“All right, Isobel,” I said. “What’s the pitch?”
“Pitch?” Her tone was one of bewildered innocence.
“Who’s Roger Neltson, and why’d you palm him off as George Smith?”
She raised her nose. “And what business is it of yours who my friends are, or what I choose to call them?”
“None,” I admitted. “Except when a guy swings at me, I like to know his right name.”
An amused light danced in her eyes for a moment. “Roger told me about that. Did he really knock you down?”
I stared at her, surprised, then worked up a dry grin. “I still ache all over. But let’s stay on the subject. Why the fake name? And while you were picking one, why didn’t you make it John Smith? That’s the common alias.”
“None of your business.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you. He’s your extramarital boy friend and you didn’t know he was in town till he walked in here last night. You got all flustered, partly because Mr. Smith-Neltson is the jealous type and partly because you suddenly remembered reading about private cops being blackmailers. So you did a little muddy thinking and sprang the first name that entered your head. How come you didn’t give me a fake name too? Something equally original, like Richard Roe?”
She tried to summon forth an offended frown, but her sense of humor got the best of her and she laughed aloud. “You’re a mind reader. Satisfied now?”
“Did I hit it?”
She nodded sardonically. “Fairly close, in your blunt, uncouth way. I’m glad my husband hasn’t your powers of deduction.” She frowned suddenly and added, “Or your dirty mind?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Dirty?”
“You flat-footedly accuse me of having a lover without knowing the first thing about it, really. Mr. Neltson is not my extramarital boy friend, as you call him, but just a friend. I’ll have you know — ”
“ — that you’re a respectable married woman,” I finished for her, slightly bored with her belated and illogical virtue. “Tell me, is Roger jealous of your husband too?”
She raised her nose and got up from her chair. With head high, she swept toward the lobby entrance like a martyred queen. Returning to Fausta at the bar, I stared after Isobel thoughtfully as she disappeared from view.
“From the lady’s manner, I would guess you made improper proposals,” Fausta said waspishly.
I let a sensual leer form on my face and Fausta stuck out her tongue at me. It was a cute tongue, pointed and pink as a rose petal. But when Fausta saw me admiring it, she withdrew it and sulked.
I ordered another round from the bartender. A few minutes later Isobel unexpectedly returned. Sliding onto the stool next to Fausta, she held her face expressionless and directed her eyes at the bartender.
“Heard from Knight yet?” I asked her.
For a moment her gaze remained fixedly on the bartender. Then, woodenly, she turned her head at me, said, “No,” in a definite let-me-alone voice, and returned to her study of the drink mixer.
And at that moment, out of nowhere, something clicked in what I use for a brain. The sudden thought astonished me, not because of its penetration, but because I had been too stupid to see it previously.
“Do you know a Willard Knight?” I asked Fausta.
She frowned thoughtfully. “Knight,” she repeated. “Yes, I think so. He is an occasional patron at El Patio. A tall man with shaggy hair.”
Isobel’s back stiffened and I grinned at her. “Right under my nose,” I said. “I have to see a man, Fausta. Order a drink for Mrs. Jones while I’m gone.”
“Why do you never sit still?” she complained. “It is certainly lonesome to talk to you, because you go first here, then there, and one is mostly left alone.”
“One can talk to Mrs. Jones until I get back,” I said.
“One can also go with you while you see this man.” She slid from her stool with an air of definiteness about her. Shrugging, I took one bare elbow and piloted her toward the hotel lobby.
At the door I paused to look back. Isobel stared after us, her fists clenched so tightly in her lap the knuckles showed white. The expression on her face was that of a small girl caught in the cookie jar.
When we got on the elevator, Fausta looked at me curiously. But all I said was, “Fourteen, please.”
When we got off at fourteen, her expression had become speculative.
“When you were gone before, you registered for a room,” she hazarded. “You think I have drunk too many rum Cokes to know what I am doing?”
