The Complete Cases of Stuart Bailey

by Roy Huggins

  “Yeah. I’d like to hear your version of that too.”

  He grinned. “I know she didn’t tell you about that. She won’t talk about it to anyone.”

  “But you will.”

  “They had an accident, that’s all. Truck hit them. Old man Dreves died instantly. Dorothy was unconscious for several days, but apparently wasn’t hurt. That was about two months ago.”

  “I’m allergic to weasel words. What does ‘apparently’ mean?”

  “Why, uh . . . They let her out of the hospital. But when she got home she acted different, cried a lot, seemed suspicious of people.”

  I leered and said, “Anybody in particular?”

  He paused, then he made a noise that I suppose was meant to sound like an amused chuckle. “She seemed to think Muriel was harboring a grudge because Dorothy got the bulk of the estate. But I happen to be a functioning member of society with a quite sufficient income.”

  “It doesn’t exist.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “A quite sufficient income.”

  He made the dry sound in his throat again and said, “I see. You’re a philosopher.” He had told me practically nothing, yet the dark I had been shooting into was beginning to show some shadows. I decided to take a shot at one of the shadows.

  I said, “Then all those things Dorothy told me about Muriel weren’t true. She was just suspicious. She just imagined all those things.”

  He was quiet for a while, then he licked his lips tentatively and croaked, “I don’t know what you’re getting at. But this seems as good a time as any to inform you that I am an attorney. I assure you that nothing Dorothy said after the accident could possibly be given any weight. Absolutely none at all.”

  He seemed pleased. The shadows were taking on a green and nasty hue. I said, “Did you or Muriel take Dorothy to a doctor after you noticed she seemed changed?”

  “We were planning to when she disappeared.”

  “It was a matter of some thirty days before she left home.”

  “She’s of age, my friend. We had no rights—or responsibilities—in the matter.”

  “That’s fine,” I whispered, “that’s just fine. I think it’s time for us to talk about the events at the Lennox Arms Apartments, Room 304.”

  No hesitation now. It came back fast, with a slight twitter in it, “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “Your wife did, very clearly.”

  He moved on the seat. He said, “I see,” vaguely, and brought his knee up a little onto the seat, the foot hanging loosely over the edge.

  I grinned. “Don’t try it.”

  “Wha—what?”

  I started to explain that it wouldn’t pay to try to make use of the free foot, but I never got the chance. He made use of it, brought it up swiftly against my arm and lunged with a great wheezing grunt. I brought up a knee. Then I brought down the gun. There was no hat, no hair, just skin and skull, and the hollow sanguine sound. Then there was silence that swelled slowly into a myriad desert sounds.

  I dragged him out of the car and away from the road. I went through his clothes. His name was Harvey Small, of the firm of Collins and Small. A key with a numbered tag on it was in a side pocket along with a five-day-old telegram which said simply, LOCATED PARTY IN TUCSON REPORTING DETAILS IN PERSON TOMORROW. I left the telegram and took the key. There was nothing else that meant anything to me. In the back seat of the car there was a blanket. I took it out and laid it gently over Mr. Harvey Small.

  I parked a block away from the Desert Inn. There were several keys attached to the ignition lock. I tried some of them on the glove compartment, got it open, and looked through it. A package of gum, a screw driver, a pair of pliers, and a flashlight. I put the gum and the flash in my pocket and went down to the hotel.

  I had to break a latch on one of the gates. It snapped loudly and I stepped into the walled village. The noise of the breaking latch still echoed down the dark walks. I waited. I looked at the plastic tag on the key. Number 4-B. I walked on. 12-C was Lighted brightly, emitting a discreet and muted sound of music. An elderly couple went into 9-C and nodded to me politely. I told them it was a nice evening and they agreed that it was. I got into bigger numbers on the next turn, went back and tried it another way. 4-B was dark. There was light in a cottage at the end of the walk and at the other end an electrolier fought the darkness and the futile attacks of a pair of moths.

