A REAL JOB AHEAD
★
There was a strange mist in Bob’s eyes as he looked up at his uncle.
“Shake, Bob. You’ve got a real job ahead of you and I know you’ll come
through with flying colors.”
“Thanks a lot. This is the biggest thing that has ever come to me and I’m
going to succeed if it is at all possible.”
There was a grim sort of a chuckle from Tully Ross, who had shoved his
leather case with its card and badge into an inside pocket.
“You’re going to have to step some if you think you can put anything over
on me.”
Tully and his uncle left the office and Bob watched the door close behind
them.
“Nice people,” he grinned.
“I don’t like the looks of this case,” said his uncle. “It isn’t pleasant
to think that you’ve got someone else in the same department, who goes
out of his way to make it unpleasant for you, working on the same case.”
“Then why is Adams assigned to team up with you?” asked Bob.
“Perhaps because we have a habit of getting results,” admitted Merritt
Hughes, with a rueful smile. “We’ve been pretty lucky on a number of
cases where we have worked together. The breaks have been about
fifty-fifty and now we both want a really smashing victory that will
bring us advancement. It looks like this may be the case, but it’s going
to be dangerous business.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, look back over the events of the last few hours. We know that an
important paper, containing part of a new radio discovery, was sent over
to your department from the radio engineering division. Before it can be
properly filed, a guard is overpowered and two offices ransacked to find
this paper. Later in the night another attempt is made to enter your room
and this morning there was an attempt to kidnap you. Looks to me like
you’re in a key position, but I don’t know just what it is yet.”
“I’ll admit the attempt to get into my room last night and the trouble
this morning have me worried,” said Bob. “I’m only a filing clerk so why
such attention should be centered on me is a mystery.”
They walked out into the corridor.
“We’ll stop at the bureau of identification and see if we can learn
anything about the fellows who tried to kidnap you,” said the federal
agent.
They dropped down a floor and entered a long room where a number of
clerks were working at filing cases.
Merritt Hughes walked up to a slender chap busy at a flat-topped desk.
“Look alive, Jimmy,” he said. “There’s business at hand.”
Jimmy Adel, chief of the filing division, looked up.
“Hello, sleuth. Who are you trailing this morning?”
“One red head and one fellow with a scar on his forehead.”
“Now isn’t that a lot of help! Don’t you know that there are a good many
red heads and a whole lot of people with scars on their foreheads? Just
be a little more exact, please.” But he grinned as he chided the federal
agent.
“Jimmy, this is my nephew, Bob Houston. He’s detailed to help me on a new
case that’s breaking pretty fast.”
“The radio case?”
“You hear about that?”
“Sure, it’s all over the department. Looks big to me. Adams working on it
too?”
Merritt Hughes nodded.
“That means you’ll have to step fast. I hear that whoever solves this
thing will be in line for an inspectorship.”
“Hope you’re right, Jimmy, because Bob and I are going to clear up this
mystery. That is, if you’ll give us a little help. A couple of hoodlums
tried to kidnap Bob a while ago. He can give you an accurate description
of them and you may be able to pull their pictures out of the files.”
“We’ll find them for you if they’ve any record at all.” He pulled a blank
form from a file and fired question after question at Bob on height,
weight, color of eyes, and any possible peculiarities which they might
have had. When he had finished both forms, he leaned back in his chair.
“I’d call that an almost perfect description of these chaps. If we don’t
dig them out of the files, I’ll miss my bet. We’ll get something for you
before midnight. Good luck.”
Bob and his uncle left the identification bureau and took an elevator
down to the main floor. Bob’s hands still smarted from the scratches they
had suffered from the barberry and he kept the handkerchiefs wrapped
around them.
“I want to drop in at the police station and question the man caught last
night,” said Merritt Hughes, “but we can stop at your apartment on our
way down and give it the once-over. We might find something of interest
in the hall.”
The federal agent flagged a taxi and they sped swiftly toward Bob’s
apartment.
“Well, how does it feel to be a federal agent, even though you’re only a
provisional one?” his uncle asked.
“I’m not quite used to it,” replied Bob, taking out the small leather
case and extracting the card and badge which it contained.
He turned the badge over carefully in his fingers. His name was engraved
on the back and behind this small emblem stood the mighty law enforcement
machinery of Uncle Sam. Bob thrilled even though he was as yet a small
and comparatively unimportant part of that great system, which was
rapidly building up a worldwide reputation for “getting its man.”
Merritt Hughes settled back in the cushions.
“This is likely to be a rather long-drawn out case,” he said, “and from
the way it’s started, it may be extremely dangerous. When it comes to
that, I want you to step aside and let the regular agents take the
chances. Do you understand, Bob?”
“But I’m not afraid of trouble,” insisted Bob.
“That isn’t it. When the pinches come we want men who have been tried
under fire in there. You’ll be used as an inside man in the archives
division and in that capacity you are going to be highly important. There
must have been a leak somewhere, else how would it have been known that a
part of the new radio development had been sent over for filing? It will
be up to you to find where this information leaked before Tully Ross and
Condon Adams learn it.”
The federal agent paused a moment, before continuing.
“After we find the leak in your department, we’ll have something to work
back on. That should lead us to the man or the men who now have the
papers that disappeared last night.”
“Won’t the man arrested last night be the key to that?” asked Bob.
“Perhaps, but I hardly believe so. Usually the boys who do the rough
stuff in a case like this know little of what is really going on. But
we’ll see him a little later. No use in letting anything slip.”
The cab slowed down in front of the apartment house and Bob’s uncle paid
the taxi bill.
They walked up to the third floor and then back along the corridor to the
door which opened into Bob’s room. The door was slightly ajar and Merritt
Hughes was about to push it open when Bob seized his arm and put his
finger on his lips. Then he pulled his uncle back several steps.
“That door was locked when I left,” he whispered. “Someone’s been in my
room.”
Merritt Hughes looked startled.
“Sure?” he whispered.
“There’s no question about it,” replied Bob.
“Then keep back and let me go ahead.” It was a whispered command that Bob
dared not disobey and he saw his uncle reach under his left arm and draw
a revolver from a shoulder holster.
They stepped close to the wall and again advanced toward the door,
treading silently on the heavy carpet of the corridor. There was no sound
of anyone moving about inside the room, but Merritt Hughes did not
believe in taking unnecessary chances.
After listening a moment at the door, he reached out with one foot and
gave it a hard shove inward, at the same time leaping into the doorway,
gun in hand and ready for action.
It was a breathless moment for Bob until he saw his uncle lower the
weapon and nod to him.
“Come here and take a look at your room.”