Chapter Sixteen

ALARM IN THE DARK

GAIL ROBERTS PUT THE CAR AWAY and walked along the side of the house to the front door. She had noticed a light in Mrs. Higgins’s room beyond the kitchen wing, but when she glanced in the drawing-room windows she saw the lights here were as she had left them and she guessed that Louise had not come home.

She went up the front steps and unlocked the door reluctantly, discouraged at the prospect of an empty house. She put the key on the tray in the hall and hung up her coat. In the drawing-room doorway she paused and rubbed her arms, not because she was cold but because it was so quiet, so still here.

It would have been nice to have found Louise curled up on the divan. She could have greeted her almost with affection, a feeling which heretofore had not been displayed by either of them. Thinking about this now, she wondered why.

Not that they hadn’t managed to get along all right since Louise had come to live here four or five weeks ago. They were polite to each other and always there was a surface friendliness; but nothing more. They had, Gail realized, very little in common. Perhaps that was the reason. Louise, with her mink coat and slinky gowns and her pieces of jewelry she had salvaged from Italy, made it clear that she expected to be waited on. She was generally in bed until close to noon and she was not above some rather obvious flattery in getting Arlene to serve breakfast in bed. Louise had made it clear that she was merely waiting for something better to turn up. Gail had often wondered what the something would be and when it would appear; then, too, Louise had been very friendly with Roger Carroll. They had come back from Italy on the same boat and once, when piqued about something, Louise had implied that she had lent Roger money since they had been back.

Gail found such thoughts disturbing and brushed them aside. Finally she smiled. Because right now it would be nice to have Louise here, to be able to talk to someone and break the silence that hung so heavily over the rooms.

She turned and went through the dining-room to the kitchen. She did not know what she wanted but opened the refrigerator door and poked around, finding nothing that appealed and settling finally for a glass of milk and an ice-box cookie that Mrs. Higgins always had on hand in a tin on the pantry shelf.

She was in bed and just dropping off to sleep when she heard the front door open and close. She heard the click of distant light switches and presently she thought she heard the stairs creak and then, faintly, steps were in the hall and another door opened and closed.…

Gail Roberts found herself staring up through the blackness of her bedroom and wondered if she had been asleep or only imagined it. When she turned her head the radium dial of the bedside clock said it was a few minutes after twelve, and she remembered hearing Louise come in sometime after eleven. She knew, finally, that she had been asleep and then she wondered what had wakened her.

A vague recollection of some sound lingered in her consciousness, as though part of a dream, and she lay quite still, holding her breath and listening. A car went past on the street outside and faded rapidly into silence and then she heard something else, some shadow of a sound, unidentifiable and quickly gone, that seemed to come not from outside but within the house.

She sat up, aware of a growing tension around her heart. She listened again. She glanced about her, peering into the corners of the room. The window was open a few inches and the curtains stirred gently in the night air and suddenly she shivered and found that she was cold all over. Not from the open window and the fresh coolness of the room but from something she could not understand, something intuitive yet frighteningly real. She swung her feet to the floor and reached for her negligee, wrapping it about her as she stepped to the door.

Opening it, she looked into the blackness of the hall and listened. She heard nothing now and since she was a sensible girl and not easily frightened, she told herself it was only her imagination. Her brain told her quite definitely that she should go back to bed and stop this nonsense. But her spine was tight and prickly and the cold vacuum remained where her stomach had been and her throat was dry and every instinct told her something was wrong.

All right then, she thought. Either find out or go back to bed—but stop being a ninny.

The silent soliloquy helped. She stepped into the corridor, left her door ajar, and started toward Louise’s room, her bare feet making no sound on the rug.

The window at the front of the house was at her back now and enough light from the night sky fell upon the hall so that she could make out the various doors. She stopped in front of Louise’s, listening a moment, still aware of the battle raging between mind and instinct, wondering whether she should knock or simply enter and call out.

Finally she made her hand move. She reached out tentatively and as she did so a clicking sound that was loud and frightening startled her and she glanced down and saw the doorknob turn. She stared and caught her breath. The knob turned a little more and stopped and then she saw the door move slowly inward.

For the next fraction of a second she could not think or even move, but froze there, staring, held by some horrible fascination she could not resist. She saw the door open a crack, saw that the room beyond was in darkness; then panic struck at her and gave her strength and she fled, not toward her room but toward the stairs.

She ran and ran and the hall was endless. Fear told her she would never find the stairs, could not have the strength to reach them, and then somehow she was going down the carpeted steps, remembering to hold her skirts so she would not trip. She was on the landing, hesitating now, looking back, listening once more while the skin crawled on the back of her neck.

She heard it then, the quick, muted sound of footsteps. She saw, through the spindles of the bannister, a shadowy form loom above her; then she turned and ran to the lower hall, poising here a moment, trying desperately to think again, remembering finally the closet under the stairs. She stepped inside and closed the door.

Over her head a stair creaked and she could hear the steady, even step of a man descending. She held her breath. She pushed her hands tight against her breasts to still the hammering of her heart. She thought, He didn’t see me. He’ll go straight to the front door. He’ll go out. Please, God, make him go out!

She could see nothing now in the blackness. She did not see the door open. She did not know it was open until she felt the cold air sweep about her ankles. Terror struck at her. She opened her mouth to scream and then, as something white and blinding exploded in her face, her mind blacked out. She felt herself falling and as consciousness left her she thought she heard a bell ring distantly.

Kent Murdock had one more caller that night. When Roger Carroll left he pulled a chair to the window and sat down. He was still there staring out into the night when Jack Fenner knocked shortly before twelve.

Fenner’s alert agate eyes were busy as he walked in. “I thought you’d at least have a suite,” he said. “How can you entertain properly in one room?”

