IT LACKED five minutes to twelve when I reached the office. A sign on the door announced that no further applicants were being interviewed. There were still men coming in to answer the ad. Two of them were standing in front of the door reading the sign as I approached. They turned away and walked past me with the steady mechanical tread of soldiers retreating from a lost battle.
Elsie Brand had finished her typing. She was seated at the desk with the left-hand top drawer open. She closed it as I opened the door.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to read a magazine in between times?”
Her eyes looked me over, a head-to-foot glance. Then she slowly opened the left-hand drawer of the desk, and started reading again. From where I was standing, I could see that it was one of the movie magazines.
“How about ringing our employer,” I suggested, “and telling her that Operative Thirteen is in the outer office with a report to make?”
She looked up from the magazine. “Mrs. Cool’s at lunch.”
“When will she be back?”
“Noon.”
I leaned across her desk. “Under those circumstances, I have five minutes to wait,” I said. “Would you prefer to talk with me or read the magazine?”
She said, “Do you have anything worth while to talk about?”
I met her eyes, and said, “No.”
For a moment, there was a faint flash of humor in her eyes. “I hate to listen to worth while conversations,” she admitted. “That’s a movie magazine in the drawer. I haven’t read The Citadel, Gone with the Wind, or any other worth while books. What’s more, I don’t intend to. Now, what did you want to talk about?”
“Well,” I said, “for a starter, how about discussing Mrs. Cool? What time does she go to lunch?”
“Eleven.”
“And gets back at twelve? And you leave at twelve and get back at one?”
“Yes.”
I saw she was quite a bit older than my first estimate. I had figured her then as being in the late twenties. Now, she could have been in the middle thirties. She’d taken care of her face and figure, but there was more than the suggestion of a line running down from her ears; and the crease under her chin, faint though it was, meant that she’d lived longer than the twenty-seven or twenty-eight years I’d given her on my first estimate.
“I have Alma Hunter waiting for me in a car at the curb,” I said. “If Mrs. Cool isn’t apt to be back on time, I’d better run down and tell her.”
“She’ll be back on time,” Elsie Brand said, “at any rate, within two or three minutes after twelve. That’s one thing about Bertha Cool. She believes a person is entitled to food, and she wouldn’t keep you waiting on your lunch hour.”
“She seems to be quite a character,” I said tentatively.
“She is,” Elsie Brand said.
“How’d she happen to get in the detective agency field?”
“Her husband died.”
“There are lots of other things for a woman to go into to make a living,” I said inanely.
“What, for instance?” she asked.
“She could have modeled gowns,” I suggested. “How long have you been with her?”
“Ever since she opened up.”
“And how long has that been?”
“Three years.”
“Did you know her before her husband died?”
“I was her husband’s secretary,” she said. “Bertha got me the job with him. She—”
Elsie Brand broke off as she heard the sound of steps in the corridor. Then a shadow formed on the ground glass of the entrance door, and Bertha Cool flowed majestically into the room. “All right, Elsie,” she said. “You may go now. What do you want, Donald?”
“I want to make a report.”
“Come in,” she said.
She strode into the private office shoulders back, breasts and hips swinging loosely inside her voluminous, thin dress. It was hot outside, but she didn’t seem to mind the heat.
“Sit down,” she said. “Have you located him yet?”
“Not the husband. I’ve talked with the brother.”
“Well, get busy and locate him.”
“I’m going to.”
“Of course you are. How good are you at arithmetic?”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“I’ve received a flat fee covering seven days’ work. If you work seven days on this job, I make a hundred and fifty dollars. If you work one day on it, I make a hundred and fifty dollars. If you clean up the case today, I have six days of your time to peddle to some other client. Figure that out, and tell me the answer. You’re not going to serve any papers hanging around this office. Get the hell out and serve those papers.”
“I came by to make a report.”
“I don’t want any report. I want action.”
“I may need someone to help me.”
“What for?”
“I have to shadow a girl. I’ve located Morgan Birks’ girl friend. I have to tell her something to make her run to Morgan and then shadow her.”
“Well, what’s holding you back?”
“I’ve arranged for a car. Miss Hunter is going to drive me.”
“All right. Let her drive. One other thing,” she said. “As soon as you get Morgan Birks located, call Sandra.”
“That may interfere with the service of the papers,” I said.
She grinned. “Don’t worry about that. Financial arrangements have been duly and properly made.”
“I may get into a mess. That’s a screwy family. Sandra Birks’ brother intimates there’s more to be said on Birks’ side of the case than on hers.”
“We’re not paid to take sides; we’re paid to serve papers.”
“I understand that, but there may be some trouble. How about giving me something to show I’m working for the agency?”
She looked at me for a moment, then opened a drawer in her desk, took out a printed form, and filled it in with my name, age, and description. She signed it, blotted it, and handed it to me.
“Now how about a gun?” I asked.
“No.”
“I may get in a jam.”
“No.”
“Suppose I do?”
“Fight your way out.”
“I can do a lot more with a gun,” I said.
“You can do too much with a gun. You’ve been reading detective magazines.”
I said, “You’re the boss,” and started for the door. She said, “Wait a minute. Come back here. While you’re here, I have something to say.”
I turned back.
“I’ve found out all about you, Donald,” she said in a motherly tone of voice. “You gave yourself away the way you looked through those legal papers this morning. I knew right away you’d had a legal education. You’re young. You’ve been in trouble. You weren’t trying to get work in a law office. When I asked you about your education, you didn’t dare to tell me anything about your law work.”
I tried to keep my face under control.
