I flashed the pencil light on the watch, and couldn"t believe it at first. "One minute, twelve seconds," I whispered. "It doesn"t seem possible."
"I didn"t go above 30 miles an hour at any time. All right, here we go for the second leg."
I checked the time as we pulled away. There was very little sound of traffic, even when we turned into Clebourne. In a moment we turned again, went on a short distance, and stopped. "Mark," she said. "We"re parked right in front of the courthouse."
I flicked the light on the watch. "One minute and thirty-two seconds. That makes a total of-" I added it quickly. "A total of two minutes forty-four seconds."
"I thought so," she whispered. "You see, he had better than seven minutes. It wouldn"t have taken him over two at the most to walk around to the front of your house and then back to the car. He had all the time he needed."
Then-if it were were George-there"d been no argument, nothing. He must have gone there simply for the purpose of killing her, for cold-blooded, premeditated murder. She"d called him, let him in the house when he rang, and then-the first instant her back was turned -he grabbed up the andiron and brought it down on her head. Why? I shook my head wearily, wondering if anybody would ever know. We started up again. George-there"d been no argument, nothing. He must have gone there simply for the purpose of killing her, for cold-blooded, premeditated murder. She"d called him, let him in the house when he rang, and then-the first instant her back was turned -he grabbed up the andiron and brought it down on her head. Why? I shook my head wearily, wondering if anybody would ever know. We started up again.
I could see the blinking amber light at the intersection as we crossed Clebourne. She turned left into Taylor. Westbury was in the east end of town, just beyond the edge of the business district. In a moment we stopped. "n.o.body in sight," she whispered.
I sat up. We were at the curb in the middle of the block, in shadow under some trees. All the houses were dark, and there were cars parked ahead and behind us. Up at the next corner, at the street light, was the apartment house. We could see the entrance from here. I checked my watch. It was five minutes of three. "She may be already home," I said.
"Yes, but we don"t know where Mulholland is. He might have gone in with her. If they don"t show up in half an hour, I"ll drive back to the apartment and ring his number to see if I get an answer."
We smoked a cigarette. Fifteen minutes went by in silence as we watched the shadowy, deserted street and the empty pool of light at the corner. The night seemed to have been going on forever, and I wondered where I"d be when it ended. In jail? Or dead? They"d take no chances; if I made a stupid move they"d shoot me.
Doris had had a date with Junior, but he hadn"t shown up. Something in that had rung a bell in my mind, very faintly, but I hadn"t been able to isolate what it was. She"d tried to get hold of him; she"d called his house- called it twice, in fact. Was she merely incensed because he"d stood her up, or was it something else, something she had to tell him? Just then, a car turned into Taylor two blocks behind us, its headlights flashing briefly in the rear-view mirror.
"Duck," I whispered. We lay down on the seats.
The car came on and went past us. We sat up again. It wasn"t a police car, but it was slowing. It went on across the intersection ahead and pulled to the curb before the apartment house entrance. A man got out from the driver"s side and went around and opened the other door, a big man, bareheaded. I felt excitement run along my nerves, and began to tense up. It was Mulholland. He helped Doris out, and they crossed the sidewalk to the doorway. I watched nervously to see if he were going to follow her in. He didn"t. For a moment the two figures blended as they kissed, and then she went inside and he came back to the car. He drove on down Taylor and turned left at the next corner.
"Give him five minutes, to be sure he doesn"t come back," she said softly. "And, remember-try not to scare her too much. If she panics, she"ll scream. I"ll drop you off right in front, and then go on and park in the next block."
"No," I whispered. "If anybody sees me under that light, I don"t want him to see me getting out of your car. I"ll leave you right here, and then you go on home."
She refused to listen to this last. "All right," I said reluctantly. "But if there"s any uproar, get out fast, because I won"t come back to the car. You"ve done too much for me now, and I don"t intend to get you in trouble."
I waited another two or three minutes while my nerves tied themselves in knots. The street remained silent and deserted. I"d better go now, before I got too scared to go at all. I eased the door open and slipped out. "Good luck," she whispered.
I came out from under the shadow of the trees at the intersection and felt a million eyes on me as I crossed Westbury under the street light. I hurried into the doorway. The door was locked. I pressed several b.u.t.tons at random, and waited, feeling the muscles in my back grow taut. The door buzzed. I yanked it open, slipped inside, and hurried up the carpeted steps to the second floor.
