book-borrowing, if any good's to come it," I advised him.
"Why? Are things taking place?"
"Things are."
"Such as?"
"This and that, but it's no time for anybody who wants to poke into the Great Leggett Mystery to be dilly-dallying with pieces about unconscious minds."
"Come on," I told Collinson, putting the phone down and leading the way to the elevators.
He had a Chrysler roadster around the corner. We got in it and bucked traffic and traffic signals for the ten blocks that lay between our starting point and the Primrose Hotel, a gaudy establishment of the fly-by-night variety, run by an ex-tent-showman named Felix Weber.
I made Collinson drive past the hotel to the next corner, where Mickey Linehan was leaning his lopsided bulk against a garage door. He came to us when we stopped at the curb.
"The shine left ten minutes ago," he reported, "with Dick behind her. Nobody else has been out that looks like any of the birds you told us about."
"You camp in the car and watch the door," I told him. "We're going in. Let me do the talking," I instructed Collinson as we walked back to the Primrose, "and try not breathing so hard. Everything will come out O.K."
At the desk I asked for Weber and was directed to a frosted glass door marked Manager's Office. Weber, a little fat blond man with round blue childish eyes and no conscience, looked up from his desk when we came in, and then jumped up to shake my hand enthusiastically. We were old friends. We were old friends. Ten years back I had just barely missed putting him in the West Virginia big-house for a swindle, and wouldn't have missed if he hadn't had too much money to spend on witnesses. In the same affair he had just barely missed putting a .45 slug in my body, and wouldn't have missed if he hadn't had too much white mule in him. I introduced Collinson and said:
"We're looking for a girl who probably came here night before last. Her name is Leggett, no matter what one she's using. A girl of twenty, medium height and build, with a small face, pointed chin, white skin. Maybe she was wearing a brown coat and a brown and yellow hat. She here?"
"I'll see," he said, starting for the door.
"Never mind seeing. If she owes you anything we'll pay it, so you won't have to find out if she does, and collect it, before you let us have her." He came back from the door, smiling good-naturedly, saying:
"She's in 416, registered as Geraldine Long. What do you want her for?"
"We're going up to see her. The chances are she'll leave with us, so have the bill, if any, ready when we come down."
Outside the manager's door, Collinson put a hand on my arm and mumbled:
"I don't know whether I—whether we ought to do this. She won't—"
"Suit yourself," I growled, "but I'm going up. Maybe she won't like it, but neither do I like people running away and hiding when I want to ask them about diamonds."
He frowned, chewed his lip, and made uncomfortable faces, but he went along with me. We found room 416, and I tapped the door with the backs of my fingers. There was no answer. I knocked again, louder.
Behind the door a voice spoke. It might have been anybody's voice, though probably a woman's, but it was too faint for identification, too smothered for us to know what it was saying.
I poked Collinson with my elbow and ordered:
"Call her."
He pulled at his collar with a forefinger and called hoarsely:
"Gaby, it's Eric."
That didn't bring any answer.