“Donald,” she said, “I know your real name. I know all about your trouble. You were admitted to the bar. You were disbarred for violating professional ethics.”
“I wasn’t disbarred,” I said, “and I didn’t violate professional ethics.”
“The grievance committee reported that you did.”
“The grievance committee were a lot of stuffed shirts. I talked too much, that’s all.”
“What about, Donald?”
“I did some work for a client,” I said. “We got to talking about the law. I told him a man could break any law and get away with it if he went at it right.”
“That’s nothing,” she said. “Anyone knows that.”
“The trouble is I didn’t stop there,” I confessed. “I told you I liked to scheme. I don’t figure knowledge is any good unless you can apply it. I’d studied out a lot of legal tricks. I knew how to apply them.”
“Go on from there,” she said, her eyes showing interest. “What happened?”
“I told this man it would be possible to commit a murder so there was nothing anyone could do about it. He said I was wrong. I got mad and offered to bet him five hundred dollars I was right, and could prove it. He said he was ready to put up the money any time I’d put up my five hundred bucks. I told him to come back the next day. That night he was arrested. He turned out to be a small-time gangster. He babbled everything he knew to the police. Among other things, he told them that I had agreed to tell him how he could commit a murder and get off scot-free. That he was to pay me five hundred dollars for the information, and then if it looked good to him, he had planned to bump off a rival gangster.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“The grievance committee went after me hammer and tongs. They revoked my license for a year. They thought I was some sort of a shyster. I told them it was an argument and a bet. Under the circumstances, they didn’t believe me. And, naturally, they took the other side of the question—that a man couldn’t commit deliberate murder and go unpunished.”
“Could he, Donald?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And you know how?”
“Yes. I told you that was my weakness. I like to figure things out.”
“And locked inside that head of yours is a plan by which I could kill someone and the law couldn’t do a damn thing about it?”
“Yes.”
“You mean if I was smart enough so I didn’t get caught.”
“I don’t mean anything of the sort. You’d have to put yourself in my hands and do just as I told you.”
“You don’t mean that old gag about fixing it so they couldn’t find the body?”
“That,” I said, “is the bunk. I’m talking about a loophole in the law itself, something a man could take advantage of to commit a murder.”
“Tell me, Donald.”
I laughed and said, “Remember, I’ve been through that once.”
“When’s your year up?”
“It’s up. It was up two months ago.”
“Why aren’t you back practicing law?”
“It takes money to fit up an office with furniture, law books, and wait for clients,” I said.
“Won’t the law-book companies trust you?”
“Not after you’ve been suspended.”
“And you couldn’t get a job in a law office?”
“Not a chance.”
“What do you intend to do with your legal education, Donald?”
“Serve papers,” I said, and turned on my heel. I walked out through the outer office. Elsie Brand had gone to lunch. Alma Hunter was waiting for me in the car. “I had to use sex appeal on a traffic cop,” she said.
“Good girl,” I approved. “Let’s go to the Milestone Apartments, and I’ll do my stuff with Sally Durke.”
She turned to look back through the window in the rear of the car, at the traffic. As she twisted her neck free of the high collar of the silk blouse, I saw once more those dark, sinister bruises—the imprints left by thumb and fingers which had clutched her throat.
I said nothing. I had plenty of thinking of my own to do. She deftly swung the car out into traffic and drove to the Milestone Apartments.
“Well,” I said. “Here goes.”
“Luck,” she said with a smile.
“Thanks.”
I walked across the street, looked over the list of names on the side of the door, and pressed the button opposite the name “S. L. Durke, 314.”
I was wondering just what a competent operative would do if Miss Durke wasn’t at home. But before I’d decided on an answer, the door buzzer indicated Miss Durke was home and was willing to see visitors without a palaver through the speaking tube.
I pushed the door as the buzzer released the catch, walked down a smelly corridor to where a patch of pale light marked the location of the automatic elevator. I closed the door, jabbed the button for the third floor, and went up.
As I raised my fingers to knock on the door of 314, a girl in dark blue silk pajamas opened the door, and said, “What is it?”
She was a blonde, and I figured her as an artificial blonde. She was somewhere on the sunny side of thirty, with a figure that pushed out at me through the silk of her pajamas. She said again, impatiently, “Well, what is it?”
Her voice was the only harsh thing about her.
“I want to come in.”
“Why?”
“I want to talk.”
“Well, come on in,” she said.
She’d been polishing her finger nails. The buffer was on a coffee table near a couch. She walked back to the couch, made herself comfortable, picked up the buffer, critically inspected her nails, and said without looking up, “Well, what is it?”
“I’m a detective,” I told her.
Her eyes flashed up at mine then. For a moment there was a startled look on her face. Then she started to laugh. She quit laughing at the look on my face, and said, “You are?”
I nodded.
“Well, you don’t look it,” she observed, trying to soften the blow of her laughter. “You look like a darn nice kid with ideals and a mother. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings by laughing.”
“No, I’m used to it.”
“All right. You’re a detective. So what?”
“I’m employed by Sandra Birks. Does that mean anything to you?”
She kept her eyes on the buffer as she polished her nails, apparently giving rapt attention to getting just the right sheen. “What’s Sandra Birks got to do with it?” she asked at length.
“She might have quite a good deal to do with it.”
“I don’t know the lady.”
“She’s the wife of Morgan Birks.”
“Who’s Morgan Birks?”
“Why, don’t you read the newspapers?” I asked.
“What if I do? Where do I come into that picture?”
I said, “Mrs. Birks could be pretty mean if she wanted to, you know.”
“Could she?”
“You know she could.”
“And how am I supposed to know it?”
“Let your conscience be your guide.”
