I LOOKED AT the little white clock on the mantel. It showed five minutes before three. Outside, everything was quiet except for the occasional sound of taxi tires on hard-packed snow. My apartment looked about as usual: everything just so, everything neat. No cops, no Ethel Brower, no anything to indicate that a murder had been committed.
Dana’s slim body was shaking. Her arms were tight. She had held up magnificently while the pressure was on but now that the first act was over, reaction hit her.
I let her cry. I knew it would do her good. I just sat there holding her close. My left arm was around her. With my right hand I patted her shoulder and made reassuring sounds. It would have sounded silly if it hadn’t been so serious.
After a while she stopped crying. Then she got up, crossed to the gateleg table where she had left her bag, and took out compact and lipstick. I just watched her, letting her handle things her own way.
She dabbed at her face with the cosmetics. Her eyes and the corners of her mouth showed evidence of the strain to which she had been subjected. She finished what she was doing and walked toward me. She said, “I’m all right now.”
I got up and poured two brandies. She drank hers and I swallowed mine in a gulp. It burned all the way down and took away some of the chill inside me. But it didn’t make me feel any better, or any less bewildered.
I reached for my pipe and tamped tobacco in the bowl. She took a cigarette. I lighted it for her, then started my pipe going. She said, “You really haven’t any idea who she was, Kirk?”
“No, dear.”
She picked her words carefully. “If you did—you’d tell me?”
“Yes:”
“You wouldn’t be afraid that I’d be jealous?”
“No.”
We sat staring at each other. Dana said, “This . . . and the bank. They must be connected some way.”
“They must be.”
I puffed harder and thought harder. I said, “There’s somewhere I want to go. Right now. I’d like you to come along if you think you can take it.”
She repeated, “I’m all right.” Then she added, “Where?”
“Just a few blocks. The McKinley Hospital. I want to talk to Arthur.”
“Arthur . . . ?” Then she got the idea and nodded. She knew I was referring to one of my few close friends in New York. Dr. Arthur Maybank, five months an M.D. and now serving a nine-months’ interneship. She said, “Didn’t he stay here while you were away, Kirk?”
“Yes. You don’t know what it means to an interne to have a place outside the hospital on his off nights.”
She glanced at the chair in which the body of Ethel Brower had been sitting. “You think maybe Arthur knew her?”
“It’s possible. I want to find out.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I didn’t want to get him mixed up in it. He’s never had anything but bad breaks since he was a kid. Why should I throw him into the middle of this unless he knew the girl?”
“Will he be frank with you?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve known him a long time. I’ll be able to tell.”
On our way out we were stared at again by the elevator operator and the doorman. I could see that they were busting with curiosity and would have given a pretty to ask a few questions. Dana and I walked to the hospital.
The McKinley was a block wide and half of an avenue-block in length. It was an ancient graystone building which once had been New York’s leading hospital. Now it was old and worn out. There had been talk of tearing it down and rebuilding on the same site, but the war had postponed those plans.
There was an old-fashioned iron fence along the front. Two gateways had been cut through it, one for doctors’ automobiles and the other for ambulances. There was a white sign with unkempt black letters which read “Accident Entrance” and an arrow pointing to a double door under a porte-cochère. I said, “Arthur told me he was on accident for three months. If he’s around, we’ll find him here.”
We walked inside. There was a narrow little entrance and a pint-size reception room. A girl sat on a hard wooden bench reading a confession magazine. She wore thick-lensed glasses. At first she paid no attention to us and I thought she must be the friend of a patient. She looked up without interest. “You a doctor?” she asked. I said No, half expecting her to inquire what the hell I was doing there but she didn’t. She had asked her question, got her answer, and was no longer interested. Dana and I rambled around.
To the right of the reception room was a plate-glass window which was the front of a cubicle of an office. A languid young lady sat inside gazing at a typewriter. There was a piece of paper under the platen, but she wasn’t doing anything about it. Nor about us, either.
We went through a doorway and stepped into a big square room. There were four or five surgical wagons standing around forlornly. There was an enameled instrument case with a lot of the enamel chipped off so that it showed black splotches. At the far side of that room was another door through which I could see a double bank of green steel lockers. A man in a blue uniform and a big blond youth in white were smoking and talking. Nobody paid any attention to us.
We went back to the reception room, and I managed to attract the attention of the girl who was doing nothing about the typewriter. I said, “I’d like to speak to Dr. Arthur Maybank.”
She looked at me with blank eyes. Then she said in a bored voice, “He ain’t on duty.”
“Is he in?”
“If he is, he’s sleeping.”
“I’m a friend of his. I wish you’d give him a ring.”
“He ain’t on duty,” she said, and that’s all she did say. She started poking at the typewriter keys. I took Dana’s arm and we went outside again. We walked down the block and re-entered the building through the main entrance.
This was larger than the accident room and not quite as dirty. There still wasn’t any rousing welcome. A worried, middle-aged woman sat in another chair, holding a sleepy little girl. There was another glassed-in cage in which I saw another bored young woman and a switchboard. I walked over and repeated my request for Dr. Arthur Maybank.
