12

Gerald North dictated.

“As you know,” he said, “the fifty-fifty division between author and publisher in the proceeds of book club sales is a long-established practice and one which—” He paused, and the hurrying pencil waited expectant in the hand of Miss Abigail Clark. “We’d better cut out ‘long,’ Miss Clark,” Jerry North said, overcome by honesty. Miss Clark’s pencil searched, found, eliminated. “Since book clubs are after all rather recent,” Jerry said, in needless explanation. This was in the not-dictating tone and the pencil continued to wait. “—is essential to the economic structure of the industry under present conditions,” Jerry said. The pencil moved. “In other words,” Jerry said, “we like money too.” Miss Clark smiled; did not make notes. “Therefore—” Jerry said, and the telephone rang.

“Yes, Janey?” Miss Clark said. She listened. She said she’d see. She said, “It’s that Mr. Ackerman. The one with the—”

“Good God,” Jerry said. “No!”

“Mr. North is—” Miss Clark said, and stopped to listen. Jerry could hear the quick rattle of Jane Lester’s voice. “Well,” Miss Clark said, “I’ll ask.”

“Jane’s going nuts,” she said. “He’s called three times and she’s used the in-conference one, and the just-stepped-out one, and the can-you-call-him-back one. And hung up. And he’s called back in the next breath and—”

“Good God,” Jerry said, and reached. He said, “Yes?” in something like a snarl and then, “Oh, sorry, Janey. Put him on.” Then he said, “Yes?” again, but could not quite recapture the snarl. A snarl wasted, he thought, and listened to a high-pitched, excited voice.

“All right,” Jerry said. “I was in conference. Then I stepped out. Listen, Mr. Ackerman—”

Floyd Ackerman did not listen.

“It is essential,” Ackerman said, “that I see you at once. Essential.” His speech was redolent of capitalization.

“I’m afraid—” Jerry said.

“Or,” Ackerman said, “the Responsibility will be yours.” His voice trembled, approached falsetto.

“I’m afraid,” Jerry said, “that our decision is final, Mr. Ackerman. No doubt some other publisher—”

“Not that,” Ackerman said. “Not about that. I realize your position. The Pressures. I am resigned. About this man Blanchard.”

Jerry said, “Oh.”

“Exactly,” Ackerman said, and his voice shook. “Exactly. There’s no time to waste. No Time. I have something to tell, something Vital. And—there’s danger. Do you hear me? Danger!”

Jerry removed the receiver a half inch from his ear.

“Listen,” he said. “Will you listen a moment? You have information about Mr. Blanchard’s—death?”

“How many times—”

“Give it to the police,” Jerry said. “They’re the ones—”

“Corrupt,” Ackerman said, and his voice was even higher than before. “Inefficient. Ride rough-shod. The third degree. You think I don’t know?”

“Yes,” Jerry said, “I certainly think you don’t know. What have you got to tell?”

“Enough,” Ackerman said. “But—don’t talk about the police. They’re part of the whole thing. Don’t you understand?”

Jerry didn’t.

“They’ll crucify me,” Ackerman said, and there was increasing hysteria in his voice. “I wouldn’t have a chance. You think I don’t know that?”

The man was, Jerry thought, irrational—now entirely irrational. And—frightened?

“All I want is a chance,” Ackerman said. “Just a chance. But—you’re against me too! I can tell that. You and all the others. I’ll give you half an hour. I can’t wait any longer than that.”

“I don’t—” Jerry said.

“And if you bring the police,” Ackerman said—almost screamed. “If you bring the police, you’ll never find me. None of you. I’ll tell you and then—I’ll go then. Know a place. Until—until it’s safe. I’ve got a right to stay alive.”

It made, obviously, no sense. There is little point in telling a man who is hysterical, who has gone over the final edge, that what he says—what he screams—makes no sense.