“I asked Isobel Jones first,” I growled at her. “She wasn’t drunk enough to give in.”
“Oh, well,” Fausta said philosophically. “Better second choice than none at all.”
We stopped before 1412 and I raised my fist to knock just as the phone inside began to ring. Dropping my hand, I waited for someone to answer. But the shrill peal went on and on.
Finally, when it was obvious no one was going to answer the phone, I tried the knob. Finding the door unlocked, I pushed it open. A quick glance from the doorway showed no one in the room. The phone, on a stand this side of the bed, continued to ring. Crossing to it, I lifted it from its cradle and said, “Yes?”
“Willard?” asked Isobel’s voice.
“Yes?” I said again.
Her voice was breathless. “That Moon man knows who you are. I think he’s on his way up.”
Fausta had moved from the doorway past the foot of the bed to the windows. Something in her manner caused my gaze to jump at her. She was standing rigid, an expression of shock on her face at something on the floor beyond my range of vision.
In a toneless voice I said into the phone, “Thanks,” and hung up.
Then, rounding the bed, I stared down at the body of Willard Knight, alias Roger Neltson, alias George Smith.
He lay flat on his back between the bed and the windows, his eyes wide open but sightless. His mouth sagged open too, and the lips had drawn back from his strong teeth to give him an expression of gaping wonder. The whole front of his shirt was soaked with blood from a wound in his chest. His body and the floor immediately around it were sprinkled with feathers.
At Knight’s feet lay the pillow from which the feathers had come, a powder-blackened hole indicating it had been used by the killer to muffle the sound of the shot.
Taking Fausta by the arm, I led her to the door. “Wait for me at the bar,” I told her, pushed her out into the hall and shut the door in her face.
Then I made a systematic search of the room.
A pigskin traveling bag containing a few changes of linen and toilet supplies was all the luggage I found. There were no papers of any sort in it or anywhere else in the room.
Finally I turned to the body. A wallet contained slightly over a hundred dollars in currency, several lodge-membership cards and a driver’s license issued to Willard Knight. His pockets yielded the usual assortment of keys, pocketknife, cigarette lighter and small change, but only one item of any interest.
In his side pants pocket I found a duplicate deposit slip issued by the Riverside Bank, showing a deposit made only that day to the account of the Jones and Knight Investment Company.
The amount shown was seventy thousand dollars.
Putting everything back the way I had found it, I lifted the phone and asked for the house detective.
13
“You had him right in your arms!” Day yelled at me. “Once you even had him unconscious!” He drew a deep breath. “So you just stood around until he woke up and took off.”
He was leaning over my chair, his nose approximately an inch from mine so that he could be sure I heard him clearly. Now he straightened, scrubbed a palm over the top of his head in a violent motion which would have left his hair a mess if he had had any, and returned to flop behind his desk. Hannegan, bending above me from the other side, snorted, “Hah!” and walked over to lean against a wall.
“Can you give me any explanation at
all why you didn’t report Knight in the first time you saw him?” Day asked in a controlled voice.
“Didn’t recognize him,” I said for the twenty-seventh time.
“Oh, stop it!” he said crossly. “You’re not that stupid.”
“Yes I am,” I insisted modestly. “I didn’t have a description of Knight and had never seen his picture. I should have had, but I muffed it and I’m not making any excuses. Even without knowing what he looked like, I should have at least wondered if George Smith was Willard Knight, because I had half an idea Mrs. Jones was carrying on an affair with Knight, and George fitted there. But I had Mrs. Jones tagged as a gal who played the field, and assumed she was fooling with both Knight and Smith.”
When neither Day nor Hannegan made any reply other than disbelieving scowls, I said, “I just wasn’t awake. I can’t be a genius all the time.”
“Hah!” Hannegan snorted again. Two audible statements from the lieutenant within a few minutes was a record, even though both statements consisted of the same word. It led me to believe he was as upset as the inspector.
