"I swear I didn't do it," Mabel protested. "I just came down here to tell you what we heard at the Green Room Bar and Lounge."
I sighed. "That's ok, Mabel. Just tell me what you know. We'll worry about Scott later."
Mabel sat down in the visitor's chair. Mackie took Scott's chair. "Well, Eugie and Foley and I were just finishing up our rehearsal when we heard these two guys squawking about a professor, or something. They were too old and too cheap looking to be in college. They said that they had to think of ways to shaddup the singer and the booth tonight before the shipment of gelatin for Holstrom Construction arrived at the Holstrom warehouses." She screwed her pretty face in concentration. "The professor guy was the big Calcutta. They way they talked about him, you'd think he was Boris Karloff or Orson Welles or somethin'. The big time, ya know?"
I think she meant big Kahuna, but I got her drift. Mackie was even more interested. "The Professor is the most feared gangster in the entire Pittsburgh area," the small agent explained. "He has both hands and a foot into every illegal racket in the city. Blackmail, smuggling, the Pittsburgh Pirates, taking candy from babies, corrupting already corrupt politicians, stealing old ladies' purses, robbery, assault, assaulting robbers, loitering, parking in no parking zones, discreetly rubbing out enemies, you name it, and he's had it done. He never actually does it himself, though, which is why we haven't caught him yet."
"Singer and booth must mean Jeff and Hilary, but what would he want with two actors?" I queried.
"Wait!" Eugie explained. "Foley and I saw the two men later. Foley actually talked to them at the bar. What was it that they said, Foley?" He started to explain but Eugie cut him off in her enthusiasm to be of some service to her country. "They were all excited because their boss just paid them to take a singer, a booth, scotch, and an apple Betty crisp to Germany."
Mabel nodded. "I met one of the men after the show. I think he said something like 'I admire and revere your exquisite melodies and I would be honored and privileged if you and your esteemed companion Miss Betty Jones would converge with me at eight o'clock in the first Holstrom Construction Warehouse on the Waterfront.' Of course, I turned him down flat. Not that he wasn't cute, mind you. I can't remember the last time I saw a tall, balding guy who made my pulse do the conga."
The long, complicated words and the description of Mabel's admirer sounded familiar, but I shook off the feelings of foreboding and leaned closer to the red (black?) haired performer. "Tell me more about this mysterious date, Mabel."
*******************************************************
Mackie drove Mabel and I to the Holstrom Construction warehouse. Gertie, Eugie, and Mr. Foley remained behind to call the police and the FBI. The fog was as thick as Mabel's red/black hair and I kept looking around the corner expecting to hear the voice of an invisible crime-solver scaring criminals. If people wanted to hide, they would have no problems here. Pittsburgh at eight PM looked like Philip Marlowe's Los Angelas at midnight.
"Yeah, it is kinda dark out here," Mackie admitted. "So much for glorious back and white, huh?"
"Mackie, you can hear my voice over too?" I asked. "What kind of a mystery is this?"
"A satire of one," Mackie pointed out to me. "Ahh, here we are." He turned his car on the street beside a rotting wood pier.
Mabel drew in her breath. "Well, it ain't the Ritz."
She wasn't the only one who took a breath. The joint did that to me. It was old and smelled like the Monogehela. The walls were pitted with stains and holes like one of Scott's shirts after he drank really hot coffee and spills it on himself. One thing struck me as odd, though. "It's awful quiet."
Mabel shivered. "Yeah," she muttered, "a little too quiet."
Mackie turned as gray as the fog. "You know, why don't I just go back to the car and wait for the police to show up? After all, this isn't really my jurisdiction and I..."
Mabel and I had to drag him to the warehouse. "Mackie, this isn't a good time to go Cowardly Lion on us!"
"Yeah," Mabel added, "find some nerve!"
"Ok," Mackie snapped back, "why don't you find a mind and Betty find a heart and we'll talk then?"
"Enough!" I whispered. They closed their mouths but kept glaring at each other. I peered through a rough metal door set in the side of the decaying building. "Does anyone have a crowbar or something we can use to open this door?"
Mabel produced a hairpin. "I always come prepared, Betty." She handed me the bit of metal. I started in on the door. She shot Mackie a look. "No comments, Agent Bloom."
Mackie leaned his ear against the door. "Betty, there's someone in the office! Listen!"
The first voice was the rudimentary Brooklynese spoken by every good cheap hoodlum in these movies. "So, Holstrom, when do you want us to get the shipment outta this crummy joint?"