The corridor was deserted. Apartment 2C was the second door on the left. I pressed the buzzer, and put one hand on the k.n.o.b. For a moment nothing happened. It occurred to me that if they had safety chains on the doors I was sunk. Then I heard her moving. "Who"s there?" she asked. I mumbled something indistinguishable and trusted to curiosity. The k.n.o.b turned.
Her breath sucked in as I came in on her, but before the scream could cut loose I clamped a hand over her mouth. She fought, her eyes wide with terror as she recognized me. I shoved the door shut with my foot, and backed her across the room toward an armchair near the old-style pull-down bed. A small, rose-shaded lamp was burning on the table beside it. So far we hadn"t made any noise, but I wasn"t sure how long my luck would last; it was a very small room, too cluttered with furniture for much romping. I pushed her down in the chair with my hand still over her mouth, pinching her nostrils to shut off her breath.
"I"m not going to hurt you," I snapped. "Keep quiet, and I"ll let you go." She quit fighting. I turned her loose, but stood over her ready to grab her again. My hand I"d had over her face was greasy with cold cream. She wore nothing but bra and pants and a sheer nylon robe or peignoir deal that had got wrapped around her waist in the struggle. She squirmed in the chair and tugged at it, trying to get some random bit of it down over her legs. The blonde hair was aswirl across her face, and the normally rather sullen brown eyes were crawling with fear as she looked up at me. "Wh-what are you going to do?"
"Nothing except ask you a few questions," I said. "But this time I want some answers, or I"ll break you in two. You got me into this mess, and now you"re going to get me out. Who was the man coming to Frances" apartment there in the shop when you were working for her?"
"I don"t know," she said.
"You said there was one."
Her eyes avoided mine. "So maybe I was mistaken."
"But you weren"t; and that"s what intrigues me. Apparently you were the only one who ever found it out, but how did you? Did you ever see him?"
"No."
"Were you ever back there in the apartment?"
"Once or twice. With her."
"See any men"s clothing lying around? Cigar b.u.t.ts? Pipes?"
She shook her head.
"I see," I said. "Now, at that time Frances and I were dating pretty steadily and generally considered to be engaged, so if you had seen any evidence a man had been in her apartment, you"d just have a.s.sumed it was me, wouldn"t you?"
"Well, yes-I guess so."
"Good." Now we were getting somewhere. "But when you told me about it on the phone, you obviously didn"t mean me. So you must have meant you had reason to believe there was a man in her apartment on some night when it couldn"t have been me? When maybe I was out of town?"
She hesitated. "Look-maybe I was wrong-"
"No, you weren"t. You were dead right, and I"ll tell you how you knew. Junior Delevan was a pretty big boy, wasn"t he?"
She gasped. "I don"t know anything about that business!"
"Too big to be killed, and then loaded into a car, by a 120-pound girl, wouldn"t you say?"
"I tell you, I don"t know anything about-"
"Maybe you don"t. But I"ll bet you could make a pretty good guess as to where he went that night. Couldn"t you?"
Her gaze went past me, crawling sickly around the room, looking for some way out. "I-I didn"t even see him at all that night. You can ask the police. You can ask his mother-"
I got it then, the thing I"d been trying to remember, the missing fragment that made a whole picture of it when you put it in place. I grinned coldly down at her. "That"s right. You phoned his house twice, didn"t you, trying to get hold of him?"
"That"s right. We had a date. He was supposed to pick me up when the store closed, but he didn"t come."
"Quite a night for being stood up, wasn"t it, Doris?"
"What do you mean?"
"I broke a date with Frances, too, remember?"
"No. Why should I?" She tried to brazen it out, but her eyes shifted, avoiding mine.
"You remember, all right. You were in the shop Friday afternoon when I stopped there and asked her to go to a dance Sat.u.r.day night at the Rutherford Country Club."
"So maybe I was. I worked there, didn"t I?"
"Did you say anything about it to Junior?"
"How do I know?"
"Did you?" you?"
"How you expect me to remember all the things we talked about? You think I write down every word I say to anybody?"
"You told him, all right."
"Have it your way; so all we got to talk about is you and your crummy dates, big-wheel Warren. How would I remember? And if I did, it"s a Federal case, I suppose?"
"I don"t know," I said. "Scanlon could answer that question for you. But let"s get on to the big item. You were also in the shop around eight P.M. Sat.u.r.day when I came by to tell Frances I had to go to Tampa and couldn"t make the dance. And you"ve just said you didn"t see Junior at all that night. You tried twice to call him at his home, so you must have had something very important to tell him, didn"t you?"
