The clerk nodded again. Green went out into Sixty-first Street and walked to a drugstore.
At eighteen minutes after two the phone on Blondie Kessler’s desk jingled cheerily for the tenth time in twenty-five minutes.
He whirled from his typewriter, picked up the receiver and yelped: “Hello.”
Green’s voice hummed silkily over the wire: “How many more identifiable pieces have they dug out of Tony’s? And how’s that red-hot Kessler theory coming along?”
Kessler scowled sourly into the transmitter.
“That Kessler theory is holding its head up and taking nourishment very nicely, thank you!” he barked with elaborate irony. “We found a chunk of the fuse with a foundry label on it, a place in Jersey—”
Green interrupted: “Don’t tell me. Let me guess... Sallust used to work there, or anyway, he used to live in Jersey, or maybe he went to Jersey once to visit his aunt.”
Kessler snorted: “All right, all right. I say Sallust is a cinch for this job, you say not. I’ll bet — I’ll bet you fifty dollars.”
Green snapped: “Bet.”
Kessler cackled shrilly. “The clincher is that Sallust and his sister took a powder about a minute and a half before the boys in blue swept in. Their next-door neighbors heard them go out and from the timing it looks like it was a tip.”