She looked up at me and laughed harshly. “I haven’t any. I had to get rid of that long ago.”
“Mrs. Birks,” I said, “could drag you into court if she wanted to.”
“On what ground?”
“On the ground of being intimate with her husband.”
“Don’t you take a lot for granted?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Do I?”
“Go ahead. You’re talking. I’m listening—for a while.”
“Well, I’m doing what I’ve been hired to do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Serve papers on Morgan Birks.”
“What sort of papers?”
“Divorce papers.”
“Why come here?”
“I think you can tell me where he is.”
“Well, I can’t.”
“If you could, there’d be a bit of coin in it for you.”
I saw her eyes light with interest. “How much coin?”
“Perhaps quite a bit. It depends.”
“What does it depend on?”
“What Mrs. Birks gets out of it.”
“No, thanks. I’m not interested. I don’t think that dodo can get a damn cent.”
“Her divorce complaint doesn’t read that way.”
“It takes more than a complaint to make a divorce. It takes a judgment of a court. Mrs. Birks is one of those baby-faced bitches who hide behind a mask of respectability. She’s been cheating on Morgan ever since they were married. If Morgan wanted to tell half of the things he’s got on her—Oh well, you’re talking, I’m listening.”
“Well, Mrs. Birks can get her divorce.”
“Can she?”
“You know she can,” I said. “And if she wanted to be mean she could drag you into it. She’s got all the evidence she needs. The way she treats you depends on the way you treat her.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” she asked, putting down the buffer and raising her eyes to mine.
“That’s it,” I said.
She sighed. “You looked like such a nice boy, too. How about a drink?”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink when I’m working.”
“You’re working now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about you,” she said.
“You don’t need to be.”
“Just what does she threaten to do to me?”
“Threaten?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why, nothing. I’m merely telling you things.”
“Just as a friend, I suppose,” she said sarcastically.
“Just as a friend.”
“Well, just what do you want me to do?”
“Get Morgan Birks to acknowledge service of this summons or else fix things so I can make a service on Birks. After all,” I said, “it’s to your interest to have the divorce go through, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” she countered, and her face was worried. “I wish I did.”
I said nothing.
“How am I supposed to fix it so you can serve the papers?”
“You make a date with Morgan Birks,” I said. “Then you telephone B. L. Cool at Main 6—9321. I come over and serve the papers.”
“And when do I get the pay-off?”
“You don’t get any.”
She threw back her head and laughed. There seemed to be genuine amusement in her laugh. “All right, sweetheart. I wanted to see what made you tick. I’ve found out. Get the hell out of here. Go tell Mrs. Birks she can go jump in the lake. If she wants to mention my name, ask her about her little sweetheart, Archie Holoman. Ask her if she thinks her husband is just a plain damn fool.”
Her laughter followed me out into the corridor.
I went back to where Alma Hunter was waiting for me in the automobile. “See her?” she asked.
“Uh huh.”
“What sort of a girl is she?” she asked curiously.
“Peroxide blonde,” I said. “Easy on the eyes, and hard on the ears.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to go roll my hoop.”
“Wasn’t that what you wanted her to say?”
“Yes, in a way, it was.”
“Why, I thought that was just what you wanted. I thought you wanted her to get hard and kick you out and then lead you to Morgan.”
“I gathered,” I said, “that was the idea.”
“What was it she said you didn’t like?”
“There are some things about being a detective which go against the grain. I suppose a detective has to be something of a heel. At any rate, she seemed to think so.”
For a long moment, Alma Hunter was silent. Then she asked, “Did she sell you on the idea?”
I said, “Yes,” and climbed in the car to sit beside her. After a while I said, “We’d better move the car down to that alley. We can watch just as well from there, and we won’t be so conspicuous.”
She stretched out a neatly shod foot and pushed the starter into action. She drove the car down to the alley entrance, backed it in, found a shady place, and parked. “You’re not a heel,” she said. “You’re nice.”
“Thanks for the reassurance,” I said, “but somehow it takes more than words to take the taste out of my mind.”
“What did you expect the job would be like?” she asked.
“I don’t know as I expected,” I said.
“Weren’t you attracted to it because of the idea of romance and adventure?”
“I was attracted to it because of the possibility of getting two meals a day, and a place to sleep at night. I didn’t even know what kind of a job it was when I answered the ad—and I didn’t much care.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t feel bitter, Don. After all, it isn’t as bad as you think. That Durke woman is the worst kind of a gold-digger. She doesn’t care a fig about Morgan. She is just playing him for what she can get out of him.”
“I know,” I said, “but I just don’t like the idea of being a heel. Not that I’m going to crab too much about it, I just didn’t like it. That was all.”
“But you did it?” she asked.
“I think I made a damn good job of it,” I said.
She laughed then, a laugh that had a catch in it. “You say the most unexpected things, Donald. I guess it’s the way you look at life. Tell me, what happened to you that leaves you so down on the world?”
“Good Lord! Do I create that sort of an impression?”
“In a way.”
“I’ll try to get over it.”
“But tell me, Don, isn’t it true?”
“I had a raw deal,” I said. “When you’ve worked for years to get somewhere, overcome all sorts of obstacles, and get what you want, only to have someone knock it out of your hands, you have some readjusting to do.”
“Was it a woman, Don?”
“No.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
She sat looking meditatively through the windshield. Her fingers toyed with my coat sleeve.
“You were disappointed when you found I wasn’t a veteran detective,” I said.
“Was I?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Why, I didn’t know that I was.”
I turned so I could see her profile. “Was it,” I asked, “because someone had been trying to choke you, and you wanted my advice on protection?”
