“Because there are better ways. You should make them respect you. You should demand a public apology and some remuneration for the inconvenience they’ve caused you, to say nothing of the damage they’ve done to your reputation.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not built that way.”

  Leith surveyed her critically. “There is,” he announced, “nothing wrong with your build.”

  She flushed, then laughed. “Really, Mr. Leith, I’m sorry about your story having been rejected, but I can’t stand here chatting. I’ve work to do.”

  Leith indicated his car parked at the curb. He asked, “Couldn’t you postpone it for about thirty minutes—just long enough to have a drink?”

  She hesitated.

  “And if you’d let me handle Jason Bellview,” he said, “I feel quite certain that he would make an apology in front of all the employees of the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company.”

  She said, “I’d just love to have that happen, but it’s asking too much. Bellview would die first.”

  Leith said, “Let’s talk it over while we’re having a drink. I know where they make some marvelous spiced coffee with brandy and cinnamon bark, orange peel, and— Oh, come on. We’ll talk it over there.”

  She said, “Well, all right, but I don’t want to be too late.”

  Fifteen minutes later, over a restaurant table, they watched a deft waiter mix ingredients, saw the blue flame of burning brandy flicker upward to cast an aromatic halo about the bowl, as the waiter stirred the mixture with a silver ladle. Then, when he had lifted out two cups of the spiced beverage and discreetly withdrawn, Leith said, “At least let me ring up Jason Bellview.”

  “What would you tell him?”

  “I’d tell him that he had done you a great wrong, that you wouldn’t return to work until he paid you ten thousand dollars and made a public apology. Then, after a little trading, I’d settle for five thousand.”

  She said, “Five seconds after you telephoned, I’d be out of a job.”

  Leith gravely took a billfold from his pocket. From it he took ten one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them in a neat pile on the tablecloth. “I have one thousand dollars,” he announced, “which says that no such thing would happen.”

  She stared at the money, then raised her eyes to his face. “You’re the strangest individual I’ve ever met.”

  “At least that’s something,” Leith acknowledged. “In these days of widespread mediocrity, it’s something to be outstanding, even if one is given credit for a mild brand of insanity.”

  “There’s nothing mild about it,” she retorted, laughing. “Are you really serious?”

  By way of answer Leith caught the waiter’s eye. “Bring me a telephone.”

  The waiter brought a telephone with a long extension cord and plugged it into a phone jack at the table. Lester Leith consulted his notebook and swiftly dialed a number.

  Bernice Lamen watched him with apprehensive eyes.

  “Hello,” Leith said. “I want to talk with Mr. Jason Bellview. Tell him it’s about his blueprints.”

  During the interval which elapsed, while Leith was waiting for Jason Bellview to come on the line, Bernice Lamen said, “In about ten minutes I’m going to think this was the most madly insane impulse I ever had in my life. I’ll kick myself all around the block for not stopping you, but right now I’m curious and—and—”

  A heavy masculine voice came over the wire, saying, “Yes, this is Bellview. What’s this about the blueprints?”

  Lester Leith said suavely, “I wanted to talk with you about Miss Lamen.”

  “What about her?”

  Leith said, “You’ve damaged her character. You’ve accused her of a crime. You’ve forced her into submitting to a most humiliating experience. Now, you apparently think that—”

  “Who’s this talking?” Bellview roared in a voice so loud that it seemed his words might rip the receiver apart.

  “This is Lester Leith.”

  “You a lawyer?”

  “No,” Leith said. “I’m a friend. I’m hoping that it won’t be necessary …”

  “Well, if you’re not a lawyer, what business is it of yours?”

  Leith said, “I’m a financier.”

  “A what?”

  “A financier. I finance various business activities. At present I’m financing Miss Lamen in her claim against you. I’m hoping it isn’t going to be necessary to get a lawyer.”

  “Get a hundred lawyers!” Bellview shouted.

  “Very well,” Leith said, “only kindly remember that I offered to make a reasonable settlement with you. Perhaps you’d better consult your own attorney and see what he has to say.”

  “I refuse to pay blackmail!” Bellview said.

  “Have it your own way,” Leith said. “Only remember, when your company gets involved in a hundred-thousand-dollar lawsuit and your lawyer tells you you haven’t a leg to stand on, you had a chance to settle the case out of court. And if the stockholders of the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company learn of it …”

  “Say, wait a minute. I never turn down anything sight unseen. What’s your figure?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  “All right, it’s turned down. I feel better now. You couldn’t stick us for that much.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Bellview said, “That’s what I know. Good-by.”

  The sound made by the slamming receiver at the other end of the line was distinctly audible.

  Bernice Lamen sighed. “I knew it,” she said.

  Lester Leith picked up the ten one-hundred-dollar bills and slid them over under her saucer. “Remember, you’ve got these coming if it doesn’t work.”

  “No. I can’t take the money—but we’re licked. He’s already reached his decision. It was a gamble, and we lost.”

  Leith smiled. “Under those circumstances, we’d better have a little more spiced coffee. There’s no reason for you to go back to the office now.”

  Tears came to her eyes. She blinked them back, laughed, and said, “Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.”

