Stop This Man(9)
“That much we knew, Dr. Tiffin. In the meantime, please hurry with your report.”
“I don’t see how a mere guess—”
“An intelligent guess, Dr. Tiffin. Good day, sir.”
Herron thought Jones had done that very well. He followed his chief down the long corridor and out into the open. The sun was shining and some new flowerbeds made a good smell in the air. Herron was glad to be out of the building. There hadn’t been any windows in the place.
They walked across the campus to the parking lot while Herron kept thinking about the things Tiffin had said.
“Has anybody answered our alarm yet, Chief?”
“Hundreds of hypochondriacs.”
“At least we’ll have our man worried.”
“Not necessarily, Herron. If he’s got half a brain, he’ll keep from exposing himself after hearing our alarm, and any mild symptoms he might get he’d be apt to overlook at first.”
“Till it gets worse.”
“It might, Herron. A few repeated exposures, each one of them small, and the effect will grow. At any rate, what have you found out in the meantime?”
Herron pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket and began to recite.
“Besides the Hamilton City case of radiation, no further reports, and they’re not sure it is radiation burn. Three of our sources report heavy spending by two of the suspects, Ham Lippin and Jerald Jenner. Ham is in Miami Beach and Jerry is in San Diego. I also got that list of parolees you asked for. It narrows down to seven: the two Corvetti brothers, Sam Nutchin, Gus Eisenberg, Tony Catell, Carl Lamotte, and Mug McFarlane. Three of them aren’t very likely, considering everything. Sam Nutchin is very sick, Tony Catell is a has-been without connections, and one of the Corvettis is drunk most of the time. So that leaves us with the younger Corvetti, Eisenberg, Lamotte, and McFarlane.”
“That leaves us with a lot of nothing.”
“Sorry, Chief, that’s as far as I could get, so far.”
They walked in silence till they came to the parking lot behind the library.
“Have the two watchmen come up with anything else?” Jones asked.
“Same story. Somebody slugged them from behind. They don’t know whether there was one or more assailants.”
“How are they getting along?”
“No change. Bad concussions.”
“Any new evidence that the lab boys dug up?”
“They find evidence of one person only.”
Jones and Herron got into the car. Jones took the wheel.
“Seems like quite an order for one man,” Herron said. “Two watchmen slugged, three doors jimmied, two electric-eye circuits ruined, one vault door blown, not to speak of the missing gold.”
“What might help us is the fact that the loot could be radioactive. I hate to think of it, Jack, but that might make it more convenient for us to track it down.”
“It hasn’t so far, Chief.”
“I know. But a thirty-six-pound block of radioactive gold is going to make somebody sick.”
“Yeah. Especially since the thief probably didn’t know the stuff could be radioactive. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have kept the stuff in the same room with him when he holed up in that crummy rooming house in Hamilton City.”
“That may not mean a thing. Don’t forget, we still haven’t a trace of the thief or the gold, which probably means he hasn’t slowed down any himself.”
The drive from Kelvin University back to St. Louis took them one hour, but at the end of that time, neither Jones nor Herron had come up with any new ideas. When the trip was over and they pulled into the underground garage of headquarters, they were glad to get out of the car. Herron looked rumpled and tired, but Jones appeared as bland and neat as ever.
“Who knows, perhaps we’ll have a break when we get to the office, eh, Chief?”
Jones smiled back for a moment, but didn’t answer. They took the elevator to their floor and entered the bureau.
“Come to my office, will you, Jack? I want you to look at the follow-ups I got on some of the possible brains behind this job. Right now we’re going on the assumption that this was not a syndicate job.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. For instance, they would have used more than one man at the scene. I’ll show you the analysis later. Now, as I was saying, that narrows the field quite a bit. There aren’t too many independents left.”
Herron opened the door for Jones and they walked into the Chief’s office.
“All right, Jack. Here’s a dossier on Charles Letterman, alias Chauncey Lettre, alias Professor Letters. Sixty-five years old, convicted twice for complicity in bank robberies. Light sentence each time. One conviction for illegal possession of stolen goods. He’s suspected of planning a long list of crimes. Take a look at it. Present address, Two-o-seven Desbrosses Street, New York City. Next, there’s one Otto Schumacher, sixty-eight, no aliases. A very careful planner. When you look at the list, you’ll find he’s supposedly been behind a lot of inside jobs, but don’t let that prejudice you. Otherwise, little is known about him except that he was probably behind some of the biggest heists during the twenties. And he’s never been convicted of anything. Take the file along, Jack, and hold it, because we haven’t found him yet.”