“Now what?” Sellers asked. “Do we wait for them to come back?”
“They aren’t coming back,” I told him. “They’re smart enough to know that the quickest way they can get picked up is to be driving a stolen police car.”
“All right. What next?” Sellers demanded impatiently.
I said, “You come along with me.”
Sellers frowned, hesitated, all but refused point-blank, then fell into step at my side.
“No funny stuff,” he warned.
We walked in silence to the Westchester Arms Hotel.
“You certainly don’t think they’re staying here?” Sellers asked.
I said, “They’re hunted, they’re desperate, they’re trying to make a getaway. When Tom Durham checked out of that hotel he was in a hurry and he was trying to make a getaway. He and his suitcase disappeared. They might as well have been swallowed into thin air. We’re dealing with a regularly established blackmail ring. It isn’t a casual act of isolated blackmail. It’s part of a pattern.”
“All right, get to the point,” Sellers said.