The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

If you think you have a tail on a subway train and want to spot him you keep moving while the train is under way, and at each station you stand close enough to a door so that you might get off. At a rush hour it's difficult, but it was ten-thirty in the morning and we were going uptown. I had him by the time we made the third stop-or rather, them. There were two. One was a chunky specimen, barely tall enough to meet the specifications, with big brown eyes that he didn't know how to handle, and the other was the Gregory Peck type except for his curly little ears. The game, just for the hell of it, was to spot them without their knowing I had, and when I got off at the 70th Street station I was pretty sure I had won it. Out on the sidewalk again, I ignored them.

Tailing on New York streets, if you know you have it and want to shake it and aren't a birdbrain, is a joke. There are a thousand dodges, and the tailee merely picks the one that fits the time and place. There on Tremont Avenue I moseyed along, glancing occasionally at my wristwatch and at the numbers on doors, until I saw an empty taxi coming. When it was thirty yards away I scooted between parked cars, flagged it, hopped in, told the hackie as I pulled the door shut, "Step on it," and saw Gregory Peck stare at me as we went by. The other one was across the street. We did seven blocks before a red light stopped us, so that was that. I admit I had kept an eye on the rear. I gave the driver the Grand Concourse address, and the light changed, and we rolled.

Some realty agency branch offices are upstairs, but that one was on the ground floor of an apartment building, of course one of the buildings it serviced. I entered. It was small, two desks and a table and a filing cabinet. A beautiful young lady with enough black hair for a Beatle was at the nearest desk, and when she smiled at me and asked if she could help me, I had to take a breath to keep my head from swimming. They should stay home during business hours. I told her I would like to see Mr Odell, and she turned her beautiful head and nodded to the rear.

He was at the other desk. I had waited to see him before deciding on the approach, and one look was enough. Some men, after a hitch in the jug, even a short one, have got a permanent wilt, but not him. In size he was a peanut, but an elegant peanut. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, he was more than fair-dressed. His pin-stripe gray suit had set him, or somebody, back at least two Cs.