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They had reached the door to Lovell’s shop, and Cathy looked at her keys to select the correct one. As she did, Max, Pro, and Chu pulled out latex gloves and began to put them on.
“So what did you find, Max?” Pro said.
“Didn’t I teach you anything, pumpkin?” Max smirked. “Show, don’t tell.”
The door opened and Max handed a pair of gloves to the baffled Cathy, as Chu murmured to Pro, “He called you ‘pumpkin,’ and you let him get away with it.”
“He also saved me from resigning and either of us from being in trouble,” Pro acquiesced. “I’ll let him enjoy himself, this once.”
Max hit the light switch with his gloved hand. “The city has many strange stories, but one of them is that the mail used to be shot around the city at thirty miles per hour in pneumatic tubes.”
“Really?” Cathy said. “That’s amazing.”
Pro and Tom exchanged a glance.
Max led them through the curtain and to the back room.
“But also amazing was that the Ansonia was part of that route, and it also had pneumatic tubes running throughout the building, for not only mail, but for communication from guests to staff.”
There were shelves of props in the back room on standing units, all carefully marked. Max walked over to the one empty wall and knocked on it as the others watched. He came to a place where the sound was remarkably hollow.
“Ah, and I think we have it,” Max said as he tapped up and down and studied the wall. At last he put his hands on it and pressed so that a part of the wall sprung open on a hidden hinge.
“Hey, that’s not supposed to do that,” Cathy said, annoyed.
“That’s all right,” Max stated as he peeked behind the moving panel. He opened the door wide, and you could see the brick of the original wall, and in front of it, three large tubes. The pipes each had a metal fitting over the end. Max tried them one at a time, and on the third one, it turned easily in his hand. “I believe we have found what we are looking for.”
He untwisted the metal cap and lifted it off. Then, he took his first two gloved fingers, shoved them into the pipe, and was obviously feeling around.
Finally, with a triumphant look on his face, he pulled several rolled-up sheets of paper from the tube.
“Well, I never,” Cathy exclaimed.
The paper tube was at least three feet long, and Max knelt to the floor to unroll it.
There were several pages of complicated sketches of the two prisms with mathematical calculations written with careful instructions.
Max rolled it back up and offered it to Pro, who took the papers.
She shook her head. “So for these, four people died.”
“That and the fifty-thousand Shaut was willing to pay for it,” Max said. “So, shall I escort you back to your office, Mrs. Edmonds?”
“It’s actually Miss Edmonds, or Ms.”
“Really, how delightful,” Max said as he put out his arm and the blonde took it. They headed out of the room. “I understand you like magic?”
“I love it! Do you know any tricks?”
“Quite a few, quite a few,” Max boasted as they walked.
Pro watched them go, her mouth a tight line.
“Relax, Pro,” Chu said. “I thought you didn’t want him seeing your mother.”
“I don’t, but I don’t like him playing games.”
“I’ll call CSI, and we’ll have this place photographed and categorized. There’s a lot here,” Chu observed.