  Leith said, “Well, don’t worry about it. Things are happening about the way I thought they would.”

  “You mean you thought he’d turn you down?”

  Leith nodded.

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “Because he’ll think it over and call up his lawyer. After we’ve had another cup of coffee I’ll call him up again, and then you may hear a different story.”

  They chatted over the second cup of coffee, had a brandy and Benedictine, and then Leith dialed Jason Bellview’s number again and got the crusty president of the instrument company on the line. This time Bellview’s voice was cautious. “Listen, Leith, perhaps you won’t have to go to a lawyer. The more I think of it, the more I think Miss Lamen is entitled to something—but ten thousand, of course, is out of the question.”

  “She’ll want an apology,” Leith said, “delivered in front of the entire office force.”

  Bellview hesitated for a minute.

  “That might be arranged,” he conceded.

  “And,” Leith went on, “she’ll want ten thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bellview said, and Leith heard the sounds of whispers at the other end of the line.

  “We’ll offer twenty-five hundred,” Bellview said.

  “Nothing doing,” Leith told him. “Ten or nothing. The minute I hang up I’m going to see my lawyer. Personally, I think she’s entitled to a real nice chunk of money. You—”

  “Wait a minute,” Bellview said.

  This time there was no attempt to disguise the whispering. Leith could even hear the hum of low-voiced conversation.

  “You send Bernice Lamen up to my office,” Bellview instructed.

  Leith laughed and said, “No chance. You don’t talk with her until you’ve agreed to pay ten thousand. Otherwise you talk with a lawyer.”

  There was a momentary pause, then Leith heard Bellview mutter, apparently to some person standing beside him, “He says it’s ten or nothing. That’s too much. What do we do?”

  The low voice made a suggestion, then Bellview said into the telephone, “I’ll put my cards on the table. My lawyer’s here. We’ve talked this thing over. You may have a lawsuit. You may not. We’ll pay five thousand as a cash settlement.”

  Lester Leith smiled into the transmitter. “You’ve saved yourself a lawsuit,” he said.

  “All right, tell Miss Lamen to come up here right away.”

  Lester Leith dropped the receiver into place, reached across, and picked up the one thousand dollars from under Bernice Lamen’s saucer.

  She looked up at him, her eyes large with incredulity. “You mean—”

  Leith said, “You may not stand much chance, but with that face and figure, you should at least go to Hollywood and try for a screen test. A girl can do a lot on five thousand dollars.”

  Captain Carmichael was enjoying a cigar and the sporting page of the morning newspaper when Sergeant Ackley, carrying a cardboard folder, entered the office.

  “What is it this time?” Carmichael asked, frowning as he looked up.

  Sergeant Ackley sat down on the other side of the captain’s desk. “This guy Leith,” he said disgustedly.

  “What about him?”

  “Beaver said he’d written a letter to me, and he thought it might be a good idea for me to know what was in the letter before Leith signed it and mailed it.”

  Captain Carmichael’s eyes danced. “A confession?”

  “You listen to it,” Sergeant Ackley said, “then you can tell me.”

  Ackley turned back the pasteboard folder and read from a carbon copy of a letter:

  My dear Sergeant: The original manuscripts of famous authors have at times commanded fabulous prices. It is, perhaps, conceited to think that my own efforts will some day be worth thousands of dollars to the discriminating collector. Yet, after all, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other famous writers must have felt the same way when they regarded their manuscripts.

  This story, my dear Sergeant, has been rejected by the publisher, which may make it even more valuable. In any event, I want you to have it as a token of friendship and as some slight measure of my appreciation for the zealous efforts you have made to enforce the law, even when my own convenience has been sacrificed to your zeal.

  Sergeant Ackley looked up. “Now what,” he asked, “do you make of that?”

  “Nothing,” Captain Carmichael said.

  “That’s the way I feel about it, but he told Beaver the letter wasn’t to be mailed until tomorrow, so Beaver thought I might want to know about it today.”

  “What’s the manuscript?” Carmichael asked.

  “A bunch of tripe,” Ackley said.

  “Did you read it?”

  “Oh, I glanced through it.”

  Captain Carmichael reached for the manuscript. “This is a carbon copy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How come?”

  “He isn’t going to mail this letter until tomorrow, you see, and he has the original story with him.”

  Captain Carmichael frowningly regarded the carbon copy. “He must have some reason for sending it to you.”

  “Just wants to give me the old razzberry.”

  Captain Carmichael frowned at the end of his cigar. “Don’t be too certain, Sergeant. You know Leith may have intended to grab off the swag and then give you a tip to the crook.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Well, you know this crime is a little different from the other crimes we’ve worked on. This is getting pretty close to treason, and I don’t think Leith would care very much about shielding a traitor.”

  “All he cares about is getting the swag.”

  “And you’ve read through this?” Carmichael asked.

  Sergeant Ackley fished a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and nodded.

  Carmichael turned rapidly through the pages. Suddenly he said, “Wait a minute. What’s this?”

  “Where?” Ackley asked.

  “On page five,” Carmichael said. “Listen to this:

  “It isn’t every place that would be suitable as a hiding place for a set of blueprints. It would take a long, hollow tube, and such a tube would be hard to conceal.”

