by Roy Huggins
“That was right thoughtful.”
“Yes. They told me not to worry. He’d get tired of her and come back home in a month or two. They said they all do.”
“Do you think there’s anything in it?” The strained undertone of excitement sounded again.
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing in it.”
When they walked into the lobby twenty minutes later, there was a message waiting for Blake. Jane Palmer wanted to see him at his earliest convenience.
He said, “Let’s go on up.”
Kathy stepped into the elevator with him, but shook her head. “I don’t think I should go.”
“We’re in the final stretch, angel. I think we’ll know where we stand in a few minutes.”
Kathy threw him a puzzled glance. “In that case,” she said slowly, “I’d like to be there.”
Jane was smiling when she opened the door, her face lightly flushed and her eyes bright. She was wearing blue satin hostess pajamas that Kathy had never seen her wear before, and when she looked past Blake into Kathy’s eyes, there was only a fleeting hint of chagrin. Her “Come in” included them both. A tall man in a dark suit and an even darker scowl stood up as they came into the living room. Jane walked around them and stood beside the man and smiled at Blake with an air of repressed triumph, like a hostess about to introduce a minor celebrity to her friends from the suburbs. But she didn’t introduce anyone. She stood and watched them and let the awkward silence grow.
Then she drawled, “Mr. Blake, you and Mr. Sharber don’t seem to know each other.”
“Give us time,” Blake smiled. “Maybe he’s shy.”
Jane laughed, and she let the laugh run through her words, “But Mr. Sharber was at Ipswich. You know, where my husband was stationed. Strange you don’t remember him.”
“Oh, that,” Blake said mildly. “Don’t give it a thought.”
The tall man said, “You never flew at Ipswich, Jack. What are you trying to put over?”
Kathy waited, her breath caught tightly in her throat. But Blake said nothing to the man. He grinned at Jane and said, “I still worry you, Mrs. Palmer. I can understand why—now.”
“My husband is missing, Mr. Blake, and here you are, posing as his friend. Can you tell me why I shouldn’t call the police?”
“Not offhand.”
Jane frowned and shrugged her beautiful shoulders and said, “But who are you? What are you up to?”
Blake said nothing, the grin still faint on his lips; and Kathy knew, with a quick and empty sense of defeat, why she had believed in him. It wasn’t that Blake had made it easy for her. He hadn’t. But he had made it possible for her to live with the horror of knowing that something had happened to Alan. He had made it possible for her to fight Jane, and to pretend that she was not utterly alone. She leaned against the chesterfield and closed her eyes. A cold tension centered somewhere above her stomach and pulled at her throat. She thought of the ticket. Blake had come here for the ticket.
Jane said sharply, “Where is my husband, Mr. Blake?”
Kathy opened her eyes. Blake was shaking his head wonderingly at Jane. He glanced at the man in the dark suit and said, “We’ll have to talk about it some other time, Mrs. Palmer . . . when you don’t have company.” He turned abruptly and started for the door.
The cold reached out and touched Kathy’s heart and she cried out, “Don’t let him go!”
Blake stopped and turned slowly, and his eyes met Kathy’s. But they didn’t tell her anything, and he said nothing.
Jane said, “Mr. Sharber, please don’t let him leave!” She disappeared into the bedroom, and the two men studied each other casually. Sharber was young and as tall as Blake, and thicker.
“I’m going out,” Blake said mildly. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re on the wrong aide, brother.”
He moved toward the door, and Sharber stepped in front of him, but he did it slowly and with a worried frown on his face.
Jane’s voice, sharp and cold, cut into the room, “Turn around, you.”
Blake turned and looked at the automatic in Jane’s hand. He grinned, but not heartily. He said, “A twenty-two. Won’t make a hole big enough for the Old Floorer to get in even a finger.” He backed toward the door. “Sharber, if you’re a friend of Palmer’s open that door for me.”