I saw her features twist with emotion, her eyes become startled, her hand involuntarily go to her throat as though to shut off my gaze.
I said, “Who tried to choke you, Alma?”
The lips quivered. Tears glistened in her eyes. Her fingertips dug into my arm. I put my arm around her and drew her to me. She laid her head against my shoulder and cried, deep sobbing that spoke of tortured nerves. I slid my left hand up around her neck, put the fingertips under the chin, moved the right hand up along her blouse.
“Oh no, no,” she sobbed, and grabbed at my wrist with both of her hands.
I looked down into her frightened, tear-flooded eyes. Her quivering lips were upturned—slightly parted.
There wasn’t any conscious volition about kissing her. I just found my lips clinging to hers, the taste of her tears, salt on my lips. She let go of my wrist then, drew me down close to her, half turned her body with a quick twist so that she was clinging to me.
After a moment, our lips separated. I raised my right hand along her blouse, fumbled with the fastenings at the neck, parted it, and drew away the silk.
She was limp in my arms, making no resistance. The sobbing had quieted.
“When did this happen, Alma?” I asked.
“Last night,” she said.
“How did it happen? Who was it?”
She clung to me, and I could feel her tremble.
“Poor kid,” I said, and kissed her again.
We sat there in the car, our lips held together, her body close and warm against mine. The bitterness and tension flowed out of me. I ceased to hate the world. A peaceful feeling took possession of me. It wasn’t passion. It wasn’t that kind of a kiss. I don’t know what kind of a kiss it was because I’d never had one before like it. She did things to me—things which I’d never before experienced.
Her sobbing ceased. She quit kissing me, gave a nervous, quivering little gasp, opened her purse, took out a square of handkerchief, and started drying her tears.
“I’m a sight,” she said, looking in the mirror on the inside of her purse. “Has Sally Durke come out yet?”
The question brought me back to realities with a jump. I peered through the windshield of the car at the entrance of the apartment house. It was forbiddingly inanimate. A dozen Sally Durkes could have come out and gone away, and I’d have been none the wiser.
“She hasn’t left, has she?” Alma asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not.”
There was something throaty in her laugh. “I hope not,” she said. “I feel a lot better. I—I like to be kissed by you, Donald.”
I wanted to say something and couldn’t. It was as though I was seeing and hearing her for the first time. Little cadences in her voice, little tricks of expression were registering with me for the first time. God, I must have been bitter not to have seen her. She had been with me for hours and yet this was the first time I’d really noticed her. Now, all of my attention was concentrated on her presence. I couldn’t think of anything else. I could feel the warmth of her body coming through her clothes where her legs were pressed against mine.
She seemed to have perfect control of herself, making her face over, applying lipstick with the tip of her finger.
Once more I tried to say something and couldn’t. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. It was like wanting to sing and not being able to.
I turned my attention back to the apartment house, and tried to concentrate on watching for Sally Durke. I wished I had some way of telling whether she’d gone out. I thought of going back to the apartment house and ringing her doorbell. That would let me know whether she was in, but I couldn’t think of anything to say if she was in. Then, she’d know I was shadowing her—or would she? At any rate, she’d know I was hanging around.
Alma raised her hand and started to button the collar of her blouse.
“Do you,” I asked, “want to tell me about that now?”
“Yes,” she said, and then after a moment added, “I’m frightened, Donald. I guess I’m an awful baby.”
“What are you frightened of?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think the arrival of Sandra’s brother will make a difference?”
“No. . . . That is, I shouldn’t say that. I just don’t know.”
“What do you know about him, Alma?”
“Not very much. Whenever Sandra speaks of him, she says they didn’t get along very well.”
“You mean recently?”
“Well, yes.”
“What does she say about him?”
“Just that he’s peculiar and very independent. The fact that Sandra’s his sister doesn’t mean a thing to him.”
“And yet she turned to him when she needed help?”
“I don’t know,” Alma Hunter said. “I think he came to her. That is, I think he got in touch with her by long distance telephone. I don’t know. I have an idea—tell me, Donald, do you suppose there’s any chance he’s in partnership with Morgan?”
“What do you mean? On this slot-machine business?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a chance of anything,” I said. “What makes you ask?”
“I don’t know. Just from the way he seems to be acting, and from a remark Sandra let drop, and—while you were there in the room with him, I could hear a little of the conversation, not all of it, but a word here and there which gave me the general drift.”
“Morgan is,” I said, “a husband. He’s a defendant in a divorce action. The papers are going to be served on him. Then he’ll either come into court, or he’ll default and cease being a husband. Therefore, why worry about it?”
“Because I think you can’t dispose of him as simply as that. I think he’s—dangerous.”
“Now,” I said, “we’re getting to the point I wanted to talk about.”
“What?”
“Those bruises on your neck.”
“Oh, he has nothing to do with them.”
“Go ahead. Tell me about it. Who was it?”
“A b-b-burglar.”
“Where?”
“Someone who broke into the apartment.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“You two girls were there alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where was Sandra?”
“She slept in the other bedroom.”
“And you were sleeping in the room with the twin beds?”
“Yes.”
“Sandra was sleeping in the room where Bleatie is now?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “—Oh, I shouldn’t tell you about it. I promised Sandra I wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”
“Why all the secrecy?”
“Because she’s having enough trouble with the police. They’re trying to locate Morgan, and they’ve been coming in at all hours of the day and night and asking all sorts of questions. It’s been very embarrassing.”
“So I imagine, but that’s no reason why you should be choked to death.”
“I fought him off.”
“How did it happen?”
