The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels (229 page)

“You’re to keep close tab on the Rhett mansion,”Mr. DeWitt instructed. “Report everything of consequence that happens there. By tomorrow things may start popping.”

The wire editor came swiftly to DeWitt’s desk with a sheet of copy which had just been torn from an Associated Press teletype.

“Here’s something,” he said. “A few hours ago police published for all state banks the numbers of those bonds stolen from the First National Bank. According to this Culver City dispatch, one of the bonds, in $1,000 denomination, turned up there yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Penny inquired.

“Sure, a Culver City bank took the bond in, not knowing it was one of the missing ones. Late this afternoon, police sent out the numbers to every bank in the state.”

DeWitt read the news item carefully his eyes glinting with interest.

“Too bad Albert Potts didn’t notify the police several days ago. Rhett may be half way to the Mexican border by this time.”

“Then you believe he walked off with the bonds?” asked Penny.

“Looks like it,” shrugged the editor. “There’s no other suspect. Or if there is, the police aren’t talking. More of those missing bonds may show up. Jerry, get busy on the telephone!” he called to the reporter who sat nearby.

“What’s doing?” Jerry inquired, getting up and coming to the desk.

DeWitt thrust the dispatch into his hand. “Get hold of that Culver City banker,” he instructed. “Find out who turned the bond in, and if the description fits Rhett.”

Jerry was occupied at the telephone for nearly fifteen minutes. He returned to report: “The bond was turned in by a woman, and the bank clerk didn’t make a record of her name.”

“Any description?”

“No, the clerk only remembers that she was a middle-aged woman.”

DeWitt sighed heavily and turned his attention to other matters. Penny glanced at the clock. It was after six o’clock. Her father, she knew, would have left the office nearly an hour earlier. She could catch a bus home, but first a cup of coffee across the street might help to fortify her until she could enjoy a home-cooked dinner by Mrs. Weems.

As she started away from the office, Jerry followed her.

“Going across the way for a bite to eat?” he asked. “Mind if I tag along?”

“I wish you would,” she replied eagerly. “We can talk about the Rhett case.”

“Oh, let’s bury that until tomorrow. I’d rather talk about a dozen other subjects—you, for instance.”

“Me?”

“About that little curl behind your ear. Or the smudge of carbon on the end of your nose!”

“Oh! Why didn’t you tell me before?” Indignantly, Penny peered at her reflection in a hand mirror and rubbed vigorously with her handkerchief.

Outside the
Star
building, newsboys were shouting their wares. As Penny and Jerry started to cross the street, one of the lads who had received a job through the girl’s influence, spied the pair.

Approaching, he flashed a paper in front of their eyes.

“See this bird who robbed the bank!” he exclaimed, pointing to the picture of Hamilton Rhett.

“Tommy, I’m afraid your reading is inaccurate,”Penny laughed. “The story doesn’t say Mr. Rhett robbed a bank.”

“He must have done it,” the newsboy insisted. “What’s the reward for his capture?”

“Mr. Rhett is not listed as a criminal,” Penny explained. “There is no reward.”

Tommy’s face dropped an inch.

“What’s the matter, son?” asked Jerry. “Figuring on cashing in?”

“Well, sort of,” the boy admitted. “I saw the fellow not an hour ago!”

“He wasn’t robbing another bank?” Jerry teased.

“He was going into a house on Fulton Street. I didn’t take down the number ’cause when I saw him I didn’t think nothin’ of it. The Green Streak wasn’t out then, and I hadn’t seen his picture in the paper.”

“Fulton Street?” repeated Penny, frowning. “What section?”

“It was at the corner of Fulton and Cherry. He went into an old three-story brick building with a sign: ‘Rooms for rent—beds thirty cents.’”

“Why, Tommy means Riverview’s cheapest flop house!” Jerry exclaimed. “I can’t imagine a bank president luxuriating in a Fulton Street dump.”

“All the same, I saw him. He wore old clothes, but it was the same bird.”

“Tommy, you’ll grow up to be a police detective some day,” Jerry chuckled. He started to pull Penny along, but she held back.

“Wait, Jerry, if there should be anything to it—”

Jerry smiled indulgently.

“Tell us more about the man you saw,” Penny urged Tommy. “How was he dressed?”

“He wore old clothes and a floppy black hat. And there was a scar on his cheek.”

“Jerry, Mr. Rhett had a similar scar!”

“And so have dozens of other people. Did I ever show you the one I got when I was a kid? Another boy socked me with a bottle and—”

“Be serious, Jerry! Tommy, are you sure the man you saw looked like the picture in the paper?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. It was the spitten image! If you catch him, will you give me a reward?”

“We’ll split fifty-fifty,” grinned Jerry, pulling Penny on by brute force.

But across the street he met unexpected opposition. Stopping dead in her tracks, Penny announced: “This is where we part company. I’m going to investigate that place on Fulton Street!”

“Say, are you crazy? You can’t go to a flop house alone!”

“That’s exactly what I shall do, unless you come with me.”

“It’s a waste of time! You know these kids. Tommy read the story, and it fired his imagination.”

“Maybe so,” admitted Penny, unmoved. “All the same, I’m going there to make certain. How about you?”

Jerry looked longingly at the restaurant and drew a deep sigh.

“Okay,” he gave in, “I learned years ago that it’s no use arguing with a gal. Lead on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

CHAPTER 10

CHEAP LODGING

Street lights blinked on as Penny and Jerry reached the corner of Fulton and Cherry Streets, in the poorer section of Riverview.

“That must be the building,” the reporter said, indicating an old, discolored brick building with a faded sign which proclaimed it a cheap rooming house of the type patronized by those who could afford only a few cents for a bed.