  I knocked lightly at the door. Silence. Somewhere down the walk a door opened, closed. The unhurried shush of feet on the walk. I jammed the key into the lock and turned. It stuck, I took it easy. It still wouldn’t turn. The people were coining by. They could see me now. They either knew the Smalls or they didn’t. I stood there as if I had just rung the bell for a Sunday call. They were going on by and I could feel their eyes on my back. I suddenly felt like a man wearing footpads and carrying a three-way jimmy. The steps died away in the direction of the lobby, moving leisurely. I tried the key again and it turned and I went on in.

  I locked the door and pulled the Venetian blinds tight. I sent the spot from the flashlight around the room, keeping it low, playing it over the couch and the chairs. No one in the room. The spot picked up the legs of a desk. It was open and covered with legal-size paper carrying single-spaced typing. The first line on one of the sheets put a neat round period to the story Harvey had told without meaning to tell. It said, “I, Dorothy Dreves, do hereby . . .” And then I knew that it did much more than that. It told me the answer. The answer to the locked room, the missing key, the girl . . .

  The sound was within the room, hardly a sound at all, a noise like the parting of lips, the falling away of some soft garment. It came again, harsher now, a breath drawn quickly in a dry throat. I turned. Or that was what I told myself I would do: turn and jump aside and send the light blaring into the room. I turned. I turned many times in a great hot falling spiral, escaping pain and never escaping it, and escaping it at last in the midst of darkness.

  IT was a large block 4 moving toward me, building speed and suddenly falling apart, and the falling apart was agony, and then it was moving toward me again and falling apart, crumbling slowly, yet suddenly; the pieces falling away sluggishly, slowing to a point that brought darkness because the slow crumbling was too much to bear. And then once out of time the 4 held and I was a part of the pattern. I held the 4 together in a swirling agony, five stories high and made of genuine Teratine marble imported from Italy. I held it together with my mind. I woke up then with the sweat standing in great globules on my forehead, grit ting my teeth. My jaws ached.

  The room was gray and the room was empty. Nobody lived in this room any more. I stumbled into the bathroom. Blood was caked across my left temple. I washed it off, feeling the mushy swelling underneath. My knees suddenly buckled and I fell on the floor. After a while I got up and went in and lay or the davenport. This was all the bloodshot bung-over hours in one concentrated package. I remembered the big 4 and wondered why it had made me sick to see it fall apart. I wondered why it made me sick to think about it now. I stopped thinking about it.

  Harvey would have been home by now. I didn’t hit him as hard as his wife hit me. So Mr. and Mrs. Small had checked out and Bailey was lying in Cottage 4-B of Tucson’s Desert Inn and it wasn’t costing a cent. Pretty soon the maid would come in and hove me removed with the rest of the dirty linen. And then I remembered why I had moved so slowly last night when the sound came, and I knew that something I wasn’t going to like was about to happen. It was because the answer had hit me. I needed only one piece to be sure of it. The piece was Dr. G.E. Slocum, If I found there whet I thought I’d find, I could stop worrying about whether they hanged you or gave you gas in Arizona. I would have other things to worry about, like finding the Smalls before they planed out or crossed Nogales’ main stem into Mexico.

  It was six A.M. I groped my way up the side of the davenport. I waited for the room to stop rising with me. I made it to the door without too much troubl
e and looked in my pockets for the key. It was gone. My wallet was gone, and the keys to the car. I looked around and found the wallet on the floor. I had a hard time getting it. A cold thin little thought slid into my mind and then out again. No, they wouldn’t have tipped off the police. They had their own problem to worry about. Besides, who was afraid of the police? There wasn’t anything missing from the wallet. I went back to the door and tried it. Locked, of course. I pulled up the blind, unlocked the window and put my head out. There was cold sunlight and silence. I put out a foot and a leg, and then another leg, and lowered myself to the ground. The cold air cleared my head. No one around. I didn’t think anyone but me. I went down the walk and out on of the gates. The gray car was still sit ting where I’d left it.