The gun jumped in Jane’s hand and the knuckles gleamed white. Blake stopped moving back. He wasn’t grinning any more.
Jane purred, “That’s much better. Now, Kathy, just why shouldn’t we let him go?”
“Let her call the police,” Blake cut in.
Kathy stood and searched Blake’s face, and she thought she could see him shaking his head, no. The cold tension was sickening through her now and she wanted to run from the room, to run and keep running forever. She had never felt so terribly and irrevocably atone.
And then Jane’s voice jabbed at her, “He’s trying to gain time, Kathy! What’s he done to Alan? What do you know about it? Quick!”
“Nothing! It isn’t that. I—I found a ticket——” Her voice trailed off.
The man was a fraud. He had lied to her every minute of the time since she had first run into him outside this door. But she knew that she had said too much.
The taut sharpness left Jane’s face and she said quietly, in a tone threaded with excitement, “I’ll take the ticket, Mr. Blake.”
“Why don’t we keep it legal?” Blake asked. “Call the police and I’ll give it to them.”
“I don’t know why you should want the ticket. It covers a bag containing some things that mean something to me, but certainly nothing you should be interested in.”
“Then there’s no problem, is there?”
“Yes, there is. Calling the police would mean ugly publicity, made up out o£ nothing. So just give me the ticket.”
Blake dropped his eyes to the gun. Jane’s fingers were massaging the heavy grip with nervous impatience. He said, “Are you going to let me out that door, Sharber?
Sharber was behind Blake. He moved up beside him now and said, “Why don’t you give the lady the ticket, chum?” He sounded weary, as if he were anxious to get things settled, so he could get out of there.
“It’s evidence.”
“It’s stolen property!” Jane countered. “If you try to leave here with it, I’m quite within my rights to shoot you.”
The room was suddenly quite still. No one moved or spoke for a full minute; then, slowly, Blake reached into a pocket and brought out the ticket.
He turned it over and studied it, and Jane shrieked, “Knock it out of his hand!”
Blake grinned and tossed it to her. “Not necessary. I got it: four-one-o-eight-eight-six.”
Jane’s face flushed hotly, and for a brief and terrible moment Kathy waited for the gun to roar. But Jane knelt and picked up the ticket and read off a number. It wasn’t the one Blake had repeated. Jane asked, “Did you get it?” and read it off again, different this time, and still wrong. Blake didn’t seem to be listening.
Sharber suddenly rumbled, “Let me out of here!” and started for the door. Kathy jumped forward and squeezed past him as he opened the door. She heard him shut it behind him as she ran down the hall. At her door, she looked back. Sharber was striding toward the elevators, paying her no heed. Jane’s door remained closed.
Kathy went into her apartment, turned the bolt and ran to the telephone.
Jane gave Don Blake an anthracite smile and said, “We seem to be alone.”
“The gun still makes it seem crowded.”
“I want to talk with you. But we can’t do it here—one of them might be hysterical enough to call the police.”
“You’re not afraid of the police, are you, Mrs. Palmer?”
“They would be inconvenient right, now. I don’t want you to get any false impressions, Mr. Blake. I wouldn’t like to kill you. I’ve never killed anyone, and I don’t want to now. But I’m desperate. My husband is gon
e and curious things are happening. I want to know what it is that he checked at Union Station.”
Blake grinned. “I thought you said it was something of yours.”
The icy smile dropped slowly away. “We can’t talk here. I want you to walk down the stairs to your apartment. I’ll be right behind you. If you do anything to startle me, I might get nervous and shoot you.”
“And break that nice clean record.”
“Let’s go down, shall we?”
Again Blake’s eyes dropped to the gun. Jane knew that he was questioning its authority, doubting that she would really use it. And she trembled and clamped her jaw to keep the trembling within her. She had found it hard to believe that pointing a gun at a man could do so much, that he could fail to see that little way inside her where the quavering fear and uncertainty lay. She lifted the gun and tightened the fingers that held the grip.