She said nothing. Her hands began twisting at the robe; she"d forgotten about trying to cover up her legs, even if she remembered she had any.
"You never did get hold of Junior," I went on, "so it"s obvious he never was warned she was going to be home that night, after all. And the next morning they found him on the city dump with his roof knocked in. Did you know he was going to burglarize the place that night, or just the first night she happened to be away?"
"Junior wouldn"t-"
"The h.e.l.l Junior wouldn"t! He already had a previous conviction for burglary. And this time he even had a girl friend who could get him a key. Or did he just break in?"
The truth was written on her face, but she tried to bluff it out. "I don"t know what you"re talking about!"
"Since she couldn"t have done it, you knew there had to be a man there. Do you know who he was?" Do you know who he was?"
"No! And you can"t prove any of that junk-!"
I grabbed for her to shake the truth out of her, forgetting she didn"t have on much to take hold of, and this time she cut loose with the scream. It must have come from her insteps, growing in volume all the way. I tried to get a hand over her mouth, stupidly hanging onto the bra and a handful of robe with the other, but the chair went over backward, taking the table and the lamp. The straps of the bra gave way and it all came off in my hand. She threw in another hopper of decibels and let go again, and bounced up and across the bed. I was as crazy now as she was, with no idea of what I was doing. I grabbed for her and got part of the robe just as she hit the floor on the other side of the bed and went rolling and bucking across the room, and then she was in the bathroom with the door locked, still screaming.
I wheeled and lunged for the door. There was n.o.body in the upper hall yet, but my luck ran out when I hit the bottom of the stairs. One man was already out of his apartment and another had his head out the door. They both recognized me, and yelled. Probably at the moment all either wanted to do was get out of my way, since I was a madman who"d already killed two people and now possibly a third, but the one in the hallway dodged the same way I did and I was going too fast to swerve. I crashed into him and we went down.
Other doors were opening now, up and down the corridor, and a woman with a voice like an air-raid siren was shrieking, "Call the police! Call the police!" Just as I untangled myself and scrambled to my feet, the other man, braver now that reinforcements were in sight, came lunging at me. I knocked him down, but stepped backward and fell over the one who was under me. I bounced up, swung at the other who was already getting to his knees, knocked him over again, and plunged on toward the front door. Another man, in nothing but a pair of jockey shorts, was coming at a hard run now, from the far end of the hall.
I hit the front door at full speed, remembering too late that it opened inward, and slammed into it with my shoulder. Gla.s.s shattered and rained with a brittle tinkling sound on the tile. I yanked it open and leaped down the steps. Off to the left, as I ran across the street, I saw Barbara pulling out from the curb in the middle of the block. I made a desperate motion of the arm for her to get away, and ran up Westbury. I looked over my shoulder and saw her headlights swinging as she turned into it behind me. I plunged behind a hedge just before the lights caught up with me, and lay down on the ground. She went on past. I prayed she"d get out of the area before the police cars got here. She turned right at the next corner. People were still shouting and pouring out of the apartment house behind me, but none crossed the street. I cut across the yard I was in just as lights began to come on in the house, climbed the fence, and ran across the vacant lot behind it. When I emerged on the next street, there was no one in sight, but I could already hear the sirens. A police car shot past on Taylor, off to my left. I ran to the right and crossed Clebourne.
I heard a car coming this way. There were street lights ahead and behind me. I ducked into the alley back of Clebourne and fell flat behind some garbage cans, sobbing for breath. As the car went past its spotlight raked the shadows, but missed me. I lay still for a moment, trying to collect my wits after all the confusion. I couldn"t go back to the office, even if I could get there. They"d search it, along with the house. But the Duquesne Building was in the next block; all I had to do was keep to the alley, cross one street, and I"d be behind it. I got up and ran again. The intersecting street was clear. I made it across, and ran on toward Montrose. I ducked into the small vestibule at the rear of the building, and collapsed, too winded to move. A car went past on Montrose, flashing its spotlight up the alley.