“Of course you have,” Jerry said, and tried to make his voice a soothing voice; tried to get understanding sympathy into his voice. He made a decision. “All right,” he said. “Come here, then. We’ll—talk it over. I promise until we do I won’t—”

“You must,” Ackerman said, “think I’m crazy.”

There was no immediate answer possible to this. It was clear that merely saying “Yes,” would be of no help.

“You’ve got my address,” Ackerman said. “Haven’t you got my address?”

“I suppose so,” Jerry said, and covered the receiver and said, to Abigail Clark, softly, “Ackerman’s address?” She nodded.

“Yes,” Jerry said, to Ackerman. “But—listen. What you’re asking is—”

“Come—” Ackerman said. “Go there. I’ll leave it so you can get in. If you’re alone—alone, you hear? Nobody else. You hear me?—if you do what I say I’ll join you as soon as I’m sure and—we’ll see. If you—if we can work out some way I can have a start—then—”

It seemed to Jerry that, although now the shrill trembling voice was lower, Ackerman was losing even the coherence of his irrational purpose. It was as if, even while he talked, the man—the thin, pale man with staring eyes behind thick lenses—were disintegrating. Suddenly, Jerry could see him, telephone in his hand, shaking through all his thin body in a kind of desperation—

It was preposterous; it was, in a sense, enraging. “Hold this,” something was saying, something implacable, grotesquely unfair. And thrusting into Jerry North’s resisting hands—what? A thing that ticked, that might go off. It occurred to Jerry suddenly that what had been thus unfairly thrust into his hands might be a man’s life.

“I’ll come,” Jerry said. “Wait.” He paused for a second. “Wait!” he said and made the word heavy, as if he set it as a block, an anchor, to hold a slipping mind.

But then the shrillness in the voice, the something near desperation in the voice—in the voice itself, more than in the tumbling, unrevealing words—sounded again in Jerry’s ears. Whether it made sense or not, the man was frightened—the man was scared to death. And as that worn phrase came into his mind, Jerry stood up. It occurred to him that, in some manner entirely obscure, Floyd Ackerman might be just that.

It was not until he was in a cab, bound downtown, with certain things tidied up, certain instructions left for Abigail Clark, that a somewhat more likely possibility entered Gerald North’s mind. Those most likely to be in fear of the police, and to want to run—to “have a start,” are those who have specific reason to fear the police. Among such, of course, murderers are prominent.

The thought was slightly chilling. It did not, however, add any rational note to the unreason of the whole business. If Ackerman had decided to confess to murder he was certainly going about it in, even for him, an odd fashion.

Of course—and this thought occurred as the cab finally—traffic had been very heavy—turned east off Fifth, below Fourteenth, and went into an area which is a conglomerate of almost everything—of course Floyd Ackerman might be inviting one Gerald North into a trap. Gerald North could not think of any reason why he should be trapped. It seemed unlikely that, although Ackerman had certainly resented the rejection of his book, he had resented it quite—well, quite that much.

Unless, Jerry thought, as the cab stopped in front of a four-story building, once a private house, now either tenement or apartment house, Floyd Ackerman merely liked to kill people who—call it criticized him.

Anyway, Jerry thought as, having paid off the cab, he climbed the stoop—anyway, I’m bigger than he is. In the dim vestibule, he bent to examine name cards above mailboxes, push-buttons. It appeared that Floyd Ackerman lived in the third floor apartment; it appeared there was one apartment to each floor.

Jerry pushed the appropriate button and waited for the inner vestibule door to buzz at him. It did not and he pushed the button again. Then, remembering, he tried the door. It was not locked. Ackerman had said he would leave things so that Jerry could get in—get in and wait for him.

Jerry climbed the first flight of stairs. It occurred to him, as he neared the top, that John Blanchard, also, had been bigger than Floyd Ackerman—bigger and, certainly, stronger. The thought was not encouraging.