Blake’s mouth turned up slightly and he said, “Okay, Mrs. Palmer, We’ll go downstairs.”
He waited while Jane opened the hall closet and felt for a coat and put it across her arm, so that it covered the gun. She followed him out the door and down the stairs to his apartment. They didn’t meet any neighbors. He took a long time and made a good deal of noise getting his door unlocked. But they were inside now, and Jane was facing him.
She said, “Back up a little, please. You’re too close to me.”
Blake grinned and backed up. “Shall I put up my hands?”
“Where do you keep your wallet?”
“On my hip, but you wouldn’t want that—a couple of tens and a moth ball.”
Jane wondered if he knew how right he was. She didn’t want his wallet. She didn’t care who he was. Things had got out of hand. The time had come for her to leave the bright island that was Southern California far behind her. And she needed only time enough to get to the station and to get the brown bag. If she could do that everything would be all right.
“Turn around. I want to see who you are.”
The grin faded slowly. He didn’t move.
“Turn around!”
His eyes seemed to darken and the full mouth pulled down tightly. But she met his gaze and she hid her trembling. He turned and lifted his arm and looked at his watch.
“Take the wallet out and throw it behind you. And don’t turn around until I’ve looked through it.”
He brought his left hand around to his pocket and Jane filled her lungs and took hold of the gun by the barrel. She stepped forward and brought it around in a long swift sweep that broke heavily against the side of his head. He doubled over and turned and lunged toward her clumsily and fell on his hands and knees. He tried to draw himself up. Blood was running from a split across his ear. She brought the gun down again and felt the heavy jar of it along the barrel and up her arm, and Blake dropped on his face and lay very still.
The night was dark and moonless and without stars. The car waited for her quietly far down the street. Inside it, where she had put them earlier, were two traveling bags and a hatbox. Jane looked back at the Château Michel for a moment, then stepped in and drove downtown.
She went into the great arched station through a side door that led to an alcove given over to twenty-four-hour lockers. It was dark there, and from the far end she could see the people at the baggage stand and in the bright waiting room beyond. From the shadow of a pillar she watched. She had to be sure there was no one watching the place, and she wanted to go up when there were few people there, so that she would be there in the bright light a minimum of time. A large woman moved away with a email black bag in her hand, and Jane could see the first leather chair in the long row of chairs in the waiting room. There was a girl sitting there reading a paper. She was holding it up stiffly, and Jane thought she could see a part of her face in the shadow behind it. But Jane didn’t have to see the face. She knew the dress and she knew Kathy’s Blender legs.
Blood pounded hotly in her throat and she moved back out of sight into deeper shadow. She wasn’t afraid, not even angry. She was only indignant. It was so ghastly, so ridiculous, so wrong! That vapid, soft, sheeplike Katherine Palmer should be the one to fight her—and to win! Jane turned and went through the door and across the tiled patio into the cocktail lounge. The thought tormented her: had Kathy called the police? What would she have been able to say to them? Had she had time to call them?
The bar was long and narrow and dimly lit, and no one paid any attention to her. She walked almost to the end before she found what she was looking for. He was about twenty or twenty-two, with a round face, a thatch of red hair and an eager look in his eyes. His nose was thin and long, and it had recently hung over too many glasses of beer. He was alone at a table that was just large enough to hold two sets of elbows. Jane sat down across from him.
He seemed stunned slightly for a moment or two. Then he seemed to realize that this was it. This was the big moment the fellows all claimed had happened to them in Salt Lake City.
He smiled all on one side of his face and said, “I’m having beer. What do you like?”
Jane leaned forward and said, “I need a little help. How’d you like to do a lady a big favor and earn five dollars?’
The boy’s smile clung to his face by sheer will. The soul had gone from it. “What kind of a favor?”
