by Lionel White
“I’m Mr. Hanna,” he said. “Expecting a call shortly, but I have to be out for a while. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell the party I’ll be back around seven-thirty.” He left his key on the desk.
The man nodded.
“Certainly, sir.”
The telephone booths were in the mezzanine and Gerald walked up the short flight of stairs. He was glad that they were out of sight of the hotel’s desk.
Putting the coin into the slot, he was unable to resist the sudden chill which overcame him. Everything would depend on the success of this call. If his party should fail to answer…
He shuddered, not wanting to think about it.
The number answered on the second ring and he asked for his party. The voice at the other end requested his name.
“The name doesn’t matter,” Gerald said. “It’s a personal matter. But very important.”
“I’m sorry, but we have to know who is calling. We can’t disturb…”
“This is about Gerald Hanna and concerns the Gorden-Frost jewel robbery,” Gerald said, speaking fast and distinct. “I’ll call back in exactly fifteen minutes.”
He hung up fast. He couldn’t take a chance on the call being traced.
It was the longest fifteen minutes in his life.
He made the second call from a different booth and this time when he asked for his party, he added, “and if he isn’t on the phone within less than half a minute I am hanging up.”
He didn’t have to wait a half minute. And he recognized the second voice the moment it spoke.
“If you are interested in the whereabouts of Gerald Hanna,” he said, “he has checked into the Metropole Hotel in New York City. Got that-the Metropole. Room 508. The Metropole-Room 508.”
He slammed the receiver back on the telephone as the voice spluttered at the other end of the wire.
Returning to the booth from which he had placed his original telephone call, Gerald once more closed the door after himself and placed a coin in the slot.
He could detect the nervousness in Slaughter’s gravel voice the moment the other man picked up the receiver and spoke.
“You’re late,” Slaughter said. “Is everything…”
“Everything is fine,” Gerald said. “Now listen. I want you to be at the Metropole Hotel in exactly one hour. Not before and no later. You are registered in Room 510. Under your own name. Get your key at the desk and come directly upstairs. You must have Miss Dunne with you and no one else. You must be prepared to consummate our deal. You have the…”
“I’ll have what I need,” Slaughter said. “But wouldn’t it be just as well if the lady…”
“It would not,” Gerald said. “She must be with you. In exactly one hour.”
Again he didn’t wait for an answer, but quickly replaced the receiver on the hook and left the booth.
When he returned to the staircase, instead of going down to the lobby, he turned and started up. He climbed the five flights of stairs and the sweat was soaking his shirt by the time he reached the fifth floor.
This time, walking down the long carpeted hallway, he ignored Room 508 and passed on to 510. He entered through the unlocked door, but was careful to snap the catch so that it clicked behind him. He rechecked the bathroom door to be sure that it was still locked.
Opening the bottom bureau drawer, he removed the zippered bag-the bag in which he had placed the fragments from his broken windshield and the gun which young Vince Dunne had dropped on the floor of his car. He took out only the gun and then reclosed the bag. He used his handkerchief to remove any possible fingerprints from the weapon. When he was finished, he placed the gun on the bed while he hauled the heavy upholstered chair around so that it half faced the door leading into the room.
Then he picked up the gun, still using the handkerchief, and tucked it down between the cushion and the seat of the chair. The handkerchief remained loosely twisted around the checkered grip.
He was kneeling at the door of the room, some thirty-five minutes later, his ear pressed to the keyhole, when he heard the elevator come to a stop at the end of the hallway.
It wasn’t until the footsteps were almost opposite the door that he heard them, softened as they were by the thick carpet. They died out and a moment later he heard the small click of a key in the lock of what he knew must be the door of Room 508. He waited only until he heard the door close and then swiftly got to his feet and crossed to the bathroom door. Once more he knelt, putting his ear to the crack.
There were several moments of silence and then he heard someone enter the bathroom. He heard the sound of voices but was unable to distinguish the words.
A hand tried the knob of the door against which he was standing and it turned but failed to open.
And then all was quiet.
Gerald half smiled, a nervous smile. He looked at his wrist watch and nodded with satisfaction.
* * *
He tried to remain oblivious of the time, tried to blank his mind, knowing that it would be futile to worry. The die was cast and there was nothing more to be done. It would happen the way he planned it or it wouldn’t happen and there was nothing more to do now but sit here in the big leather upholstered chair facing the doorway of the room and wait.
Once, after endless minutes had passed, he became conscious of the ticking of his wrist watch as his right elbow rested on the arm of the chair and his head rested against his hand. He began to count the ticks, counting up to sixty, and checking the minutes on the fingers of his hands-until he suddenly realized that the individual ticks of the watch didn’t mark off the seconds but marked off the half seconds.
He was thinking about that, half smiling to himself, when he heard the alien sound; heard the key turning in the lock of the outside door. He knew then for the first time that someone was on the other side of it, someone who had approached on silent footsteps and was standing there at this very moment, preparing to enter.
He sat suddenly stiff and tense in his chair and watched as the knob slowly turned and then the door was quickly opened and Sue Dunne stepped into the room. Slaughter was directly behind her and he followed the girl inside, wordlessly turning and softly closing the door and snapping the night lock.
