When the taxi finally rounded the truck and darted forward into the clear, Sandy answered the uncompleted question.
“I told you it was a hunch,” he said. “But the Tobacco Mart’s on Chatham Square, isn’t it?”
Ken nodded. “So?”
“Well, Barrack said he worked there, but it looks now as if he doesn’t.”
Ken interrupted. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you before, but the label on that package Barrack left on top of the box said Spectrum Printing Company.”
“Then Barrack must have been lying about his job with the Tobacco Mart. Why would he have been mailing packages for a printing firm if he didn’t work there?”
“As a favor, maybe,” Ken suggested.
Sandy ignored him. “I’m assuming, therefore, that he does not work for the Tobacco Mart. But the fact that he used its name must mean he knows the outfit—and may be tied in with it somehow. And therefore our friend Watch Crystal might also be tied in with it. Anyway, my hunch is that that’s where he’s going. If I’m wrong we haven’t lost anything, except the price of the taxi fare.”
“You think then,” Ken said slowly, bracing his feet on the floor as the cab tore around another corner to head downtown, “that they definitely recognized each other in the restaurant—that the exchange of the package was a planned thing?”
Sandy stared at him. “What else could it have been? Sure, Barrack might honestly have left a package behind in a restaurant. And some stranger sitting near by might have noticed it, and been dishonest enough to pick it up and make off with it. Sure, it could all have happened that way. But not to those two. Not after Barrack admitted to us that he’d been with Watch Crystal the other day. Besides, there was something mighty smooth and furtive about the way that exchange was made. If that whole deal wasn’t carefully planned I’ll—I’ll—”