Читать книгу Caught by the Camera - Roy J. Snell - Страница 7

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A little more than an hour after his exit from the freight subway, Jimmie walked into Joe’s place. Joe’s was a place for eating sandwiches and doughnuts and drinking coffee. It was within a stone’s throw of the largest police station in the city. Policemen, plain-clothes men, and reporters gathered there. Many a hard-boiled crook owes his present place behind the bars, where he rightfully belongs, to the consultations held over coffee and sinkers in Joe’s place.

Jimmie hoped that Tom Howe had not been too badly handled and that he might find him here. He was not disappointed. With a bandage showing beneath his cap, Tom sat in a corner talking to the young reporter, John Nightingale, and a short, square-shouldered stranger sat beside Tom in the shadows.

“Jimmie Drury!” Tom Howe exclaimed as he entered the door. “Just the fellow we wanted most to see. But say!” His face took on mock gravity. “You’re a fine pal! Lead a fellow into a trap and get him hit over the head with a blackjack! My pal!”

“Honest, Tom, I wouldn’t have done it for the world. I——”

“Forget it!” Tom laughed. “It’s all in the game. You were trying to do your bit. So are we all. What are you having?”

“Hot chocolate, good and bitter, and strawberry pie.”

“Coming up,” said Tony, the waiter.

“Well, Jimmie,” drawled Tom. “It looks as if we might be preparing to work on one more case. And then again, it may not be much of a case. Suppose you tell us about it.”

“Important enough to get us bunged up at the very start,” said Jimmie, sipping his hot chocolate. “Who knows how important it is? Anyway, I think I got his picture.”

“You did? How?” Tom stared.

“Good stuff!” exclaimed John Nightingale, the reporter. “Get it developed right away. We’ll run it with a story.”

“That,” said Jimmie, “depends on Tom. It may not be time for a story just yet. But I’ll tell you about it.”

Passing over his experience with Peter Grim in the camera shop, he told what happened in the auction house and the adventures that followed. When he drew a note-book from his pocket and read the address taken from the package within a package: “S. O. C. 606 Corbin Place. Room 767.” Jimmie caught a low exclamation from the stranger in a dark corner near their table. He tried to distinguish the man’s face in the darkness, but failed.

“It all sounds a little goofy,” he said, after he had finished his story. “What does it all mean? What can it mean? A package within a package, a set of plans or something. A fellow willing to risk his neck for it, and others prepared to bump you, Tom, over the head, to get it. What’s it all about?”

“I’ll tell you,” said a voice that to Jimmie seemed familiar. “That package contained plans,—you are right. They’re mighty important plans.” The bulky figure moved out of the shadow. Jimmie saw the man’s face.

“Peter Grim!” he exclaimed.

“None other,” said Peter. “It seems we were destined to meet again. And, speaking for myself, I do not think it a bad piece of luck.”

“Nor I,” said Jimmie, though for the life of him he could not have told exactly why.

“It would seem,” drawled John Nightingale, “that you two have met but not been introduced, Jimmie,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Peter Grim here is a Federal man.”

“Oh-o—,” Jimmie breathed. “So that’s it!”

“Well,—I won’t bite you,” Peter Grim laughed. “But truly, Jimmie Drury!” His voice took on a sober note. “Some people seem to have all the luck, both good and bad. You had a very valuable set of plans in your hands. You bought them, took a bill of sale for them, and then they got away from you. Those,—” his voice dropped, “were plans for the McNair anti-aircraft gun.

“Of course,” he added, “that doesn’t mean a thing to you. But to any man in the army or the Secret Service it means more than words can tell.

“To think!” His whisper was as solemn as a psalm. “To think you actually had them in your hands, and now they are gone!”

“I—I’m sorry,” was all Jimmie could say. And then, “Were they truly as important as all that?”

“Important!” Peter Grim sprang to his feet. “It’s a spy plot! That’s what it is! That anti-aircraft gun! Why, it doubles the protection of any big city. It will shoot twice as high as any gun we now have in the field, or so its inventor claims. And I’m beginning to believe it. We haven’t tested it out yet. It takes a special kind of steel. That’s part of the secret. They’re preparing to make the steel out at Gary right now, the steel and the gun as well. I’m going out there,——

“But if our enemies have the plans!” he exploded, taking short steps back and forth like a caged tiger, “Oh! I say! We can’t let them have those plans!”

“As I said before, I think I got that fellow’s picture,” Jimmie suggested. “Won’t that help?”

“Picture? Sure! Good boy!” Peter exclaimed. “We’ll go through all the rogues’ galleries.

“But then,” his voice dropped, “you don’t often find the faces of spies in such places.”

“It was a colored picture,” said Jimmie. “I have a sort of notion that you can do more with such a picture, color of clothes, and everything.”

“People change their clothes,” suggested Tom.

“Not everything,” Jimmie insisted. “Did you ever notice, you’ll change your suit, shoes, even your overcoat, and you’ll wear the same scarf or tie. It’s these little things that have the most unusual color and give you away.”

“Might work.” Peter Grim seemed impressed. “Have that picture developed. Bring me a copy, a dozen copies. I’ll pay you well for them. I’ll give each of our men a copy. We’ll get that fellow and the plans.

“Trouble is,” he lowered his voice, “two can play with candid cameras. First thing those fellows will do will be to photograph those plans. Then, what do they care if we get them back? They’ll just enlarge their pictures, and there they are. We’ve got to act fast.”

“You’ll have the pictures at eight tomorrow morning,” said Jimmie, swallowing his last mouthful of hot chocolate. “But I’ve got to step on it in that case.”

“606 Corbin Place,” Peter Grim reminded him. “You have the address?”

“Yes, I’ve got it,” said Jimmie. “Now I’ll have to beat it. Good night.” He was gone.

“There are a few things I don’t understand,” said Tom Howe, after ordering a second cup of coffee. “You say these plans are tremendously important?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why were they sent by express? Wasn’t that risky?”

“Very!” Peter Grim agreed. “But you see, we didn’t know they were important in the beginning. Every month in the year, the War Department, to which I am at present attached, receives letters from people assuring it that the writer has made a scientific discovery or invented something that will revolutionize war. And most of them are cranks.

“Ninety-nine out of a hundred. So we just tell them to send us the plans and we’ll look them over. That’s what we did with this man.

“He sent the plans. Some spy must have discovered their importance. They never arrived. When they failed to show up, we wrote him, and he brought us a second set of plans.”

“And when you discovered how important the plans were, somebody lost his job.”

“Not quite that bad,” Peter laughed quietly. “Anyone may make a mistake. But we did get mighty excited about it. Little good it did. Those plans had vanished. And now,—well, work it out for yourself.” He settled back in his chair.

“Seems clear enough,” Tom said, after a moment’s reflection. “They were in the process of stealing the plans when someone interrupted them. After hiding the plans in a box of paper flowers, they snatched the billing tag from the box of flowers and beat it.”

“Something like that,” Peter agreed.

“After that they watched the unclaimed auctions until the flower package came through,——”

“But why let Jimmie bid in the package?”

“This fellow may have been a little afraid of being caught. It would be easy to take a package from a boy, so why spend a lot of money? He had accomplices waiting for him. They spotted me and banged me over the head. Of course, they all got away. That was one I muffed. Oh, well,” Tom sighed as he rose, “you can’t catch ’em all. But we’ll get those birds yet!”

“If only we could get them before they make a copy of those plans!” Peter exclaimed. “Honest, Tom, you haven’t a notion of how very important it is!”

“We’ll get them!” Tom repeated. “You don’t know Jimmie and me!” For all that, he had his own grave misgivings.