Jerry climbed the second flight of stairs to the landing and on the landing faced a door. He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing happened. He tried the knob, and it turned and he went into a hallway which connected two large rooms—a hallway off which opened a bathroom and a small kitchen. The arrangement was familiar; the Norths have lived on floor-through apartments in converted houses; in apartments of two large rooms, connected by narrow halls. The living room, presumably, would be on the street side. Jerry called Ackerman’s name, at first softly, then more loudly, and was unanswered. He went through the hall to the living room.

The big room was comfortably furnished. There was nobody in it. There was, apparently, nobody in the apartment. So—Floyd Ackerman was behaving as he had planned. Some place—outside the building? More simply, one flight up in the building?—Ackerman had hidden himself to watch, to wait until he was sure that the man he had summoned had come alone. Jerry looked at his watch. It was a quarter after four. Give the jittering little man ten minutes.

Ten minutes was long enough to spend on this—this charade. It seemed, now, to be no more than that—the frightened voice had dimmed in Jerry’s memory. A rather silly charade for a grown man to be engaged in, particularly during working hours. It occurred to Jerry that there was one more possibility—it could be that he had been had. The purpose was obscure, but no more obscure than anything else. To get him here, out of the way, while somewhere else something else was done which required the absence of Gerald North? He could not think what was elsewhere to be done. After all, Ackerman had only got him out of his office. It was improbable that Ackerman—it was certainly Ackerman who had called—planned some action in the offices of North Books, Inc.

The hell with it, Jerry thought, and sat down in one of the comfortable chairs. Give him the ten minutes—no, now the seven minutes. Leave a note saying he had been and gone. Go. And—

Dimly, he heard footsteps outside—footsteps on, evidently, the flight leading down from the floor above, then on the linoleum surface of the outer corridor. So—Ackerman had waited above, peering down; now was coming—

He was not. The footsteps did not stop at the door to Ackerman’s apartment. The door did not open. The footsteps diminished, now, on the flight below. Another tenant, going about his business—probably her business. Going out, probably, to get a pound of coffee, a loaf of bread. Apparently, Ackerman had lurked somewhere in the street, and so would come up the stairs when he came. If he came. Five minutes—four—the hell with it. Ackerman was taking too long, far too long, to assure himself that the police had not been brought. Do now what he should have done long ago—call Bill, tell him about this charade, take the raised eyebrows, the regretting sound made by teeth and tongue, that he had earned.

Jerry got up, walked through the hallway to the other large room, the bedroom, at the rear of the apartment. Conceivably, Ackerman might have fallen asleep. Or, succumbed in some fashion to his own excitement.

The large bedroom—also well furnished—was empty. Somewhat absently, Jerry looked into a closet—a large closet. Clothes hung neatly in the closet. Shoes were neat on the floor. Ackerman was not in the closet. Why on earth should he be in the closet?

All right—having gone so far in a fruitless charade, make sure. Jerry went back into the hall and opened one of the two doors. The door opened into a bathroom. Nobody in the bathroom.

Jerry tried the other door—the kitchen door.

Floyd Ackerman was in the kitchen. He was hanging, straight, neat, his feet six inches from the floor. He was hanging by the neck on a length of thin rope—actually, a very heavy cord—which had been hitched around a thick pipe which ran across the kitchen, just below the ceiling. A small stool lay on its side on the floor, just out of reach of the dangling feet. He was wearing his glasses.

If Floyd Ackerman had had a right to live, he had elected not to exercise it further.

Jerry found a knife in a kitchen drawer and cut the body down. The action would not, he supposed, be approved, but it was inevitable. He could not leave the thin little man, who would never shake again—never raise a shrill voice again in hysteria—dangling grotesquely there. He touched the body as little as he could, lowering it with hands under armpits. He did not touch the tipped-over stool and did not tamper with the knots.

There was warmth in the body. Dead now—Jerry made as sure of that as a layman can—Ackerman had not been dead long. He could not have been—it had not been long, not much more than three-quarters of an hour, since he had talked on the telephone, and talked in fear. He must have killed himself almost at once after Jerry North had said, so slowly, so carefully—so ineffectually—“Wait.”