“If anyone else disappears during this investigation,” I said, “I’ll memorize his description and carry his photograph next to my heart. Why don’t you admit what you’re really mad about is Knight not being Lancaster’s killer, so you could close the case.”
“I never said he was Lancaster’s killer!” the inspector half yelled. “He was only a suspect.”
“And now who have you got?” I asked. “A hood who’s cagey enough to stay across the river until the heat dies down.”
“Seldon didn’t bump Knight,” Day muttered. “The Illinois cops have been tailing him for me, and he was at a dinner in Madden, Illinois, with fifty other people when Knight got it.”
“All his guns got alibis too?” I asked dryly.
The inspector rubbed his head wearily. “I know Seldon’s alibi doesn’t mean anything. But Knight’s death doesn’t necessarily remove Knight as a suspect in the Lancaster killing either. Maybe he bumped Lancaster and the Jones woman bumped him.”
“Oh for cripes’ sake!” I said.
“According to you she was gone from the bar about ten minutes after Knight went upstairs,” he said doggedly. “She says she went to the ladies’ lounge, but she could just as easily have spent the time knocking off her lover.”
“The elevator operator would have remembered taking her up. And don’t tell me she walked fourteen flights, shot the guy and walked down again, all in ten minutes.”
“The elevator operator took lots of people up and down last night,” Day growled. “He wouldn’t remember one lone woman.”
“He would a good-looking one like Isobel Jones. Bet you ten bucks if you ask him about Fausta going up with me, he’ll remember her.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” the inspector said with such lack of conviction I was convinced he had already discovered the elevator boy recalled Fausta. But to myself I had to admit only a dead man would have missed her in that dress.
“Mrs. Jones phoned Knight I was on my way up,” I told him for the dozenth time. “She didn’t even know he was dead.”
“Maybe a cover-up,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’re holding her awhile.”
“What’s her husband think?”
Frowning at his ashtray, the inspector began to search for a long butt. “He thinks we’re the Gestapo, apparently. Doesn’t believe his wife had a lover. Doesn’t believe his partner would have deceived him even if his wife would. If he wasn’t so upset, he’d have had a lawyer down here prying her out of jail, but apparently it never occurred to him. He hung around here half the night waiting for somebody to let him see her.”
“Why don’t you let him?”
“We will, soon as we get a straight story from Mrs. Jones.” Finding a cigar butt which suited him, the inspector blew it free of ashes and stuffed it in his mouth. “So far she insists she met Knight accidentally. Claims she went to bed last night the same time as her husband, couldn’t sleep and got up to take a walk. She dropped into the Sheridan simply because it was close to her home, and ran into Knight at the bar. When we jumped her about seeing him there the previous evening when she was with you, she blandly explained she assumed he had just dropped in for a drink, and she didn’t realize he was staying there. The reason she gives for introducing him by a fake name is as screwy as the rest of her statement. She says she knew you and the police were hunting Knight, and if she identified him, she’d be called as a witness. Then her husband would discover she’d been out with you instead of home in bed.”
Knowing both the inspector and Hannegan had been up half the night questioning Isobel, I couldn’t repress a grin, for I could visualize how her faintly mad manner must have slowly driven them both toward insanity. Day scowled when he saw the grin, and I erased it hurriedly.
“What did you make of the bank-deposit slip in Knight’s pocket?” I asked.
For a long time Day glowered at me over his glasses. Then he asked in a soft voice, “How did you know it was in his pocket? As I recall your statement, you didn’t touch the body at all.”
“Just enough to make sure he was dead,” I said easily. “You mentioned it yourself. Matter of fact you almost yelled it.”
He continued to regard me suspiciously, but I could see he wasn’t sure. He was so worn out, and had been in so many towering rages during the night, he wasn’t sure himself what he had said or not said. He decided to skip it.