“It was a hot night,” she said. “I was sleeping without very much on. I woke up and a man was leaning over the bed. I moved and started to scream. He grabbed me by the throat and I began to kick. I kicked him in the stomach with my heels and got my knees up against his shoulders and pushed with all of my might. If I’d slept just a second longer, and he’d got closer to me, he’d have choked me; but when I got my knees up and pushed, I finally broke his hold.”
“And then what happened?”
“And then he ran.”
“Where?”
“Out into the other room.”
“And then what?”
“Then I called Sandra. We turned on the lights, and looked through the apartment. Nothing was disturbed.”
“Did you find how he got in?”
“It must have been by the fire escape because the door was locked.”
“Was he dressed?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him. It was dark.”
“But you could feel, couldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, in a way.”
“And you never did see him? You wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him again?”
“No, it was dark as pitch.”
“Look here, Alma,” I said. “You’re nervous. There’s more to this than you’re telling me. Why don’t you give me a chance to help you?”
“No,” she said, “I can’t—I mean, there isn’t—I’ve told you everything.”
I sat back and smoked a cigarette in silence. After a minute, she said, “You’re really truly a detective, aren’t you? I mean legally?”
“Yes.”
“And you have a right to carry a gun?”
“I suppose so.”
“Could you—could you get a gun if I gave you the money, and let me carry it for a while?”
“Why?”
“Protection.”
“Why the gun?”
“Why not?” she asked. “Good Lord, if you’d wakened in the middle of the night and found someone leaning over you, and then hands clutching at your throat and—”
“Then you think it’s going to happen again?”
“I don’t know, but I want to stay with Sandra, and I think she’s in danger.”
“What’s she in danger of?”
“I don’t know. I think someone’s trying to kill her.”
“Why her?”
“You see, I was sleeping in her bed.”
“Her husband perhaps?”
“No, I don’t think it’s her husband, but—well, it might have been.”
“Leave her,” I said. “Go get a room by yourself and—”
“No, I couldn’t do that. I’m her friend. I’m going to stand by her. She’s stood by me.”
“Has she?”
“Yes.”
“I gathered from her brother she was rather selfish, a woman who—”
“Well, she isn’t,” she interrupted. “What does her brother know about her? My God, he’s never paid the faintest attention to her. I don’t think he’s written to her once in five years.”
“He seemed to know a lot about her.”
“That’s what makes me think he’s standing in with Morgan. I think Morgan put those ideas in his head. Morgan’s been talking about her, saying the most horrible things, that she’s sex-crazy and has a new man on the string all the time, and all that sort of stuff, things that no man should say about a woman, least of all about his wife.”
“I gather their domestic life hasn’t been particularly happy?”
“Of course it hasn’t. But that’s no reason a man should go around making a lot of false statements about the woman he’s sworn to love and protect—sometimes men make me sick.”
“Let’s go back to the reason for your interest in Mrs. Cool’s marital venture.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I thought you took an unusual interest in it.”
“It was interesting.”
“Doubly interesting to one who is contemplating marriage.”
“Or running away from marriage,” she said, smiling up at me.
“Is that what you’re doing?”
She nodded.
“Want to tell me about it?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “No, Donald, I’d rather not—not right now, anyway.”
“From Kansas City?” I asked.
“Yes. One of those crazy, insanely jealous men who are always looking for an excuse to get drunk and smash things.”
“Don’t waste time on him,” I said. “I know the breed. They’re all the same. They have a fierce, possessive desire to own a woman, body and soul. He probably tried to tell you that his jealousy is only because he really doesn’t have the legal right to love and cherish you the way he wants, that if you were only his wife, he wouldn’t mind, that if you’d marry him, things would all be hunky-dory; and whenever you refuse, he goes out and gets drunk. He comes back and makes a scene, smashes glassware, and—”
“You sound as though you knew him,” she interrupted.
“I do, not as an individual, but as a type.”
“And your advice is to lay off?”
“Absolutely. Any time a man can’t show his strength of character by beating down his own faults, and then tries to get his self-respect back by smashing a dish, you want to lay off of him.”
“His particular yen is smashing glasses in a bar,” she said.
“You’re not going to marry him?”
“No.”
“He’s in Kansas City?”
“Yes—that is, he was when I left. If he knew where I was, he’d follow.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, smash some dishes perhaps.”
“Those men are poison,” I said. “They’ll pay any price for the opportunity to assert themselves.”
“I know,” she said. “You read about them every day in the papers, the men who track down estranged wives, shoot them, and then commit suicide—the final gesture of futility—I hate it, and I’m afraid of it.”
I looked at her sharply. “And is it because of that you want the gun?”
She met my eyes then, and said, “Yes.”
“Do you want to buy one?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You have the money?”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to take about twenty-five dollars,” I said.
She opened her purse, took out two tens and a five, and gave them to me.
“I can’t get it right now,” I told her, “because we’re going to have to watch for that Durke girl to come out. I wonder why Bleatie was so positive she’d go somewhere to get in touch with Morgan Birks. You’d think she’d use the telephone.”
“Probably her line’s tapped,” Alma said.
“No, the police don’t know anything about her. If they did, they’d shadow her.”
“Well, she probably thinks the telephone’s tapped, or perhaps Morgan thinks so.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, “but then in real life things seldom do make—There she comes!”
Sally Durke walked out of the apartment house with an overnight bag in her hand. She was tailored up to the minute in a blue skirt and jacket. The skirt was cut short, and her ankles were enough to make any man turn around. She wore a close-fitting blue hat tilted at an angle with a rakish little bow of blue velvet. Her flaxen hair, peeking out from under the hat, showed up soft and golden against the blue.