  “Well,” Ackley snorted, “what’s significant about that?”

  Captain Carmichael’s face showed his excitement. “Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. “That’s just paving the way for the next paragraph. Listen to this:

  “As soon as the actress I had employed started screaming for the police, I noticed a man pick up a shotgun. This man was in the offices of the Precision Instrument Company, standing in the doorway of an office which adjoined that containing the vault. A shotgun. How interesting!”

  Captain Carmichael looked up. “Well, don’t you get it?”

  “Get what?” Sergeant Ackley said.

  “The shotgun!” Carmichael shouted.

  Sergeant Ackley said, “We know all about that. Frank Packerson, the editor of the Pidico house organ, had been trapshooting, and—”

  “Are there some photographs that go with this?” Carmichael asked.

  “The same ones you saw. They don’t mean anything.”

  “The shotgun!” Captain Carmichael shouted. “Don’t you get it, you fool? The shotgun!”

  “What about it?”

  Captain Carmichael pushed back his chair. His voice showed that he was making an effort to keep his temper. “Tomorrow Lester Leith wanted you to read this manuscript. You’re reading it just twenty-four hours early. In this manuscript Leith intended to show you how to get the man who had stolen those blueprints. By that time Leith intended to have the blueprints and have covered his tracks so you could never get anything on him. By virtue of some nice brainwork on the part of Beaver, you get this stuff twenty-four hours early—and haven’t sense enough to know what it means.”

  Sergeant Ackley’s face became a shade darker. “Well,” he demanded, “what does it mean?”

  Captain Carmichael got to his feet. “Get a squad car,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

  Frank Packerson clicked on the interoffice loudspeaker. The reception clerk announced, “Two gentlemen from headquarters.”

  Packerson smiled. “Show them in.”

  Captain Carmichael did the talking. “We’re working on that blueprint case, Packerson. The thief must have had some unusual hiding place prepared in advance. All he needed was a second or two to slip the blueprints out of the vault and into this hiding place.

  “In other words,” Carmichael went on, “the theory we’re working on now is that the thief had some hiding place so carefully prepared that, while it was instantly available, no one would ever have thought to look there. A hiding place where he could push the blueprints—a long, smooth, slender tube. After that, the tube could be taken out of the building without arousing suspicion.”

  Packerson wasn’t smiling now.

  “A man could be holding a shotgun in his hands,” Captain Carmichael went on, “standing right in front of the safe, asserting that he was looking for a thief, and people would naturally regard the shotgun as a weapon—not as a hiding place!”

  Packerson’s face was flushed. Little beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. He cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Captain. In my case, it happens that I had a gun. Naturally, when I was aroused by someone shouting for the police, I grabbed the gun. Are you insinuating …”

  “That you shoved the blueprints down the barrel,” Captain Carmichael said.

  “No, no! I swear that I didn’t, absolutely not!”

  Captain Carmichael was insistent. “Yes, you did, Packerson. You grabbed your gun and stood right by the vault, holding it in your hands. Everyone thought you were standing there, protecting the property of the company. No one realized that you yourself—”

  “I tell you, I didn’t. I …”

  Captain Carmichael got up. “Let’s take a look at your gun, Packerson.”

  Packerson pushed back his chair, grabbed the gun which was reposing behind his desk. “No,” he asserted. “That gun is my private property. You can’t look at it unless you have a search warrant.”

  Sergeant Ackley moved belligerently forward.

  Packerson jumped back and raised the gun as though to swing it as a weapon. “Keep away from me,” he shouted, “or I’ll cave in your skull—”

  He ceased talking abruptly as his eyes came to focus on the small black hole which was the business end of Captain Carmichael’s revolver.

  “Stick ’em up,” Carmichael said.

  Packerson hesitated for a moment, then dropped the gun. His knees buckled.

  “You got the blueprints in there now?” Captain Carmichael asked.

  Packerson shook his head. “The money for them,” he said.

  Carmichael exchanged a significant glance with Sergeant Ackley. “Who gave you the money, Packerson?”

  “Gilbert, the furrier.”

  “He planned the whole thing?” Carmichael asked.

  “Him and Fanny Gillmeyer. There really wasn’t any customer. Fanny kept watching the offices over here. When she saw the coast was clear so that I could dash into the vault, grab the blueprints, and get out before anyone noticed what I was doing, she tossed the cape out of the window and started yelling for the police. I had just time to grab the shotgun, jump into the vault, push the blueprints down the barrel, and then stand with the gun at my shoulder.”

  “Where are the blueprints now?”

  “I gave them to Gilbert. I walked out last night carrying my trap gun, and walked right past the guard.”

  Captain Carmichael frowned. “Then you brought the gun back again today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you see?” Packerson said. “I got thirty thousand dollars for those blueprints. The money’s in fifty-dollar bills. I didn’t dare leave that money in my room, and I didn’t dare keep it in my possession. So I rolled the bills into packages that would just fit the gun barrel and shoved them in the barrel of the gun. In that way I could keep the money with me all the time. In case anyone began to suspect me and I had to take it on the lam, I was all ready for a getaway.”