Gerald Hanna watched the man, but conscious of Sue tense and silent a couple of feet away. Slaughter stood there, his hands thrust deep into the side pockets of his light-weight jacket. He stared at Gerald coldly. Somehow or other he seemed to have lost his suaveness and he no longer appeared to be a small-time businessman or a bank teller or a salesman. He looked hard and dangerous.
“All right,” he said, his gravelly voice very low.
“All right, where is it? Where’s the stuff.”
Gerald jerked his head, indicating Sue.
“Let’s wait until Miss Dunne leaves,” he said.
Slaughter smiled, without humor.
“She stays,” he said. “Right here, until we get through.”
Gerald looked at her and saw that she was staring past him, as though he didn’t exist. Her face was totally without expression.
“Witnesses,” he said. “It’s foolish to have…”
“She stays,” Slaughter repeated. “You are the one who guarantees her silence, remember?”
Gerald shrugged, nodded. He looked up again at Sue and this time she was watching him, but he could tell nothing by her expression. Was she trusting him; did she believe in him? He couldn’t tell. Couldn’t guess.
It wasn’t the way he wanted it, with her there in the room, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d just have to play it that way, take this one additional gamble.
Gerald looked over at the zipper bag sitting on the night table.
“Where’s the money?” he asked.
Slaughter ignored the remark and stepped quickly across the room. He opened the bag and dumped its contents on the white bedspread.
For a moment then the man just stood there, his dark eyes wide and staring as he looked
at the collection of broken glass. The blood began to surge up his thick neck and into his beefy face. He swung around with a curse on his mouth.
“What is this,” he half yelled. “What kind of lousy joke…”
“The money,” Gerald said. “You were to bring the money. The thirty-five thousand dollars. I haven’t seen it yet.”
Slaughter stared at him.
“You’re cute, aren’t you,” he said. “Real cute. The fact is, I suspected there was something screwy about this deal. Suspected something like this. Figured you for a phony. So I put the money in an envelope and checked it down at the desk. Now, if you aren’t a phony, and you want to play it smart, just show me the stuff and then we can go downstairs together and we pick up the dough.”
Gerald smiled thinly at the other man.
“I don’t suppose,” he said, “that you’d just happen to be carrying a gun in that coat pocket of yours, would you?” he asked, his eyes going to Slaughter’s right hand which was still thrust into his jacket pocket.
Slaughter removed his hand, looking at Gerald in disgust.
“Don’t be a damned fool,” he said. “What do you think, I was going to come up here and stick you up or something? Of course I’m not carrying a gun. You think I’d be crazy enough to shoot anyone in a place like this? I’m no gun-happy desperado.”
“I just wanted to make sure,” Gerald said.
“All right, now you know. Let’s get back to the jewels. Have you got the stuff or haven’t you? If you have, then let’s see it!”
Gerald nodded his head in the direction of the bureau.
“The bottom drawer,” he said. “In the brief case.” He turned to the girl as Slaughter crossed the room in a couple of quick steps.
“Go over and sit in that chair by the window,” he said. It wasn’t a request; it was an order.
For a long moment her hot, tired eyes looked into his and he was unable to read anything in their depths. She stood as though frozen and he wondered if she had even heard his words. But then slowly she turned and without a word crossed the room and found the chair by the drawn Venetian blinds.
Slaughter had jerked open the drawer and had the brief case in his hands. He lifted it, almost as though he were mentally weighing it, and then he fumbled with the catch and opened it.
He was staring, fascinated, into the contents of the brief case as Gerald took the gun from the place where it was half concealed beneath his body at the side of the seat cushion.
As he started to rise from the chair, his finger pressed the trigger.
The bullet crashed into the panel of the bathroom door and even as the sound of the shot reverberated in the confines of the small, closed room, Slaughter dropped the brief case and swung around.
Sue, in the chair by the window, gasped, but sat still and stiff, as though frozen to the seat.
“You damned insane fool!” Slaughter screamed. “What in the name of God…”
He was across the room in a single wild leap and slashing down at Gerald’s arm with his closed fist. He caught the revolver as it started to fall to the floor, but Gerald held on to the handkerchief which had been wrapped around its stock.
The moment Slaughter’s fist struck his arm and he reached for the falling gun, Gerald side-stepped, moving like lightening to Slaughter’s right. His hands reached out as he moved and he swung the other man around so that he was momentarily facing the bathroom door.
Gerald was in time to see the door itself bursting inward on its hinges as he made a flying tackle across the room, dropping Sue Dunne to the floor as her straight-backed chair went over backwards, and half falling on top of her.
“You double-crossing son…”
Slaughter was screaming the words as the door gave way. The gun in his hand was half lifted and instinctively he pressed the trigger.
The sound of the explosion blended with that of Lieutenant Hopper’s service revolver as the detective fired.
Slaughter never had the opportunity for a second shot. The dark red blood was gushing from twin holes just above his eyes as he crumpled and dropped to the carpeted floor.
Gerald himself had time for only the few brief words as he pressed his mouth close to the girl’s ear.