The door to the left opened onto the stairs going up to the second floor; the one on the right was the rear entrance to Roberts" apartment, leading into the kitchen. When I could get to my feet, I backed up as far as I could and crashed into the latter with my shoulder. On the third lunge the bolt tore out and it swung open. I stepped inside, closed it, and flicked on the cigarette lighter to look about for something to prop it shut. There was a small table next to the refrigerator. I shoved it against the door, holding the lighter with the other hand, and then stood looking down at the linoleum in horror. There were spatters of blood on it. The lighter went out. I nicked it on again. The blood was coming from a cut on the back of my left hand. I"d left a trail of it all the way from that apartment house that a Boy Scout could follow. I let the lighter go out and stood listening to the drip, drip, drip, as it fell and spattered in the darkness. Even if I could move on the streets now, there was nowhere else to go.
10
Well, I"d known all the time they had to get me sooner or later. There was no use standing here crying about it; at least I could make use of the little time I had left. I looked at my watch; it was twenty minutes of four. The chances were they wouldn"t discover that trail of blood until after daybreak, which was another three hours.
I groped my way to the bathroom. There was no window here, and I could turn on a light. I washed the blood off my hand. It was only a superficial cut from a piece of that falling gla.s.s; in all the uproar I"d been so charged with adrenalin I hadn"t even felt it. I rooted around in his medicine chest for a Band-aid and stuck it on, but the blood continued to ooze out around the edges, so I wrapped a towel around it. I wouldn"t bleed to death from a scratch like that.
There were two windows in the apartment, one in the living room-bedroom, facing Montrose, and the other in the kitchen, looking out into the alley. I closed the door from the kitchen, tore a blanket off the bed and draped it across the curtain rods of the window in here to cut off any seepage of light, and switched on a lamp. The furnishings were meager; it wouldn"t take long to search the place. A dresser stood against the front wall, next to the door going out into the shop. The bed was in the corner beside it, under the window. At the foot of the bed was the door to the bathroom, with a small clothes closet beside it, while a desk stood against the wall opposite the window.
I started with the dresser drawers, and by the time I"d finished them I knew somebody had beaten me to it Whoever it was had made some effort to replace things with at least a semblance of order, but there was no doubt the place had been gone over. If there"d been any clue here as to Frances" ident.i.ty or how Roberts had learned it, there was slight chance it was here now. He"d had two nights. Getting in had been no problem, apparently; if he"d had a key when Frances was living here, he probably still had it. The locks hadn"t been changed. Then I remembered Scanlon and Ernie had been in here looking for the name and address of Roberts" next of kin. Maybe that was all it was. I moved on to the desk.
In the drawer were a dozen or more letters, thrown in haphazardly in their envelopes after he"d read them. Two were from his brother in Houston and were apparently the ones from which Scanlon had obtained the address. The others were all from girls, mostly in Houston and Galveston, handwritten on a variety of different pastel shades of stationery-though several of them would have been safer written on asbestos-and through all of them ran the same complaint: why didn"t he write? Apparently he"d had a way with women, all right, but when they were out of sight he forgot about them. I skimmed through them hastily, reading a line or two in each paragraph and tossing them back into the drawer, not really expecting to find anything that had any bearing on his murder. The last one I picked up was postmarked Los Angeles sometime in November and in addition to being written on rough lavender paper it was perfumed. It was only three pages. I raced through it and had already tossed it aside in disgust when I did a double take over a word on the last page. ". . . clippings. . ." ". . . clippings. . ."
Clippings?
I grabbed the letter up again.
". . . you rascal, you never have even acknowledged those clippings you asked me for last summer, and when I think of the trouble-and risk-I went through to get them for you, well, honestly, I think you"re a cad, sir. That"s spelled s-t-i-n-k-e-r. The librarian almost caught me cutting them out of the papers in the file, and wouldn"t my face have been red? At least you could tell me whether they were the ones you wanted- and also, Mr. Mysterious Roberts, what you wanted them for. Don"t tell me you know the girl! Because if you do, I don"t know whether to be worried about you, or just jealous. She must have been really something, in spades, and a dreamboat for looks, judging from the pictures. That is, if you like the type. Meow! Now you write to me, you villain, and tell me all . . ."