He stepped to the bathroom, glanced in. He turned, frowning, and quickly but thoroughly inspected the room with his shrewd bright gaze. He went over to the bureau and opened the drawers and Murdock let him go. Finally Fenner snorted disgustedly.

“What the hell,” he said. “No booze? Nine in the morning to midnight I work and not even a drink when I finish?”

“It took you long enough to get in touch with me,” Murdock said.

Fenner sighed. “I never thought it would come to this. No drink and not even an apology. Maybe you’re on the wagon. No, it couldn’t be that.… I didn’t have much to report.”

“You started last night,” Murdock said, “You could have—”

“I did. I phoned about one last night. You were out.”

Murdock looked at him disgustedly. “You couldn’t have left a message, could you?”

“Leaving messages with hotel operators these days is a waste of time. Anyway the only thing that happened was that the guy she was with took her home.”

He sat down and stretched his legs. With his hat off his hair was straight and fine and he had a widow’s peak that was slowly approaching baldness. This, added to his tight-muscled face and the narrow, upward-slanting eyes, gave him a look that made you think of Mephistopheles.

“You were right about Louise,” he said. “She’s pretty terrific. The only trouble is when you have to tail a dame like that you never get to meet her; you can’t even try to pick her up. You think you can fix it—for later—so I could buy her a drink?”

“Never mind,” Murdock said. “What happened?”

“Nothing much. She came home after the funeral, stayed there until nine tonight, then went to the place you were at last night.”

“The Silver Door?”

“Some guy was waiting for her and—”

“Describe him.”

“Tall, thin, hungry-looking. Maybe twenty-eight. Brown hair, wavy, needs a haircut. Clothes sort of hang on him and he looks as if the world had soured on him. Thin nose and—”

“Roger Carroll,” Murdock said. “You couldn’t hear what they said?”

Fenner shook his head. “Couldn’t get close enough. But they didn’t act like love birds. Sometimes it looked as if they were arguing and then they’d sit and stare at nothing. They were at it quite a while and the dame did most of the talking and finally I guess she got annoyed and walked out on him.”

“Did she go home?”

“Let me tell this, will you?”

Murdock checked his reply. A strange new excitement he could not explain began to stir inside him. It made him impatient, but he knew Fenner would not be hurried. He waited while the detective lit a cigarette.

“She went to a small apartment house on Blake Street-number 118. She was there about an hour and then came out, got into her car, and drove home.”

Murdock’s brows puckered and one lifted and stayed there while he considered what he had heard. He did not know what it meant but he had the feeling that something had been accomplished. That here, possibly, was a new lead of some kind. Without knowing any more he felt good, a little exultant about this meeting of Louise and Roger Carroll. He looked at Fenner, his brows still warped.

“Did she have anything with her? I mean did she carry anything?”

“A pocketbook.”

Murdock nodded. “Swell,” he said. “Try it again tomorrow.”

“Okay. And don’t forget—I’d still like to buy her that drink.” He made no move to get up. He glanced at Murdock and the gleam in his eyes was sardonic but amused. “I’d even buy you one—if you’d order it.”

Murdock sighed loudly and with the weariness of a beaten man. He got up. He started for the telephone, then stopped. “Will you shove off after you get it?”

“Sure,” said Fenner. “If it’s a double.”

Murdock ordered a double bourbon and a Scotch. When he came back Fenner was examining the end of his cigarette. He said, “I see the guitar player at the Silver Door got knocked off last night.”

“Tony Lorello,” Murdock said. “Yes.”

“I made some inquiries from a friend of mine down at headquarters. Shot once, close up, like Andrada, wasn’t he?”

Murdock nodded and no longer felt good.

“Lorello was talking to you last night,” Fenner said. “And Louise and that big guy she was with.” He tried to make smoke rings by bobbing the cigarette up and down. “Same guy shoot both of ’em?”

“Probably.”

The waiter came with the drinks. Fenner didn’t linger over his. He drank appreciatively and then drank again. “You’d like to crack this case, wouldn’t you?”

“Professor Andrada was a friend of mine. If I hadn’t come to town he might be alive now. With what I know now I won’t be cracking anything, but maybe Bacon can.”

“You’re going to try, though.”

Murdock’s mouth was grim and unpleasant, like his thoughts. “You’re damn right I’m going to try. I am trying. I haven’t got to first base yet and there’s another job I have to do, but—”

He let the sentence hang and made no attempt to finish it. Presently Fenner drained his glass and stood up. He said, “Thanks for the drink.” He went to the door and when Murdock did not get up or even look at him he said, “I’ll buy tomorrow,” and went out.

Murdock remained in his chair, his drink practically untouched. Gradually his thoughts turned back to Louise Andrada and the things Jack Fenner had told him. He thought beyond this to the callers he’d had and he knew he had been wise in staying in tonight. Sometimes it paid to wait, to sit a thing out and let people come to you and this was one of those times—he hoped.

“118 Blake Street,” he said aloud.

Someone had said that Gail Roberts was fixing up an apartment on Blake Street. Was it the same address? And what business could Louise have there alone?

He thought about it quite a while. Finally he sat down on the bed and started to unlace his shoe and then, abruptly, he stopped and picked up the telephone. What if it is after twelve? he thought, and gave the number of the Andrada home.

Presently he heard the distant ringing of the other telephone. He listened absently at first and thought of other things; then, wonderingly, he began to count. When the operator said his party did not answer, he asked her to try again. In another moment he heard the distant ringing again and this time he counted twelve rings while his incredulity gave way to a vague alarm that worried him strangely. When he finally put the telephone aside he started to unlace his other shoe. Then, suddenly, he tied it, tied the other, grabbed his cap and coat, and left the room.