Three to Conquer (22 page)

             
"Both, Mrs. Clague.
I'm sorry." Norris extracted three photographs from his wallet, showed them to her. "Do you recognize any of these men?"

             
She blew her nose, wiped her eyes,
studied
the pictures bemusedly. "No, I don't."

             
"Sure you haven't seen any of them recently?"

             
"I'm positive."

             
"Where's this maid you mentioned?"

             
"In the kitchen.
Do
you
wish to speak with her?"

             
"Yes."

             
She called, "Winnie! Winnie!"

             
Winnie slouched in, a plump, ungainly girl with the placid eyes of a ruminating cow.

             
"Know these?" demanded Norris.

             
She ogled the photographs.
"No, sir."

             
"If any of them had visited here recently, would you or Mrs. Clague have been sure to have seen them?"

             
"Uhu.
I guess so."

             
The housekeeper put in, "Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Philip seldom had visitors. They used this house only for relaxation and sleep. And they kept late hours. Two or three o'clock in the morning they'd come home, sometimes. But always sober, I'll say that for them. I—"

             
"What did they do for a living?" Norris asked.

             
"They have three jewelry shops, somewhere or other. And a small wholesale warehouse in town. Their father started the business, I believe. He's been gone a good many years. They were two nice gentlemen, and it's terrible to think they're—"

             
Norris cut the garrulity with an impatient gesture. "We want to look over any papers they've left lying around. Where did they keep their correspondence?"

             
"A
ll
their business files will be at the office," said Mrs. Clague. "But their personal letters will be in that desk, or perhaps upstairs in their rooms."

             
"All right, Mrs. Clague. We're sorry to trouble you, but these things happen. If you're not too busy, how about fixing some coffee?"

             
Still somewhat bewildered, she agreed, retreating to the kitchen as if glad to escape their questions. Winnie slopped along behind her, but turned twice to look back with a bovine smile before she too disappeared. Norris frowned after her.

             
"What was that slut smirking at?" he asked.

             
"You," Harper informed. "She's about I.Q. 70, but that doesn't spoil her appetite for a tasty hunk of man. It's what comes of being a handsome Fed."

             
"Nuts!" growled Norris, looking sour. He spoke to Rausch. "We've no time for search-warrant formalities, and by the looks of it there's nobody around to bawl about the matter. I'll rake through this desk. You give the bedrooms a going-over. When we've finished we'll run into town and frisk the office. We must compile a list of all contacts they've made these last few weeks."

             
Rausch tramped upstairs, Norris spent five minutes trying to open the desk, failed, called in one of the two agents stationed at back.

             
"Finagle this lock for me, Yensen."

             
Examining it, Yensen went out to the garage, returned with a length of wire. "Another Roadking is stashed in there.
Same model and one number higher.
They must have bought them together." He fiddled with the wire, turned the lock, rolled up the lid which automatically released the drawers.

             
Avidly Norris pounced on the contents, pulling documents from pigeonholes, scanning them rapidly, putting them aside.-He lugged out the drawers one by one, found a dull black gun concealed in a camera carton, handed it to Yensen.
'
"
Hang onto that. The ballistics boys may be able to dig some data out of it."

             
After a while he finished reading the last of a bunch of letters, shoved them back,
grunted
discontentedly. "Go ask Mrs. Clague when the Baums were last here."

             
Yensen departed, came back. "She says they had breakfast this morning."

             
"That's peculiar." He turned to Harper. "All this stuff is chitchat, mostly from friends in the trade. It averages a letter a day. But there's nothing filed for the last five days. If
the average was maintained, there are five letters missing.
"

             
"
The
y
ma
y
be at the office," Harper suggested. "Or—
"

             
"
Or what?"

             
"Maybe they destroyed them on receipt.
"

             
"
Why should they do that?"

             
"Because the messages were devoid of interest, having become alien to the readers."

             
"We'll check at their office before we jump to any conclusions," Norris decided. "Either they kept them, or they didn't."

             
"If a search elsewhere fails to produce them, we can bet on two things," said Harper. "
First, that
the Baums were taken over about five days ago. Secondly, that the enemy is no longer so desperate to get established in number, and is starting to be choosy."