  The glove comportment was still unlocked. I got the pliers and the screw driver, lifted the hood and went to work. My fingers were stiff and I had to look at things over an edge of pain that kept rising. But after a while had it so I could do without the key I got in and drove away from there. I stopped at a service station on Camp bell and looked up the phone number of the Municipal Airport. A nice warm voice said, “Good morning.” I asked her if any air-line planes had left since midnight and when the next plane was due out. She told me one had left for Los Angeles at four A.M. and the next plane out would be leaving on the New York run at seven-ten. Another for Los Angeles at eight-forty.

  I said, “Can you tell me whether Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Small were on that four-o’clock plane?”

  “I’m sorry, sir; that information is confidential.”

  “This is Captain Farr, city police.”

  “I’ll call you back, Captain Farr. What is the number at your office?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “You wouldn’t find me there.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Not so cordial now. We hung up.

  I found a breakfast shop and had some coffee. At seven-thirty I started out toward Doctor Slocum’s office. It was on North 3rd Avenue in a private house, a little square box with a tile roof and stucco the color of West Texas. His shingle told me all I wanted to know. I wouldn’t have to wait for the doctor. I could drive out to the airport and sit, and hope that Farr didn’t get any hunches and come out there first.

  I drove through town, letting myself get used to the fact that I knew the answer to the thing now, and that knowing the answer made me feel more sanguine than I thought it should, and at the same time more uncomfortable for the unforgivable boner I had made. Just the other side of town, on Highway 89, I began to realize I was hungry. I turned into the first eating place I could find and parked the car in back.

  I figured it might be hot by now. I had ham and eggs and more coffee. I rend the morning paper. The search was still on for the body of the San Francisco girl, and police were having difficulty locating members of her family in that city. The Los Angeles man who originally reported the disappearance as murder was wanted only on charges of resisting arrest and assault with a deadly weapon. He was thought to have returned to Tucson. They repeated the story the News had carried, with some garnishment, although no mention was made of accomplices or of Doctor Blair. There was some snide innuendo coupled with Farr’s name, and the story implied without saying it that there was a madman loose in the city and the police were responsible for it.

  It was just eight o’clock when I went out and started the car. The gas gauge registered almost empty, so I pulled around to the pump and asked for five gallons. The attendant walked back to the tank, came back to the window, looked bored, and held out a hand.

  I said, “You want me to read your palm?”

  “The key,” he groaned; “your tank’s got a lock on it, you know.”

  I fumbled in the glove compartment for a second and said, “Let’s skip it. Looks like I left the key at home.”

  He gave me a sharp look and his eyes opened wide and he reached for the wheel. But it wasn’t there. I was on the way out, hoping he’d get his feet out of the way. I had to brake the car hard at the highway to let a taxi whip past. And for an instant of time there was a blond head leaning against the rear window. I Toll in behind, not too close, but a half mile later the round blank of Harvey Small’s face appeared at the rear window, ducked back, and the taxi added its last increment of speed. Three miles farther, a car began to come up behind me fast.

  I put the accelerator down to the boards, the car behind turned on a red light, and seconds later the sound of the siren caught up with me.

  We were lined up about two hundred yards apart when we pulled into the airport. By the time I had run across the lot the people from the taxi had disappeared into the building. They were halfway to the big plane when I came out of the front of the building—Muriel, Harvey, and a broad woman in white stockings and shoes and a hem of white showing beneath a black coat. And between Harvey and Muriel, being hurried along by both arms, was a slender girl in a short tan coat.

  I shouted, “Dorothy, wait!”

  She stopped, and Harvey tried for one last moment to drag her on. I could see Muriel’s mouth moving fast. But Dorothy turned, her wide blue eyes dark and staring in the paleness or her face. She gave a little cry and ran toward me. Behind me I heard the sound of heavy feet, and something that had possibly once been a voice saying, “That’s him all right!”

  Dorothy had reached me then. Maybe I went out to meet her. She look a grip on my arms that felt as if it might be permanent and buried her face in my shirt front. I felt vaguely uneasy and less vaguely ashamed. She had hired me to do a job and I had muxed it. Now she was holding onto me as if she thought I was a pretty sturdy character.

