Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

“Pete I don’t know who. Zey jus’ call heem Pete.”

“Who’s‘they’?”

“Hees buddies. Two of zem. Zey come here many time for oh, ’bout eight months.”

“Catch any other names?”

“Lemee theenk. Wan zey call Frank. Zat all I hear.”

“Are they heeled?”

She nodded. “Oh, good! Zey buy wheesky, teep big. Five dollah, wan time I treenk wiz zem.”

“What did they talk about?”

She shrugged. “Ball game, horses — I don’t remember.”

“Anything about jewelry?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Joolry? No, I don’ theenk—”

“Haydee, the next time they come in, try to get their names and addresses. It’ll be worth fifty.”

“Feefty dollah? Oh, I try hard, Eegan!”

“So long, Haydee. You’re a good kid.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek.

She giggled and said: “Not like zat, Eegan. Like zis.” She kissed him on the lips, her full mouth working sensuously against his.

“Very nice,” he said. “Thanks, Haydee. And don’t forget those names and addresses.”

Well, it wasn’t much to show for a night’s work, but it was something. Binky Byers, the fat hoodlum tentatively identified by Feldman as one of his assailants, was still in town, was hanging around The Block with two pals, and was calling himself Pete.

Wearily he headed the black Chevvie towards his apartment on Calvert Street.

IV

Two nights later Egan had dinner at Muriel’s. Afterwards they made a fire, threw some pillows on the floor in front of the fireplace, and lay there, sipping brandy and listening to the hi-fi. It was cozy and warm, and so was Muriel, but at 11:25, just as their kisses were beginning to take on a new meaning, the phone rang.

“Let it ring,” he groaned.

“Damn! I’d like to.” But she got up and answered it. Then she held it out to him. “It’s for you.”

It couldn’t be anybody but Mike Casey, because nobody but Mike knew that he could be reached at this number.

Casey rasped: “Phil? They’ve dropped an atom bomb on us. Just blew the safe in the Lord Calvert Hotel Jewel and Fur Shop and grabbed one hundred eighty thousand dollars worth of ice. Didn’t touch the furs. Get down here right away.”

The black Chevvie streaked downtown to the Lord Calvert Hotel in six minutes.

The Jewel and Fur Shop was on the mezzanine floor of the big hotel, overlooking the ornate lobby, but set well back from it. There were several other shops, a travel bureau, and the hotel’s business offices there, and after the close of the business day the mezzanine was usually quite deserted. It was reached either by elevator or by a broad staircase from the lobby.

Phil Egan bounded up the stairs. There were two policemen outside the Jewel and Fur Shop. Inside were Mike Casey and two detectives, the manger of the hotel, and a Mr. Birnbaum, who managed the shop. There were wisps of acrid blue smoke still floating around, and the sharp odor of acetylene gas. The door of the safe was open, and there was a round hole about a foot in diameter where the lock had been.

“Hello, Mike,” Egan said. “How’d they get in?” He added in an aside: “As if I didn’t know.”

“Like always,” grated Casey. “They unlocked the door with a key and walked in.”

“Anybody see them?”

“Maintenance man in the basement saw three guys in overalls go up in the self-service freight elevator about quarter of eleven. One of them was carrying a big canvas bag, like a laundry bag. They must have got off at the mezzanine, opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, and left the same way they came.”

“Anybody see them go out?” Egan asked.

“No. At least, we haven’t turned up anybody yet.”

“Hm. In that canvas bag they must have had one of those baby tanks of acetylene — the kind you carry in your arms — and a blowtorch. They knew when the night-watchman rang in from the mezzanine and timed it just right. They opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, shoved it into the bag with the acetylene tank, and left the same way they came, by the freight elevator.”

“Yeah,” said Casey. “And acetylene gas, which brings a heat of sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit to the point of contact, can cut through steel like a sharp knife through a tender steak — as every damned crook knows.”

One of the detectives came over to them. “This might be something.” He handed Phil Egan a small metal gauge. “We found it under a chair.”

Egan examined it curiously and stuck it in his topcoat pocket. “Anything else?”

“That’s all,” said the detective.

Egan spent the next day interrogating employees of the hotel and the Jewel and Fur Shop. There were two of the latter, a woman in her fifties and a man in his sixties. Both had been with the shop for more than Jen years, both were bonded, both had airtight alibis, as did Birnbaum himself. Their keys, they swore, had not left their possession.