I threw the letter aside and began pawing through the drawer again. There were no clippings, and no other letter postmarked Los Angeles. I yanked the drawer out and looked under it to see if they were stuck to the bottom. I swung back to the dresser and did the same with the drawers in it. There was nothing. I went through them again, more thoroughly this time, unfolding the clean shirts, unrolling socks, and tearing out the paper liners in the bottom. I tore the bed apart and examined the mattress, searched the pockets of the suits hanging in the closet and felt the linings of the jackets. The knowledge that what I sought had actually been here was maddening. Well, they might still be here; there was still a chance he hadn"t found them either. I went through the two suitcases in the closet and poked at the linings, tore the papers off the shelves, looked in the sweatbands of the two hats I found, lifted the dresser and the desk away from the wall and searched behind them, tore up the rug, turned over the chairs and checked their cushions, examined the wallpaper, looked in the water tank of the toilet in the bathroom, and under the old-fashioned tub. I peered through the barrels of two shotguns, and felt inside rubber boots. I couldn"t turn on a light in the kitchen without blanking off the window, but I"d found a flashlight that would be safe enough, so I started out there, tearing papers out of cupboards, looking in cereal boxes and in the stove and refrigerator, even in the ice cube trays, and minutely examining the linoleum for traces of its having been disturbed. I found nothing. If he"d kept the clippings here, George had already got them.
I went back into the other room, closed the kitchen door, and slumped wearily on the bed. It was four-thirty; it had taken almost an hour. A car went past on Montrose, its tires squealing as it made the turn into Clebourne. In my mind I could see them criss-crossing the town, flashing their lights into doorways and shrubbery, blocking the exits. Take no chances; he"s insane, and he may be armed. Take no chances; he"s insane, and he may be armed.
I craned my neck and stared up at the ceiling. George"s offices were directly over my head. Reaching over on the desk for the phone, I looked up the number in the directory dialed it, and sat smiling bitterly as I listened to it ring. I shrugged, and let the receiver drop back on the cradle.
I"d better call Barbara and remind her. She should be back at her apartment by now. She answered on the first ring. "h.e.l.lo?"
"Duke-"
"Oh, thank Heaven! I"ve been scared blue. Where are you?"
"In Roberts" apartment. Look-they"re going to find my suitcase in the office. Remember, stick to your story and there"s nothing they can do; there was no way you could have known I was back there-"
She cut me off. "Never mind that. What did you find out from Doris?"
I told her. "She won"t admit it, but she knows Junior broke in here that night to burglarize the place. She wasn"t able to get hold of him to tell him I"d had to break the date with Frances, so he thought he was going to have the place to himself and could find where she kept the Sat.u.r.day receipts from the shop. But of course he walked in on two people, and I don"t think there"s any doubt now the other one was George. I just checked, and you can hear the phone in his office from down here. For having a girl friend on the side, in a small town, you"d never find a cozier arrangement. I suppose he worked a lot at night."
"Yes, and usually alone. I used to see the windows lighted at night when I"d be coming home from a date or from a movie. He never asked for any stenographic help, so I just a.s.sumed he was reading law on cases he was working on."
"It was a beautiful set-up, all right. If anybody- Fleurelle, for instance-tried to call him, all he had to do was go out through the, kitchen, up the stairs, and answer it. But when Junior walked in on them that night, he must have lost his head. I doubt he intended to kill him-he was just taken by surprise and hit him too hard with something. They probably didn"t have any trouble getting the body out of here, since they could bring the car into the alley right to the back door, but from then on there was a lot more at stake than a scandal and divorce."
"Then on top of that, she pulled out of the arrangement and married you."
"Right. So all George had for his trouble was a potential murder charge hanging over his head-"
She broke in, "And Roberts probably didn"t even know about that part of it at all."
I grinned coldly. It was hard to imagine sympathizing with a blackmailer, but you could almost feel sorry for poor Roberts. He had a nice safe racket going, extorting money from a girl standing in front of him, and all the time he was inadvertently threatening to expose a homicide committed by a very dangerous man standing behind him. "It"s a miracle he lasted as long as he did. That"s actually what got him killed-the fact he didn"t know George had any connection with her at all. But if he exposed her, the whole thing might come out. What he was gouging her for, G.o.d only knows, except that it must have been something that happened before she ever came here."
"But how do you suppose Roberts could have found out about that?"
I told her about the letter from the girl in Los Angeles and its reference to clippings. "I"ve searched every inch of the apartment and there are no clippings here, so Roberts either kept them somewhere else or George beat me to "em. It still doesn"t make much sense, anyway; the news stories could only verify something Roberts already suspected, but she came here from Florida, he was from Texas, and the clippings must have been from a California paper. Naturally, I was hoping that one of those detectives in Miami or Houston would turn up some lead that would indicate she and Roberts had known each other before, but since that didn"t pan out we"re still as far from home as ever."
"Except for one thing. Roberts was a policeman at one time."