The girl put up an argument. She said Dr. Maybank was asleep and that it was against the rules to disturb him. I worked on her. She finally plugged in, waited a long while—about as long as it would take to wake someone from a sound sleep—and then started talking. She told Arthur that a man and a woman were downstairs to see him and that she hadn’t been able to brush them off. I told her to say that it was Kirk Douglas and Dana Warren and that it was important. She said it, then snapped the plug out and looked at us. She said, “He’s coming now,” and promptly lost all interest in us.
Dana said, “What a depressing place. I don’t wonder Arthur would want to use your apartment on his off nights.”
An ancient elevator stopped on the lobby floor. The door clanked open and Arthur Maybank stepped out. His eyes looked heavy with sleep. He had pulled trousers and a coat over his pajamas. His feet were encased in bedroom slippers.
Arthur never was an inspiring figure, but in this costume he was even less so. He was small and looked even smaller than his 135 pounds. His hair was sparse and old-looking in spite of the fact that he was only twenty-six. His coloring was mousy. He looked like a young man who had been slapped around by life. He certainly didn’t look like a Lothario.
I had known him for years. We were close without being intimate. He had scraped and struggled and sweated to get through college and medical school. He was serving his interneship without pay. They all do but most of them have a little income. Arthur didn’t. He was grateful as a pup for small favors, and I had let him use my apartment while I was away because I knew that it looked like a palace to him. It was because he had been buffeted so much that I had hesitated to drag him into the case.
He seemed surprised to see us. He shook hands with us, and smiled at Dana. She smiled right back, though I knew she wasn’t feeling much like smiling.
I apologized for waking him. He said that was all right. Whatever you did to Arthur was always all right. I said, “Can we sit down somewhere?”
We went to a corner of the lobby. We arranged three stiff wooden chairs in a little circle. I said, “I want to ask you something, Arthur. If the answer is Yes, it’s okay by me. But I want you to come clean.”
He nodded. “You know I will.”
“Sure I know.” I cast around for the right way of starting. “While I was away you used my apartment, didn’t you?”
“Sure. On my off nights. You don’t know how good it feels to get away from this joint.”
“I can imagine. What did you do in the apartment?”
He frowned. “Slept. And read. And just sat there figuring how lucky I was to get a break like that.”
“What else?”
“You’ll laugh. I fixed my own dinners. I’m a lousy cook, but they tasted wonderful. I even enjoyed washing the dishes. Then I’d sit in the corner and read and hope that some day I’d be successful enough to afford an apartment like that.”
I said, “Did you do any helling around?”
“Any what?”
“Any stepping? Briefly, did you entertain any girl friends?”
“I haven’t any girl friends,” he said simply.
I started over. “I’m driving at something. On the level, it’s fine with me if you did. I just wanted to know.”
He shook his head. “Even if I’d known any girls who would have liked to come up there, Kirk—I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . well, it wouldn’t have seemed right.”
“You aren’t embarrassed because Dana is listening, are you?”
They exchanged smiles. “I can take Dana in stride,” he said. “As a matter of fact, if I had been partying I’d probably boast about it.” A worried frown appeared on his forehead. He said, “Did you find something broken—or missing? Is that it?”
“No. But before I explain, I’ve got one more question. Did you ever hear of—a girl named Ethel Brower?”
I could see him thinking. Then he shook his head. “No, Kirk. Not that I remember. I meet lots of people here at the hospital. But if you mean it’s somebody I should remember . . . I don’t.”
“Did any girl show up at the apartment at any time you were there? Anybody asking for me, perhaps?”
“I never saw a soul.” He looked concerned. “I wish you’d explain all this, Kirk. You and Dana wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”
I told him the story of Ethel Brower. When I finished, he said, “My God! And you thought maybe she was someone I’d been playing around with?”
“No, I didn’t. But I knew I didn’t know her, and I figured that if she’d been a guest of yours there, and if she had perhaps thought it was your apartment and had come back to see you . . .”
He seemed shocked. He said, “Is she still there?”
“No. They carried her to the morgue.”
“Would you like me to go over and take a look?”
“Better stay out of it, Arthur.”
He turned to Dana. “He should have told them about me.”
“Why?” she asked. “There wasn’t any sense dragging you in unless it turned out that you had known the girl.”
He said, “Gee! you’re a thoughtful pair.” He looked small and helpless. “Is there something I can do?”
“Yes. First, go back to bed. Second, forget the whole thing.”
“And,” finished Dana, “forgive us for waking you.”
We practically shoved him into the elevator and sent him back to his room. We stepped into the bitter cold of black morning. I said, “One block away there’s a diner. It’ll be warm there, and the coffee will be hot. Let’s go.”
The diner was hot all right. There was a long counter with stools in front of it. Behind the counter was a man in a greasy apron. He was tossing some hamburgers for a couple of truckmen. Onions were sizzling on the griddle.
I ordered two hamburgers and two black coffees. We were served and Dana started eating. So did I.
She said, “I wonder whether the police have talked to Ricardo.”
Ricardo!
We looked at each other. We didn’t say anything. But the name “Ricardo” was hanging between us in the steamy air.