It made no sense. There was no use trying to guess sense into it. The telephone was in the living room. Jerry went into the living room.

By a little after four on Monday afternoon it began to look that, as a suspect, Graham Latham had what it took. Mullins was, admittedly, pleased with this; he had brought Latham back as a suspect, more or less on a silver platter, and Weigand, listening, had said “right” several times before they got at it—by telephone, through the cooperation of precinct detectives. They had been lucky.

That Latham had a motive as good as any, and better than most, leaped to the mind. Half a million dollars in a daughter’s name is half a million dollars in the family—in a family which, obviously, could use it. Between Latham and the money there was little chance that whim might intervene. “The girl might change her mind about this guy Mears,” Mullins pointed out, pointing it up. “Not about daddy.” Latham impressed Mullins as a tough guy—tough mentally and physically. The girl—Mullins wasn’t so sure about the girl. Sorta nice, the girl seemed to be. So—

Latham had played bridge with Blanchard and two other men, at Blanchard’s apartment, the night before Blanchard died. The two other men, reached at their offices by telephone—for once things broke smoothly—had agreed to this. There had been nothing unusual about the bridge game—Latham had won fifty dollars or so, but there was nothing unusual about that. “Be a hell of a lot better off if he’d played cards instead of the market,” one of the men said. “Good old Gray.” The game had ended around midnight, because Blanchard had to get up early to go to Forest Hills.

Latham had stayed overnight at the Princeton Club, precisely as he said, and had left early—around eight—also as he had said. “Plenty of time to have dropped by to knock Blanchard off on his way home,” Mullins pointed out, and Bill Weigand said, “Right, sergeant.”

He would have had to “drop by” after Mears had left, if Mears was telling the truth. He could have been there, with Blanchard dead, when Ackerman rang the doorbell—if Ackerman was telling the truth. “Wouldn’t say, ‘Come on in, lookit what I’ve just done,’” Mullins pointed out.

“Give him a ring,” Bill said. “Ask him, nice, if he’d like to come in and give us a little more information. And—get the locals to stand by.”

But the luck ran out, then. Mrs. Graham Latham—answering the telephone in Southampton in a crisp voice which carried the accent, the intonation, of good New York—was sorry, but her husband was not in. He had gone to the city. Nor was Hilda in. She was playing tennis at the home of friends. Why, yes, she thought Mr. Mears was one of the players. But she hadn’t, certainly, queried her daughter as to that. She was sure that her husband, when he did return, would be glad to get in touch with Sergeant Mullins. She was sorry that she did not know where, in the city, he could be reached.

The “locals”—but actually the State police—would keep an eye on things and, if it seemed indicated, provide transportation into town for Mr. Graham Latham. When—and of course if—he showed up.

“Pretty sure I didn’t scare him off,” Mullins said. “Of course—if he got worried—”

Bill doubted it.

“Could be,” Mullins said, “he’s come in to start shopping.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Could be he has, Mullins.” He drummed his desk with active fingers.

They had, of course, only a theory—call it, at best, a probability. They hadn’t placed Latham in, or near, the apartment house on Riverside Drive. Without that—

The telephone rang. Mullins answered, said, “O.K., Mr. North,” and handed the receiver to Bill Weigand, who said, “Yes, Jerry?” And listened. And said, “The hell he has,” and, “Wait for us.” And hung up.

“Floyd Ackerman’s hanged himself,” Weigand said.

“The hell he has,” Mullins said. “That’s a hell of a note.”

He spoke in sorrow. He had been rather pleased with the contents of his silver platter.

“Of course,” he said, “it don’t have to mean—”

He did not finish. His heart was not in it.

“Jerry North walked in on him,” Bill said.

“Damn,” Sergeant Mullins said. “They sure make things screwy, don’t they?”