“We haven’t made anything of it yet. I sent a man over to Riverside Bank when it opened, but he isn’t back yet. Jones didn’t know what it meant either. I sprang it on him about nine this morning and he nearly had a conniption fit. He took off in the direction of the bank like a scared rabbit.”
The phone rang at that moment and the inspector answered it. “Day,” he said, then grunted twice and hung up.
“Ballistics,” he offered in a discouraged voice. “The slug hit a bone and was all mashed up, just like in the Lancaster killing. All they can give me is it was a thirty-eight. And since there was no casing found in the room, probably a revolver was used.”
“Unless the murderer stopped to pick up the ejected cartridge.”
“Yeah,” Day said. “So it might be the same gun used on Lancaster, or it might not. What I like about this case is all the scientific help we get from our hundred-thousand-dollar laboratory.”
“Speaking of the laboratory, did you give Isobel Jones a paraffin test?”
Over by the wall Hannegan emitted a snort.
The inspector said, “We stopped using it.”
“Huh?” I asked in surprise.
“You’re behind the times,” Day said irritably. “We stopped taking paraffin impressions six months ago. What’s the use, when they’re no good in court?”
“I didn’t know they were no good.”
“Well, you know now. Light a cigarette with a kitchen match and the paraffin test will prove you fired a gun even if you never had one in your hand. Get a little inaccurate in the bathroom, forget to wash your hands, and the same thing. Urine gives the nicest positive reaction you’d ever want to see.” Reaching under his coat, he produced his short-barreled Detective-Special. “On the other hand, you can fire a good tight gun like this all day long, and the paraffin test will prove you never touched it because there’s no flashback.”
“Well,” I said. “You learn something every day.”
Putting the gun away, Day said, “And take fingerprints. Every time somebody gets killed, the public wants to know about fingerprints. Know how many usable fingerprints we found in Knight’s hotel room?”
I admitted I didn’t.
“One. Exactly one. On the underside of the dresser’s glass top. Probably belongs to the guy who set the top there when the room was furnished. Every other print in the room was so smudged it was useless for comparison. Look here.” Pulling a glass paperweight before him, the inspector rubbed it clean with his handkerchief. “Now there’s a
perfect surface for fingerprints, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’d think so,” I agreed.
Gently he placed an index finger against the glass.
“If I touch it lightly like this, I leave a nice print. But if I press too hard” — he illustrated by increasing the pressure — “the print smudges. Fingerprints are wonderful for identification purposes, but I never yet solved a murder by finding fingerprints on anything.”
Picking up the paperweight, he tossed it from one hand to the other a half-dozen times, then shoved it toward me. “Take that up to the fingerprint bureau, and I’ll bet you ten bucks they don’t bring out a single print good enough for comparison purposes.”
Knowing Warren Day’s eagerness to part with money was approximately equal to my eagerness to part with another leg, I declined the bet. “I’ll take your word for it, Inspector. I’m convinced scientific criminal investigation, television and the horseless carriage are all flops. The blacksmith, vaudeville and homicide cops who can’t read will have their day yet.”
“Oh, the hell with you, Moon! I try to educate you a little and you crack wise.”
A knock sounded at the door. Day growled, “Yes?” and a uniformed cop entered.
“Fellow named Robert Caxton asking to see you, Inspector.”
“Caxton?” Day repeated. “Oh, that taxi driver in the Lancaster case. What’s he want?”
“Wouldn’t say, sir. Wants to talk to you.”
“All right,” the inspector said impatiently. “Send him in. You can go, Moon, but keep in touch with me.”
The cop backed out, but I made no effort to move.
“You can go,” Day repeated.
“We’re sharing all information, remember, Inspector? I’ll stick around to see what Caxton wants.”
The inspector scowled at me, but decided to let it ride. A moment later the little taxi driver came in, scowled at me also, then turned his attention to Warren Day.
“I figured I better bring this straight to you, Inspector. I got to thinking about this phone call I got yesterday morning, and the more I thought about it, the screwier it seemed.”
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