“What makes you think she’s peroxide?” Alma Hunter asked, as she started the motor.
“I don’t know. Something about the color of her hair. It’s—”
“She looks like a natural blonde from here—looks pretty.”
“Far be it from me to argue about feminine beauty with an expert,” I said. “Careful not to crowd too close. She’s headed for the boulevard. Let her get enough of a lead so she won’t look back and see us crawling along. That’ll make her suspicious.”
“I thought I’d run out into the street and then stop until we can see what she does.”
“Okay, good girl. Want me to drive?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like it a lot. I’m nervous.”
I said, “All right. Come out from behind the wheel, and I’ll slide under.”
She moved over from behind the wheel, raised herself, and I slid under. I slipped the gears into mesh, then kicked out the clutch, and let the machine inch along close to the curb.
Sally Durke walked to the corner and flagged a passing taxicab. I speeded the car and made the turn into the boulevard not over fifty feet behind the cab. Then I gradually dropped behind, waiting to see if she looked back.
She didn’t. Her head showed through the rear window in the cab, her eyes apparently fixed straight ahead.
“Looks like a cinch,” I said, and closed the distance between the car and the cab.
The cab rolled smoothly along, made no attempt to shake off pursuit, turned to the left when it got to Sixteenth Street and went to the Perkins Hotel. There wasn’t any parking place in sight. I said to Alma, “This is where you have to pinch-hit. Get in behind the wheel and keep driving around the block. I want to get in there right after she registers and see what room she gets. I’ll give her time enough to get out of the lobby and that’s all.”
Alma Hunter said, “Look here. I want to be in on this thing.”
“You’re in on it,” I said.
“No, not that way. I want to be in at the finish. What are you going to do?”
“Find out what room she has, and get a room directly across from it if possible.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“No chance,” I said. “Sorry, but that’s out. The better-class hotels get snooty when a man starts entertaining women in his room. The bellboys try to work a little blackmail, and—”
“Oh shucks,” she said, “don’t be like that! Go register as man and wife. What name are you going to use?”
“Donald Helforth.”
“All right, I’ll be Mrs. Helforth. I’ll come in later and join you. Get started.”
I went across to the hotel. Sally Durke wasn’t in sight. I told a bellboy to get me the bell captain, and took the captain off into executive session. “A blonde in a blue outfit came in about two minutes ago,” I said. “I want to know what name she registered under, where she’s registered, and what rooms near her are vacant. I’d like to get one across the corridor from her if I can.”
“What’s the idea?” he asked.
I took a five-dollar bill from my pocket, folded it, twisted it around my fingers, and said, “I’m a committee of one, working on behalf of the government, trying to get deserving bellboys into the higher income brackets so we can collect more tax.”
“I always co-operate with the government,” he said, grinning. “Just a minute.”
I waited in the lobby until he came back with the information. She was Mrs. B. F. Morgan and was in 618. She expected her husband to join her shortly. The only vacant room anywhere in that part of the hotel was 620, and Mrs. Morgan, it seemed, had reserved 618 earlier in the day by telephone, said she might want 620 as well, and had asked the management to hold that. When she registered, she said she’d changed her mind about 620 and would only want 618.
“I’m Donald Helforth,” I said. “My wife, about twenty-five, with chestnut hair and brown eyes, will be coming in within five or ten minutes. Keep an eye out for her, and show her up to my room, will you?”
“Your wife?” he asked.
“My wife,” I said.
“Oh, I see.”
“And here’s one other thing. I want a gun.”
His eyes lost their friendliness. “What sort of a gun?”
“A small gun that fits in the pocket nicely, preferably an automatic. And I want a box of shells for it.”
“You’re supposed to have a police permit in order to get a gun,” he said.
“And when you have a police permit, you buy your gun at a store and pay about fifteen dollars for it,” I said. “What the hell do you think I’m paying twenty-five bucks for a gun for?”
“Oh, you’re paying twenty-five bucks for it?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I didn’t give him any chance to tip off the room clerk, but walked directly to the desk. The clerk handed me a card, and I wrote, “Donald Helforth and wife,” and gave a fictitious address.
“Something at about seven dollars a day, Mr. Helforth?” the clerk asked.
“What do you have on the sixth floor? I don’t want to be too high, and yet I want to be far enough above the traffic to keep the street cars out of my ears.”
He looked at the chart and said, “I could give you 675.”
“Which end of the house is that?”
“The east.”
“What do you have on the west?”
“I could give you 605, or I can give you 620.”
“What about 620?”
“Twin beds and a bath. The rates are seven and a half double.”
“Can’t you make it seven?” I asked.
He looked me over, and said he’d make a special concession.
“All right,” I said. “My wife will be in later with my baggage, but I’ll pay for the room now.”
I gave him the money, took a receipt, and went up to my room with the bell captain. “You can’t get a new gun for twenty-five bucks,” he objected.
“Who said anything about a new gun? You’re getting one from a second-hand store somewhere. Twenty-five is my limit, and don’t try to chisel too much profit. Get one that costs at least fifteen.”
“I’d be breaking the law,” he said.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I took from my pocket the authorization Mrs. Cool had signed for me. “I’m a private detective,” I said.
He looked it over, and the perplexity left his face. “All right, boss. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Make it snappy,” I told him, “but don’t go out until my wife comes in. I want her to be taken right up here.”
“Right,” he said, and went out.
