“V8 being my own number in the service,” said Bill, “and the initials those of the big boss. I want to add that I’m tickled to death to be working under you, Mr. Davis. All the world knows the big things you’ve put over. And just to think that when you were piloting Osceola and me up to Kolinski’s shack this morning, you probably knew a lot more than we did about the winged cartwheels!”
Mr. Davis made a gesture of dissent. “That’s where you’re wrong, Bolton. Until you told the story to Captain Simmonds and me in the car, I’d never heard of the emblems nor of the organization they represent.”
“But surely you—I mean, it is rather cheeky of me to ask questions, but if you knew nothing about the cartwheel gang, how did you happen to be in that out-of-the-way place?”
“It’s simple enough, Bill—I’m going to call you Bill. I’m old enough to be your father, and we’ll probably get pretty well acquainted before this case goes into the files completed.”
“Bill is what I like my friends to call me, Mr. Davis.”
“Thanks. Well, the truth of the matter is that I was in Heartfield’s to keep an eye on Kolinski. For some time, a big gang with headquarters in New York City has been doing a land-office business smuggling cocaine and other drugs into this country from Europe. The police came to a dead end on the case and that brought me into it. Kolinski, who is known to have been a dope pedlar in a small way, suddenly blossomed out with a big car and plenty of money. I had enough on that Pole before he took the house at Heartfield’s to put him behind bars for the remainder of his life. Instead, I followed him up there, because, after considering a number of things—I’ll tell you about them sometime—I had the hunch that he’d become a member of this big dope running gang.”
“Have you found out much about it?”
Mr. Davis tamped the glowing tobacco in his pipe with the flat end of a pencil. “Mighty little—nothing important, anyway. Kolinski has no flies on him, he’s a slick article. Even though he made one or two slips in the past, he seems to have been walking the straight and narrow since he joined this racket; only of course I’m certain he’s been doing nothing of the kind!”
“Then you think this silver cartwheel business is nothing more than a dope smuggling ring?”
“I’m not so sure. However, our Department has been advised from France that large quantities of cocaine are being shipped to the United States. The French tracked down and located two of these shipments before they left Europe. The stuff was in small packets and had been placed in boxes containing truffles.”