Tildy smiled, shook her head in mock amusement. “I suppose you’re the thousandth person to ask me that.” She leaned close to me, smiled at me. “I guess she doesn’t ride in subways much, does she?”
The girl fumbled with “excuse me’s” and “the resemblance is astonishing,” went back to her companion.
I got Tildy off at the next stop, Thirty-Fourth Street. There was a drugstore on the corner. I shooed her in, went to a phone booth, called the hotel.
Mona answered, “Law, Mister V. How long can you be paged! Tim is going out of his mind—”
“A short trip and a merry one. Let me talk to him.”
“Holy Mother, Mister Vine!” When Tim “Misters” me, there is something very nokay and usually someone else in the office with him. “How quick can you get over here?”
“Whatsit, Timothy?”
“We — uh — got another one of those things upstairs.”
“Another what? A killing?”
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to say too much, Mister Vine, because I think prob’ly our beer is bein’ tapped, but it’s Mister L.”