I looked around the room. It was an ordinary twin-bed affair in an ordinary hotel. I went into the bathroom. It was designed so that 618 and 620 could be opened up together as adjoining rooms with the bath in between. I tried the knob on the connecting door slowly and carefully. The door was locked. Listening, I could hear the sounds of someone moving around in the adjoining room. I went back to the telephone and called Sandra Birks. When I had her on the line, I said, “Everything seems to be okay. I’ve followed her to the Perkins Hotel. She’s in 618, registered under the name of Morgan, and has left word at the desk her husband is joining her. Alma and I are here at the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Donald Helforth in 620.”
“Mr. and Mrs?” Sandra Birks asked with rising inflection.
“Yes. Alma wanted to be in on it.”
“In on what?”
“On the service of the papers,” I said.
“Well, I want to be in on it, too. I hate to interrupt your honeymoon, but Bleatie and I are coming up.”
“Now, look here,” I objected, “if Morgan Birks should happen to be hanging around the hotel and sees you drive up, it’ll just be too bad. We’ll never get a chance to serve him again.”
“I understand that,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”
“You can’t be careful. You can’t tell whether you’ll run into him in the lobby, in the elevator, or in the corridor. He may be watching the place now for all you know. He—”
“You shouldn’t have let Alma share the room with you,” Sandra Birks said in a dignified voice. “After all, you know, Mr. Lam, this thing may come up in court.”
“Bosh. I’m simply serving papers,” I said.
“I’m afraid,” she cooed, “you don’t understand. Alma simply can’t afford to have her name in the papers. Bleatie and I will be right up. Good-by.” And the telephone clicked.
I hung up the receiver, took off my coat, washed my face and hands, sat down in the chair, and lit a cigarette. Someone knocked on the door. Before I could get up, the bellboy opened it and said, “Here you are, Mrs. Helforth.”
Alma came in, saying, in a voice she tried to keep casual, “Hello, dear. I thought I’d better park the car before I came in. They’re going to deliver some packages for me later on.”
I walked over to the bellboy whose expression showed that Alma’s amateurish attempt at domestic deception was giving him a quiet laugh. “Some other people are coming in,” I said. “They’ll probably be here within ten or fifteen minutes. I want that gun before they get here.”
“I’ll have to have some money. I—”
I gave him the two tens and a five. “Make it snappy,” I said, “and don’t forget the shells. Have it done up in brown paper. Don’t give the package to anyone but me. Get started.”
“On my way,” he said, and shot out of the door.
“What gun are you talking about, the one you were getting for me?” Alma asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Sandra and Bleatie are coming up here. Your friend Sandra seems to think I’ve irrevocably ruined your good name in letting you in on this. She refers to it as ‘sharing my room.’ ”
Alma laughed. “Good old Sandra,” she said, “is so scrupulously careful about protecting my good name, yet she—”
“And yet she does what?” I asked as her voice faded out like a distant radio station.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Come on, let’s have it.”
“No, nothing. Honestly, I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Much,” I said. “I’d like to know what Sandra does.”
“It isn’t important.”
“Anyway, she’s coming up here. Before she arrives, I want to take a look at your neck.”
“At my neck?”
“Yes, at those bruises. I want to see something.”
I stepped forward and slid my left arm around the back of her shoulder, fumbled with the silken loop which circled some ornamental buttons on the collar of her blouse.
“No, no,” she said. “Don’t. Please—” She raised her hand to push me away, but I slipped the loop over the button and opened her blouse. Her head came back. Her lips were close to mine. Her arm slid over my shoulders, and I pulled her to me. Her lips were warm and clinging. This time there was no taste of salt tears. After a while, she drew away and said, “Oh, Donald, what must you think of me?”
“I think you’re swell,” I said.
“Donald, I don’t usually do this. I have been feeling so lonesome and all alone—and from the first time I met you—”
I kissed her again. After that, I gently slid the blouse away from her neck and looked at the bruised marks. She stood perfectly still. I could feel her even, regular breathing, but a pulse in her neck was throbbing rapidly.
“How big was this man who tried to choke you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I tell you it was dark.”
“Was he big and fat, or small and thin?”
“He wasn’t fat.”
“His hands must have been small.”
“Well—I don’t know—”
“Look here,” I said, “there are little scratches on the skin which could have been made by fingernails. Now, are you certain it wasn’t a woman?”
She caught her breath at that. “Scratches?” she asked.
“Yes, scratches, nail scratches. The person who choked you must have had long, pointed fingernails. Now why couldn’t it have been a woman as well as a man?”
“Because I don’t think—no, I think it was a man.”
“But you couldn’t see anything at all?”
“No.”
“It was pitch dark?”
“Yes.”
“And whoever it was made no sound?”
“No.”
“Simply started to choke you and you fought free?”
“Yes, I pushed him away.”
“And you have absolutely no idea who it was?” I asked.
“No.”
“There’s nothing whatever to give you a clue?”
“No.”
I patted her shoulder. “All right, dear. I just wanted to find out. That’s all.”
“I—I think I’ll sit down,” she said. “I get nervous every time I talk about it.”
She went over to the overstuffed chair and sat down.
“I think you’d better tell me about your boy friend,” I said.
“He’s in Kansas City.”
“But you don’t think he’s going to stay there?”
“If he finds out where I am, he may come here.”
“Don’t you think he’s found out already?”
“No. He couldn’t have found out.”
“And yet in the back of your mind there’s the thought that he may have—”
“Don’t, Donald, please,” she interrupted. “I don’t think I can take any more.”
“All right,” I said. “You don’t have to. Better button up your blouse. Sandra and Bleatie may be here any minute.”
She raised her hands to her blouse. I saw the fingers quiver as she fitted the loops over the buttons.