“Remember,” he said, “remember what you told me. You’d give anything to get the man who got your brother into it. Keep trusting me. Say nothing-and trust me.”
* * *
Lieutenant Hopper waited until the basket arrived from the morgue and they’d removed the body; until after the chalked outlines on the floor had been photographed and the lab men were all through.
The room was cleared now and there were only the four of them. Gerald Hanna sat as Lieutenant Hopper stalked in front of him. Sue was on the edge of the bed, with Finn next to her chewing his nails and muttering under his breath. The uniformed patrolman was outside the door and all the others had left.
“You certainly have the damnedest way of turning up, the lieutenant said. “Maybe you are going to try and explain this one away.” His voice was thin with sarcasm.
“Nothing to explain,” Gerald said. “I’m just glad you took my telephone calf seriously and showed up. I was getting a little nervous.”
“You will probably be a lot more nervous before it’s all over,” Hopper said. “Maybe you’d like to tell me about it. It might relieve you and it certainly…”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Gerald looked over at the detective and smiled as he continued.
“You have it all in the registered letter which I mailed you this afternoon,” he said. “The letter which you will have in the morning. I said in that letter that if you came here after I called you on the phone, you’d find the loot from the Gorden-Frost robbery. Well, there it is-in that brief case which your men checked and put over on the dresser.”
“So you wrote and explained,” Hopper said softly. “How nice of you.” And just how do you fit into this thing?”
“That’s very simple, Lieutenant,” Gerald said. “As you know, I’m in the insurance business. Well, I figured after I read about the robbery, that the stuff must be insured. And I knew that the insurance company would offer a reward for the return of the jewels. Yesterday, through a connection in my office, I found I was right. There’s a hundred thousand dollar reward. I’m claiming that reward. I sent you a note advising you to come here and pick up the stuff and you did and here it is. I have a receipt for that note.
“To make doubly sure there would be no misunderstanding later on, I mailed a second registered letter to the insurance people, establishing my claim.”
Lieutenant Hopper stared at him, his face growing red and congested as Gerald finished speaking.
“That’s dandy,” he said. “Just downright dandy! So you’re going to claim the reward, eh?”
He hesitated, fighting to control his temper.
“And how about the rest of it? How about the two police officers who were killed? By God, don’t you remember our little conversation? Don’t you remember what I told you about how we feel about things like that? Don’t you…”
“I think I can help you out a little there, too, Lieutenant,” Gerald said. Once more he smiled, conciliatorily.
“Yes,” he went on. “I believe I can help you. You took a gun out of Slaughter’s hand when you broke into this room and after he was shot down. Remember? Well, check that gun down at ballistics, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find that it was the same gun which was used to kill your policemen. Slaughter had the jewels and he had the gun. What more do you need?”
The lieutenant looked at him closely for several moments. At last, when he again spoke, his voice was more nearly back to normal and had lost a little of its bitterness.
“All right, just for the sake of argument, we’ll assume it was the murder weapon. But how do you plan to prove that Slaughter was in on the job? That he used the gun?”
“That’s simple, too,” Gerald said. He pointed over to the desk. �
�Among your other souvenirs,” he said, “you have that pile of broken glass which was swept up off the bed. I saw in the newspapers that police found fragments of glass from a shattered windshield at the scene of the robbery. Glass shot from the windshield of the getaway car. I think-in fact I feel absolutely sure-that if you take that glass along with you and match it up with the glass you already have, you’ll end up with a complete windshield. So can’t we just assume that Slaughter had to be in the getaway car in order for him to have the glass in his possession?”
Gerald stood up and yawned, putting his hand delicately to his mouth to cover his social lapse.
“And now,” he said, “I’m rather tired and I would appreciate it if you would just let me leave. I’m sure Miss Dunne is tired too and I’d like to take her home.”
Gerald’s eyes went over to Sue and he smiled, a little weakly, at her.
He noticed then, for the very first time since he had seen her, that the antagonism and the bitterness was gone from her face. That she was looking at him, still wide-eyed and with a trace of amazement in her expression. But there was something else; there was a warmth that had never been there before.
She nodded ever so briefly and half smiled, as her eyes met his.
Lieutenant Hopper was eying Gerald with grim distaste.
“At the very best,” he said, “you’re a material witness. And so is Miss Dunne. I’m going to hold…”
“Lieutenant,” Gerald said. “You don’t want to do anything foolish. The fact is, I’m a sort of hero. I feel quite sure that’s what the morning newspapers are going to say. Of course, up until now I have had every intention of explaining to the reporters that I have worked with the police on this and that I am sharing the reward with them-in the hope that their share will be turned over to the widows of the officers slain in the robbery…”
Detective Lieutenant Hopper shook his head slowly, staring at Gerald as though he were observing some completely new specimen in the Bronx Zoo.
“All right,” he said, at last. “All right, Hanna. You’ll get the reward, I guess. Maybe you are a hero. But I still don’t understand it. I know that I won’t be able to make you talk and tell me about it, but in the long run, I am glad to have the thing cleaned up. We’ll go over the glass and the gun of course, but I’m satisfied that they’ll check out.