  I said, “It’s okay, baby. It’s all straight now.”

  The three cops hung their faces over my shoulders and said, “Break it up,” and “Come on, Roark,” and “That’s all, brother.”

  Dorothy said, “Why weren’t you there when she came? Why did you leave me?”

  I shook my head. The bruise on the temple, or maybe conscience, made it ache. “It’s a long story, angel.”

  Muriel and Harvey had joined us and had begun to talk at Dorothy, and two of the cops were talking at me. The nurse stood silent and implacable in the background. There was a sudden silence. The third cop had shouted “Quiet!”

  He was a big, gate-mouthed man with a stubble of gray hair. He looked everybody over, said, “Any more of this and I’ll read the riot act,” then turned to me and snapped, “You’re Roark, or Bailey, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh, but relax. This,” I said, nodding down at Dorothy, “is the girl you’ve been referring to as ‘the body.’ ”

  One of the cops leered and said, “Why not, I ask?”

  The big man looked sharply at Dorothy, and Muriel stepped in and purred, “Dorothy, darling, we must hurry. The plane’s leaving.”

  Dorothy let go of me slowly and stood there looking bewildered. I said, “Do you want to go with your sister?”

  “No.”

  Muriel’s thin nostrils took on a bluish tinge and she looked at me out of her wide eyes, also blue, like Damascus steel. She said slowly, “She’s ill and not responsible. If you interfere you’ll be sued for everything you’ll ever own. Come on, Dotty.”

  “Harvey will tell you,” I said, “that it’s kidnaping if you take her on that plane.”

  The three cops were standing by now, just listening.

  Muriel’s lips were drawn tight across the pithy teeth. “Dorothy asked us to take her home, where she belongs.” She put her arm around Dorothy and the girl shuddered lightly. “All this excitement. The poor girl doesn’t even know what’s being said!”

  I said, “Did you ask them to take you back, Dorothy? And do you want to go buck with them?”

  She closed her eyes. Her teeth were held together tightly, deepening the shadows in her cheeks. It came out quietly, “No.”

  Muriel stiffened and glanced at Harvey. Harvey’s great round face was the color of laurel bark, his eyes wayward and empty. I said, “And they’re no good
, Mrs. Small—those papers you got her to sign. I’m taking her back into town with me. As Harvey pointed out last night, Dorothy’s of age. I’m working for her. I’m taking her to a doctor first, then we’ll put a lawyer on it. If I can get Dorothy to see it that way, we’ll prosecute.”

  Muriel’s eyes were searching Harvey’s face again for help, but she didn’t find any there. The engines roared in the silence and then over the roar the loudspeaker was calling for passengers Small and Dreves. Flight eight for Los Angeles was leaving immediately.

  Passengers Small turned and walked rapidly away toward the plane.

  I WAS at headquarters waiting for Farr to come in. Dorothy, the nurse, and one of the men had been dropped at Blair’s office. After a while the big man said, “Okay, you can call Blair, but you gotta hang up when Farr gets here.”

  I called Blair, told him who I was, and started to give him what I had on Dorothy. He cut me short and said, “Just what was the purpose of coming into my office and telling me Miss Halloran was dead? I want to know that before I continue with Miss Halloran as a patient.”

  “No purpose,” I said. “It was just a dumb play. I make lots of them. I thought she was dead. She was lying on the floor with bruises on her neck and I didn’t find a pulse. She’d had an attack of some kind; epilepsy, I suppose.”

  Blair didn’t answer.

  My throat was suddenly dry. I said, “She had some kind of attack. Is it epilepsy? Is that what’s wrong?”

  “I have no idea, Mr. Roark. I doubt it. But I’m still confused. I think you described the bruises as having been put there by a hand.”

  Where Brother Roark was concerned. Doctor Blair was a cautious, man. I didn’t blame him.

  I said, “Whatever she’s got, she didn’t know about it. To her it was just headaches. She had been going to a chiropractor, a Doctor Slocum. He put the bruises there, not me.”