Afternoon sun streamed into the room, made it hot and close. There was no breeze, and the open windows seemed merely to attract the hot air which radiated up from the side of the building.
The bell captain knocked at the door, pushed a brown paper package into my hands. “Listen, buddy,” he said, “don’t get into any trouble with this rod. It’s a good one, but I had to lie like hell to get old Mose to let loose of it.”
I said, “Thanks,” kicked the door shut, ripped off the brown wrappings, and brought to light a thirty-two blue-steel automatic. The blue was worn off the steel in places; but the barrel was in good condition. I opened the box of shells, pushed the magazine full, and said to Alma Hunter, “You know how to work this?”
“No,” she said.
“Here’s a safety catch that you work with your thumb,” I explained. “Here’s another safety catch on the back of the handle which you automatically release when you squeeze your hand about the grip. All you have to do is to hold it in your right hand, pull this little lever down with your thumb, and pull the trigger. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s see if you do.” I removed the magazine, jerked the mechanism back and forth, snapped the safety catch into position, handed it to her, and said, “Shoot me.”
She took the gun and said, “Donald, don’t say that.”
“Point it at me,” I said. “Shoot me. You’ve got to. I’m going to choke you. Come on, Alma, snap out of it. Let’s see if you can point the gun and pull the trigger.”
She pointed the gun and tried to pull the trigger. The skin grew white across her knuckles, but nothing happened.
“The safety catch,” I said.
She jerked the catch down with her thumb. I heard the click of the firing pin against the chamber, and then she sat down on the bed as though her knees had lost all their strength. The gun dropped from her limp fingers to the carpet.
I picked up the gun, shoved the magazine back into position, jacked a shell up into the chamber, saw that the safety catch was on, removed the magazine, and shoved in a shell to take the place of the one that had gone up into the firing chamber. I put the gun in her purse.
She watched me with frightened, fascinated eyes.
I wrapped the extra box of shells in the brown paper and dropped it into the bureau drawer. Then I went over and sat down on the bed beside her. “Listen, Alma,” I said, “that gun’s loaded. Don’t shoot anyone unless you have to, but if anyone starts playing with your neck again, you start making noises with that gun. You don’t need to hit him. Just cut loose with the gun. That will bring help.”
She stretched out on the bed, and twisted her lithe, supple body around to mine with a gesture that reminded me of a kitten twisting around in play. Her arms came around my neck, drew me to her. I felt the tip of her tongue searching my lips.
It was perhaps an hour later that a quick succession of knocks announced the arrival of Sandra Birks and her brother.
I opened the door.
“Where’s Alma?” Sandra Birks asked.
“In the bathroom,” I said, “washing her eyes. She’s nervous and upset. She’s been crying.”
“And I presume,” Sandra said, looking at the rumpled bed, “you were comforting her.”
Bleatie stared down at the pillow and said, “Hell, they’re all the same.”
Sandra turned on him. “You shut up, Bleatie,” she said. “You have a dirty mind. You don’t think any woman’s decent.”
“Well,” he said, “what were you thinking?”
I said, “Did you see anything of Morgan Birks?”
Sandra seemed anxious to change the subject. “No, we came in the back way, bribed the porter to take us up in the freight elevator.”
Alma came out of the bathroom.
“She hasn’t been crying,” Bleatie said.
Sandra ignored him. “What’s going on in the next room?” she asked.
“Miss Sally Durke has become Mrs. B. F. Morgan,” I said. “She’s waiting for Mr. Morgan to join her. Doubtless it’ll be before dinner. They may have dinner served in their room.”
“We can prop this door open and listen,” Sandra Birks said.
“You don’t give your husband credit for very much intelligence, do you?” I asked.
“Why?”
“He’d spot that open door before he was halfway down the corridor. No, we’ll have to take turns listening at the bathroom door. We can hear him when he comes in.”
Bleatie said, “I’ve got a scheme that beats that all to pieces.” He took a pocket drill from his pocket, tiptoed into the bathroom, listened a minute, and said, “The place to bore holes in a door is right in the corner of the panel.”
“Put that thing away,” I said. “You’ll just spill wood particles all over the floor and put her wise.”
“Have you any plans?” he asked me.
“Plenty of them. We take turns listening at the bathroom. When we hear a man come in, I go around to their room. If it’s Morgan Birks, I serve the papers on him.”
“You’ll recognize him from his photographs?” Sandra Birks asked.
“Yes, I’ve studied them carefully.”
“How are you going to get in?” Bleatie asked me.
“I’m going to ring the room, tell them it’s the office talking, that there’s a telegram for Mr. B. F. Morgan, and ask if I shall send it up.”
“That’s an old dodge. They’ll get suspicious, and tell you to slip it under the door.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have the telegram and a registration book. I won’t be able to get the book under the door. I’ll try. The telegram will be real.”
“They’ll open the door a crack, see you, and slam it shut.”
“Not when they see me, they won’t,” I said. “I’m going out and collect the stage properties. You stay here and hold the fort. Don’t get excited if Morgan comes in. I’ll be back inside of half an hour. He’s certain to stay at least that long. Remember, she’s brought an overnight bag.”
“I don’t like it,” Bleatie said. “It sounds crude and—”
“Everything sounds crude when you outline it in cold conversation,” I said. “It’s the build-up. Look at all the bunco games which are pulled by the slickers. You read about them in the newspapers, and they seem so crude you can’t imagine anyone falling for them. Yet people fall for them three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year just like clockwork. It’s the build-up.”
“Nevertheless, I still think it’s crude. I—”
I didn’t see any sense debating it with him. I slipped out of the door and into the corridor, leaving him to explain to the others how crude it was.