For transportation I had my pick of the new Cadillac, the subway, or a taxi. It might not be convenient to have my hands occupied with a steering wheel, and escorting a murderer on a subway without handcuffs is a damn nuisance, so I chose the taxi. The driver of the one I flagged on Tenth Avenue had satisfactory reactions to my license card and my discreet outline of the situation, and I elected him.
Eight-sixteen East Ninetieth Street was neither a dump nor a castle of luxury — just one of the big clean hives. Leaving the taxi waiting at the curb, I entered, walked across the lobby as if I were in my own home, entered the elevator, and mumbled casually, “Ten please.”
The man moved no muscle but his jaw. “Who do you want to see?”
“Dickson.”
“I’ll have to phone up. What’s your name?”
“Tell him it’s a message from Mr. Bernard Daumery.”
The man moved. I followed him out of the elevator and around a corner to the switchboard, and watched him plug in and flip a switch. In a moment he was speaking into the transmitter, and in another moment he turned to me.
“He says for me to bring the message up.”
“Tell him my name is Goodwin and I was told to give it to him personally.”
Apparently Dickson didn’t have to think things over. At least there was no extended discussion. The man pulled out the plug, told me to come ahead, and led me back to the elevator. He took me to the tenth floor and thumbed me to the left, and I went to the end of the hall, to the door marked IOC. The door was ajar, to a crack big enough to stick a peanut in, and as my finger was aiming for the pushbutton a voice came through.