             
"How d'you make that out?"

             
"The Baums have been in daily contact with Mrs. Clague and Winnie; we know that much. But neither of the women
were
touched. They've lived with the Devil but retained their souls. Aren't they the luckiest people?"

             
"You give me the creeps," Norris complained. He turned to Yensen. "Make a list of names and addresses from this correspondence and bring it to H.Q. We
'
ll have to follow up every one of them."

             
Rausch reappeared saying, "Nothing of any significance up there, except a couple of telephone numbers scribbled on a pad by the phone in Ambrose's room."

             
"We'll look into those later." Norris had a final, dissatisfied glance around, saw nothing of fresh interest. "If the fate of the Baums isn't yet known to those we're seeking, you can see what's likely to happen. Somebody's going to come along wanting to know how the brothers made out. If all of us go to their office, there'll be nobody here to make a grab. We'll have to stake this place until the news gets out and warns off possible visitors."

             
"I'll stay with Yensen," Rausch volunteered. "If anybody—"

             
Something went
whirr-whirr
above them.

             
"The phone!" yelped Norris.

             
He charged upstairs, taking two steps at a time. The others crowded behind him. Entering Ambrose's room, he eyed the bedside phone warily.

             
"Notice any other telephone here?"

             
They shook their heads.

             
"Too bad.
No chance of holding the caller while we trace him." Extracting his pocket handkerchief, he draped it over the tiny scanner,
then
lifted the earpiece. The small visiscreen at
once lit up but revealed no picture. That meant a similarly obscured scanner at the other end. "Hello!" he said.

             
"Var silvin, Wend?"
demanded a voice bearing the sharpness of deep suspicion.

             
"Baum residence," said Norris frowning. "Can I help you?"

             
Click! The line went dead. Norris rattled the instrument, raised the operator,
identified
himself. "Where did that call originate? Let me know quickly—it's urgent!" He hung on for most of a minute, listened again, snorted, racked the phone and told the others, "The Baum warehouse. Evidently they had a rendezvous there with somebody who got worried and called, after they'd failed to turn up. We missed a trick by not finding out about the place and going there first."

             
"Get along right now," urged Rausch. "I'll stay with Yensen, just in case."

             
Norris nodded, signed to Harper and they hastened to the car. Ordering one of the waiting police to join them, he drove away at top speed.

             
"You might as well take it easy," advised Harper, with unconcealed pessimism. "There'll be nobody at the place; whoever hangs up on a call isn't going to sit around."

             
"That's what I think," agreed Norris, maintaining speed. "But if we fail to catch somebody, it won't be for lack of trying."

-

             
The warehouse proved to be an ancient but solid red-brick building with six heavily barred and shuttered windows, and a cumbersome steel door. Two cars were lined up outside, and three police were standing defeatedly nearby.

             
"We've three men waiting around the back," one of them told Norris. "The place is locked. Nobody answers the bell; no sounds inside. Looks like
it's
empty."

             
"Then we'll break through the door."

             
It took some time to do that, but they managed
without overmuch damage
. Not a soul lurked within. The first floor held a number of flat
glass
showcases exhibiting costume jewelry arrayed on black velvet. The floor above was littered with light crates and cardboard cartons, some full, some empty. A small office of clapboard and plastiglass stood in a comer.

             
Entering the office, Norris moved around carefully, and said to one of the police, "Fetch the fingerprint man. Given enough luck, we may be able to discover who was waiting here." To Harper, he added, "It takes a professional criminal to wipe a place clean of prints—and the characters we're after don't fall into that category."

             
He went to the desk and slid out its drawers. The contents were not enlightening—mostly billheads, invoices and other business items. A metal filing cabinet proved no more informative.

             
"Tell you one thing," remarked Harper, sniffing the air. "The Baums and their associates seem fond of cold-cure."

             
"What makes you say that?" asked Norris.

             
"Ambrose had a faint odor. So did Philip. And I can smell it again here."

             
Norris twitched his nostrils a couple of times. "Your sense of smell must be a great deal sharper than mine."