They crossed the street. Penny’s courage faltered as she saw that they must climb a long, dark stairway. Dust was very thick; the air inside was stuffy.

“You still can change your mind, you know,” said Jerry. “Why not wait outside, while I go up?”

Penny shook her head.

Climbing the stairs, they entered an open space from which branched narrow corridors. The landing was even dirtier and darker than the stairway, with a huge pasteboard carton standing in a corner filled with empty bottles.

In a little office room, behind a cage window, sat a plump middle-aged woman with reddish frizzled hair. She eyed the pair suspiciously. To her experienced eye, their manner and clothing immediately stamped them as “outsiders,” perhaps investigators. She smiled ingratiatingly at Jerry.

“We’re looking for a man,” he said briefly.

“You’re from the police, ain’t you?” she demanded. “We got nothin’ to hide. My husband and me run a respectable place for poor workin’ men.”

“May we see your room register?”

“Sure. Ever since that last copper was here I been keepin’ it just like he told me I had to do.”

Through the wooden slats of the cage, the woman thrust a grimy notebook which had been ruled off to provide spaces for names, addresses and date of registry.

Rapidly Jerry scanned the entries for several days back. No one by the name of Rhett had registered, but neither he nor Penny had expected the banker would be stupid enough to use his real name, if indeed he had come to such a place.

As Penny glanced about the dingy, smoke-stained room, it seemed impossible to her that Mr. Rhett, a man of culture and wealth, would voluntarily seek such quarters.

“The man we’re looking for is middle-aged,”Penny explained. “He wore glasses and may have been well dressed. We were told he was seen here earlier tonight.”

“They all look alike to me,” the woman said wearily. “Most of my rooms are empty now. We don’t fill up until the coppers start runnin’ loiterers off Cherry Street around ten o’clock. It’s still warm enough outside so’s a lot o’ the cheap skates can sleep out on the river bank.”

“Isn’t anyone here?” inquired Jerry.

“Maybe one or two men. A fella name of Ben Smith came in about an hour or two ago. He signed up for one of the flops. Come to think of it, maybe he’s the one you’re after. He acted nervous like and I figured maybe he was dodgin’ the police. Another thing, he acted like he was used to havin’ money.”

“Did he have much on him?”

“I couldn’t see, but he paid me with a five dollar bill. And why would a fella with even that much dough sleep in a flop if he wasn’t tryin’ to dodge the cops?”

“Suppose you describe the man.”

“He was about average height and middle-aged. No glasses, though. He couldn’t have been down and out very long, because he still wore a ring.”

“Describe it, please,” requested Penny.

“It was a gold ring with a picture of a snake on it—some sort of order probably.”

“The plumed serpent!” exclaimed Penny. “Jerry, perhaps Tommy was right!”

“Take us to this man,” the reporter directed the landlady.

“How do I know if he’s still here? The men come and go and so long as they’re paid up, I don’t pay no attention. What’s he done anyhow?”

“Nothing very serious,” Jerry replied. “Anyway, we’re not from the police station.”

The woman’s pretended friendliness vanished. “Then what you pryin’ around here for?” she demanded. “Who are you anyhow?”

“We’re newspaper reporters.”

“I don’t want my name in the paper, and we don’t want nothing written about this place!”

“Take it easy,” Jerry advised. “Your name won’t be in the paper. We’re only looking for a man. Now lead us to him.”

“When people take rooms or a bed in this place they got a right to privacy,” the woman argued unpleasantly. “It ain’t none o’ my business what folks have done that come here.”

“We want to talk to this man who registered as Smith. Either take us to him, or we’ll have to call in the police. I’m a personal friend of Joe Grabey, the patrolman on this beat.”

“I was only kiddin’,” the woman said hastily. “You can talk to him if he’s here.”

Locking the office door behind her, the woman led the pair down a narrow corridor with rooms on either side. A door stood open. Penny caught a glimpse of a cell-like chamber, furnished only with a sagging bed, soiled blankets, and a rickety dresser. The dingy walls were lined with pegs.

“Those nails are for hanging up clothes, and symbolize a man’s rise in the world,” Jerry pointed out to her. “Men who patronize the flops usually have only the suit on their backs. But when they make a little money and get two suits, they need a safe place to keep the extra clothes during the day. So they rent one of these tiny rooms which can be locked.”

Leading the way down a dark hall to the very end, the landlady opened a door. This room with paper-thin walls, sheltered perhaps twenty men, each cot jammed close to its neighbor. The air was disagreeable with the odor of strong disinfectant which had been used on the bare wood floor.

The room now was deserted save for a man in baggy black trousers who sat on one of the cots, reading a comic magazine. Other beds were made up, but empty.

“Is that man Ben Smith?” Penny asked in disappointment, for he bore not the slightest resemblance to the picture of Mr. Rhett.

“No, I don’t know what became of Smith, if he ain’t here,” the landlady answered. She called to the man on the cot. “Jake, seen anyone in here during the last hour?”

He shook his head, staring curiously at the intruders.

To Jerry the woman said: “You’ll have to come back later if you want to see Smith. Maybe after ten o’clock.”

Jerry scribbled his name and telephone number on a sheet of notebook paper.

“If he does show up, will you telephone me?” he requested.

“Oh, sure,” the woman replied, her careless tone making it clear she would never put herself to so much trouble.

Jerry gave her a five dollar bill. “This should make it worth your while,” he said. “You’ll earn another five if we find the man.”

“I’ll call you the minute he comes in,” the woman promised with more enthusiasm.

Penny drew a deep breath as she and Jerry left the building, stepping out into the cool, sweet air of the street.

“I still doubt we’re trailing the right man,” remarked Jerry. “Why would Hamilton Rhett hole in at a place like this?”

“It does seem out of the picture. However, we know he wore a serpent ring at the time of his disappearance.”