"Yes," another, deeper, very familiar voice added, "it is of the utmost importance that we remove these boxes tonight, before the local and national authorities discover that the blasting powder in the cases is in reality a load of guns for the Axis cause."
"Don't worry, we're sending them out tonight," Kurt Holstrom's voice told them. "We just need to wait for the apple Betty crisp, right Professor?"
"The Professor", if this was indeed him, spoke in a slick, slimy, purring voice that also sounded extremly familiar. "Yes, Mr. Holstrom. It should follow the scotch cases any moment now." He sighed. "Thank goodness Miss Nellicoa was taken care of before she revealed our entire plan. It was a shame your friends killed her. She was quite a good actress, in her way, and rather lovely. She outlived her usefulness, however, and we couldn't have her telling Miss Jones and Mr. Dane everything she knew about us."
I heard him move closer to the door. "C'm on, fellas," he said, "let's go see if we can pick up that pretty little dessert." He opened the door too quickly and Mabel, Mackie, and I fell one on top of the other into the office.
The small office was little more than a bare desk and a large chair. The back of the chair faced the desk so that whoever sat in it remained hidden. I heard a mew come from behind the chair as well. I drew the gun I hid in my purse and Mackie drew his. "Nobody move!" Mackie exclaimed. "You're all under arrest for kidnapping, smuggling, not repairing this fire hazard of a warehouse since about 1915, and doing all the stuff that I mentioned earlier."
I aimed my gun at Holstrom. "Where's Jeff Singer, his wife, and my partner, you jerk?"
He snorted. "You couldn't have thought of a stronger word than jerk?"
"This show is rated G and the talk about the blood and Pavlia's murder pushed the rating to its limits already," I insisted.
Holstrom's men grabbed Mackie and I from behind. I nearly screamed when I saw who had me. Victor Comstock put his thin finger to his lips. "Betty, please don't tell them who I am," he murmured. "I'll explain what I'm doing later, but try to go along with me for the moment." He lightly pulled my arm behind my back. I was so dazed by my ex-partner's sudden return to the living that I barely noticed when he slapped handcuffs on my wrists. Mackie and Mabel were also handcuffed.
Holstrom himself led us to the main interior of the warehouse. It was filled from rusted ceiling to waterlogged floor with dusty crates of illegal arms, and probably legs, too. "I'm afraid you'll have to join us in Germany, folks" he told us. "You know far too much. We're disposing of Hilary Booth, too, just in case Jeff Singer squawked to her." He nudged his gun into my shoulders. "We wanted both of you and those coded notebooks. Mr. Dane's a leading cryptologist. He's probably cracked those codes and put them back together by now." The gun went a little further into my shoulder blades. "Where are those notebooks, Miss Jones?"
"Not a chance. I wouldn't tell you if my life depended on it."
"It does."
A sudden noise from one of the boxes attracted everyone's attention. Holstrom laughed evilly and threw open the top of the box. "Well, what do you know? Here's our scotch shipment," he leered.
"Scotty!" I exclaimed. Scott lay on his side on top of a stack of rifles. Handcuffs bound his wrists and ankles and a white rag muffled his angry cries. Holstrom took off the gag.
Scott smiled. "Betty, Betty, Betty, they sure like picking on me, don't they?" His face suddenly became serious. "Don't worry, I won't tell them where the notebooks are. Even I have more principals than that."
Holstrom pointed the gun at my head. "Al right, Dane. If you really have principals, you'll tell me where your notebooks are hidden before your fair Miss Jones becomes food for the citizens of the Mongohela's underwater underworld."
"Not so fast, Holstrom!" exclaimed Victor. The men who once held Mabel and Mackie prisoner were now unlocking their handcuffs. One handed a gun to Mackie.
"Victor," I screamed, "it is you!"
"Yes, but don't pass out on me this time," Victor reminded me. "I have to bring Holstrom to justice." He took something from the businessman/gangster/Nazi's pocket. "This should be the key to Dane's handcuffs, and to the handcuffs on Miss Booth and Mr. Singer as well."
Mackie kicked open a long, thin box. A young man with thick, curly hair lay on a row of pistols. He was also bound and gagged. Mackie took off his gag. "You're Jeff Singer, the spy we've been looking for!"
"And the husband we've been looking for," I added. Mackie unlocked Jeff's cuffs and removed his gag.
"Thanks for getting me out of that," Jeff said. "They brought Pavlia over here to try to make me tell her what I knew about our plan. She threatened to reveal the secret about my and Hilary's marriage if I didn't tell her everything."
"Which was?" I asked as I took the handcuff keys from Mackie. I already knew Hilary and Jeff's "secret".