“I have to get my bag from the check stand. My . . . ex-boyfriend is in there waiting for me to show up. I’d like you to get it for me.” She winked ever so slightly and added, “If you want, I’ll let you spend the five dollars on me.”
The grin was well again now, and he said, “What are we waiting for?”
Jane watched him from the same pillar. Kathy was still there, still reading the same page. It was the boy’s turn now, and he handed the ticket across the low metal counter and waited. Seconds later the brown bag was dropped before him, and Jane could hear the sound of it, and it was like heavenly music. The bald man behind the counter was saying something. The boy looked down at the bag, nodded his head, picked the bag up and took a few steps toward Jane. He changed his direction and walked over to a bench and put the bag on it. There was some yellow paper hanging on the bag. The boy unfolded this and looked at it. Then he picked the bag up hurriedly and walked toward her with a jerky stride.
He put the bag down in front of her and said, “Where’s the fin?”
Jane decided he meant the five dollars, and gave it to him. He said, “Thanks, lady. I’ll be going now.” He hurried down to the end of the alcove and out the door.
Jane tore the yellow sheet from the bag and read it. She read it slowly twice. Then she wadded it into a tight ball and threw it against one of the lockers. She picked up the bag and walked out into the moonless night.
THERE was a rich and ringing quality about the darkness in Blake’s room. It was a matter of Bound and feeling rather than a mere absence of light. He groped his way up and his stomach rose with him and he fought it down and stood swaying gently. He tried to strike a match with a thumb that was like a French bun. He walked until he came to a wall and he scraped the match across it, and it sputtered and lit. He looked at his watch. The match burned his finger and he dropped it. Twenty-five minutes. It would take almost that long for her to drive down there. He felt his way around to the wall switch, turned on the light, and went into the bathroom to run cold water over his head.
Twenty minutes later he was walking through the great glass door that was the main entrance to the Union Passenger Station. There were ten or twelve people milling about the stand, none of them Jane Palmer. He walked on down toward the waiting room, telling himself it wouldn’t do any harm—or any good—to sit down for a while. He noticed the newspaper first because it was obvious that someone was hiding behind it. Then he saw who it was, and sat down beside her.
Kathy lowered the paper slowly and the warm olive of her skin became warmer and darker, and she stared past the people at the edge of light and beyond them into the station’s great dark vault.
“I—I half
expected you to walk in here with Jane on your arm.”
“She didn’t like my company. I thought she made it painfully obvious.” The flush deepened. “I suppose you think I’m a special kind of menace.” She didn’t wait for Blake to answer, but hurried on, “What else could I do? You didn’t explain. Everything you’ve ever told me was a lie.” She stopped abruptly and turned her eyes toward him and added, “Wasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, angel.”
She looked away then, and after a while she said, “Where did you get that picture of Alan?”
“From his employer at the bank.”
“You couldn’t have. It was far too late.”
“I’d already been to the bank, Kathy—before I found you coming out of the apartment with a passkey in your hand. I heard about your brother at one o’clock. It was a five-line story in the midday edition of the News. The story mentioned where he worked, and I went by there to find out if he was in the clear.”
“But why?”
“Because I wouldn’t have been interested if he hadn’t been.”
“No. I mean why are you doing all this? Who——”
“We’ll have a long, long time for explanations, angel. In the meantime, Janie goes her sanguine way.”
“She hasn’t been here yet.”
“I’m afraid she has. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I did! As soon as I got to my apartment. They asked a million questions, and before they got there, I found you were both gone, so I rushed down here. I knew if I stopped to call the police again, she’d be here and gone before I finished spelling out answers.”
“Would you by any chance remember that ticket number?” The tone was a quiet combination of chagrin and apology.”
He made a fleeting grimace, and Kathy glanced at the split ear and saw the swelling above it and kept her silence. He stood up slowly, and Kathy rose with him and asked if he thought she should go home.
He nodded and said, “She had a friend—the man with the pipe wrench in his pocket. She probably had him pick it up.”
