest.
The eyes that looked out through the holes in the false face flickered from the growling dog back to the gray-haired man at the desk. The voice from within the mask said, “If you don't want that pooch killed, tell him—” He didn't waste words finishing the sentence; the pistol now in his hands was more eloquent than speech—it was silently eloquent, one might say, for there was a silencer on the pistol.