"We're federal counterspies," Victor explained. "Jeff, my men, and I were trying to find out what the Professor and his gang were doing. Some of my men and I went undercover as members of the gang, while Jeff worked from the outside."
"I knew something was fishy about Holstrom Construction," Jeff admitted. "I met with Pruitt and Holstrom the day before Pavlia lured me to their car. Someone hit me on the back of the head, and when I woke up, I was locked in that box."
"Thank you for telling us that, Mr. Singer," said a smooth, slithery voice. The voice held a white cat in one arm and an Uzi in the other. The face was ugly, the stomach round, the suit expensive...
"Pruitt," Scott growled as I helped him out of the case, "I should have known."
Mabel pointed at Pruitt. "That's the big Kahlua?" She raised her eyebrows. "Boy, did his face wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what?"
"You're the Professor?" I gasped.
Pruitt rolled his eyes. "Aren't I always? Sometimes I feel like the small, chubby child who always portrays the villain when the little ones play cops and robbers." He pointed the gun at the crowd in general. The fluffy white cat gazed at us with its languid blue eyes. "I've known your identity for a long time, Mr. Comstock. As I said in the office, Pavlia had her moments." He shifted the gun over to me. "I'm glad I locked that strongbox," he added. "The name of my whole organization was inside of it. And don't think I didn't know that you and Mr. Dane were snooping around in my office, Miss Jones. I have a nose for these things."
"Holstrom Construction is the company's name, I presume," I said.
"But we put everything back nice and neat," said Scott.
"Wait a minute," shouted Holstrom, "that's MY business!"
"But I'm the Professor, the head kahuna and so forth," Pruitt laughed. He had the evil laugh thing down to a science. "I'm tired of sharing this very profitable enterprise." He turned his gun to Holstrom, but a shot rang out before he could fire. Pruitt collapsed and the cat fled for the main warehouse area.
Scott and I both turned to Victor Comstock. "No, I wasn't aiming for the couch this time. I was aiming for Pruitt. I hope I didn't hurt him."
Mabel ran to inspect Pruitt. The cat joined her. "Don't worry, Vic, it's only a flesh wound. There's practically no blood."
I sighed. "Thank goodness. Pruitt isn't one of my favorite people, but I don't think I could stand much more violence."
Jeff frowned. "So, if we found me and Mr. Dane, where's Hilary?"
The cat sprinted from Pruitt to a small, narrow box labeled operating theater equipment. Jeff followed the cat. "He must smell Hilary's kippers on rye toast," he proclaimed.
Sure enough, Hilary Booth lay on her side in the box. The cat purred and nuzzled Hilary's handcuffs. She sneezed through her gag. Scott took it off. "Where in blazes have you been?" Hilary exclaimed. "I was kidnapped by these...these ruffians and dumped in here." She glared at her husband. "Pumpkin, do you have anything to do with this? Or with that woman who was found in Miss Jones and Mr. Dane's agency? Or with..."
Jeff put the gag back on and closed the lid. "I might be safer if I sent her to Germany."
I stood with Victor. "Betty, I really must go."
"But why, Victor, why?"
"Because world affairs are much more important that our affair," he explained. "Betty, I'm no good at being noble, but..."
"Victor, please don't give me the hill of beans speech. It's practically a cliché." I sighed. "You do what you think is right." He walked over to talk with Mackie and Maple and the FBI and I sat on a box, stroking the cat.
"Wanna go to lunch, Betty? I know a nice little place down the street that serves nice food at even nicer prices."
Hold on, that voice sounded awfully real...
*******************************************************
Scott shook Betty's shoulder. Her eyes flew open. "Hey, Betty, did you hear me? I asked you to lunch."
Betty smiled and shook her head. "Oh, sorry, Scott, I was just, um, thinking of a new plot for 'Sam Dane'. And," I added, "you really should leave Hilary alone. She's had enough problems as it is with Jeff and Pavla and everything."
"That's why I do it, Betty," Scott said with a grin. "Hildy needs a laugh right now." Betty's stomach growled. "And you could use some lunch, and so could I. I'm starving."
Betty sighed. He'd keep bugging her if she didn't go with him anyway, so why not accept? One date couldn't hurt. "All right, Scott. What's the place called?"
"I think you'll like it. It's the Green Room Bar and Lounge. One of my old buddies is the bartender and he's willing to give us free drinks. And the singing act is something else."
Betty opened her mouth but decided that it would be wise to say nothing at all. "Sounds terrific, Scott."
The End
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