Bacon said: “Let’s take a ride.”
“Ride?” Tripp forgot his act. “What for?” he growled. “I’m out on bail, ain’t I? You can’t—”
“Who says so?” Bacon rapped. “That night operator at Redfield’s place said you came in at four-forty-five and we let it go at that. The guy I had checkin’ the building muffed one—as usual. I only just found out today that they’ve got a night maid on duty there. She saw you go up the fire stairs at three-fifteen that mornin’. She was in the fifth-floor hall and she saw you go round the corner and start up. And then I found that my friend the operator remembered he had to go to the can at just about that time. He was off the desk for about five minutes. We were concentrating too much on the time after three-thirty to follow through. What were you walkin’ up for?”
“Because I didn’t know how the sixth floor was laid out. For all I knew, the elevator might’ve gone right to Redfield’s entrance. I just thought I ought to get off at the fifth and walk up; then I’d be sure not to get thrown out.”
“That’s all right.” Bacon nodded in satisfaction. “I just wanted to know if you were there.”
“But I went right out again,” Tripp protested. “When I heard the music, I knew the party wasn’t gonna wind up right away and so I went out and came back at a quarter of five.”
“So you say,” Bacon grunted. “But if you did you went out the back way. And that’s one I called right. Remember? I said you came back for an alibi.”
“I didn’t,” Tripp argued, “I came back in to get Marie.”
Bacon stood up. “Maybe I can make you remember better down at my place. I got a room that was built for guys like you. And I’ll tell you what really happened; let’s see if I can guess right twice. You hung around up on the sixth floor until some time after the party broke up—waiting for her”—he nodded towards the girl, whose face had gone white. “And while you were there you stuck in that closet and saw what you could see. Because you’re that kind of a guy. We’ve had a tip before that you made a few dollars in blackmail. And parties like that might mean business, huh? And you stayed right there. And I want to know who came back after that party broke up—and what time and all about it.”
Tripp’s little eyes shifted from Bacon, sought the girl. As they fastened upon her he shook his head. It was just a slight, almost imperceptible movement, yet it was enough for one with her schooling.
She was standing less than two feet from the Lieutenant, and he was not looking at her. So when she jabbed out with both arms stiff and all her weight behind them, he slid off the end of the davenport and fell over towards the middle of it with his face on the cushions.
Murdock was on his feet in an instant, but the flash of Tripp’s arm as he sprang from the davenport was even quicker. The small automatic appeared from nowhere and swung to cover him. Tripp backed into the inner doorway just as Bacon recovered and regained his feet.
Bacon cursed, snapped: “Put it down before you get in trouble!” He took a step forward.
“Lay off!” rasped Tripp. “You’re not gonna take me down and beat the pants off me. Not till I get a chance to—”
“Put it down!” Bacon’s voice was sharp with the ring of authority. If he felt any uncertainty, he did not show it. He did not reach for his own gun; he just moved slowly forward, his manner assured, confident.
Tripp stopped in the doorway. His face went gray and his gun arm stiffened; the knuckles of his hand got white. Murdock held his breath, was the first to notice the blur of motion behind Bacon. In those four or five seconds no one had paid any attention to Marie, and for the second time she did her part.
She cursed shrilly and threw herself upon Bacon’s back, her arms around his neck, her hands clenched under his chin. Bacon spun angrily, whirling the girl’s feet high off the floor. Tripp disappeared through the doorway. From somewhere beyond, a door slammed as Murdock leaped forward and Bacon threw the girl roughly to the davenport.
Murdock and Bacon reached the locked door together. Bacon hammered at it, and Marie was upon him again, pulling at his arm.
“Break it!” she shrilled. “Break it, you lousy police bastard, and I’ll have you—”
Bacon jerked away from the door, bumping into the girl and knocking her to the floor. He continued down the short hall to the kitchen, with Murdock right behind him. There was a single window here and Bacon threw it up, leaned out. Murdock squeezed into the frame beside him.
There was a fire-escape touching the adjoining window of the locked room. Murdock saw that this window was open. Then, looking down, he saw Tripp just disappearing round the corner of the building into the alley.
Bacon pulled his head in and closed the window. He looked at Murdock, groaned from deep down in his long body. “That was a damn fool thing to do. We’ll pick him up, all right. But now we’ll have to get real rough with him.”
Marie was lighting a cigarette in the living-room when they went back. Her face was still flushed, her eyes hard, gloating. Bacon picked up his hat and she said: “If you want to make anything of it—”
Bacon said: “So far you’ve done all right.” He stepped towards her, his wrist cocking. “But how would you like a slap in the mouth for yourself?”
Marie completely forgot her bravado. She squealed and threw up a protecting hand as she cringed. Bacon grunted and strode to the door. “Come on,” he said to Murdock. “There’s a way of handling tarts like her too. But what’s the use? I shoulda got tough before.”
13
STOPPING IN AT his apartment as he did at three o’clock that afternoon was something that Murdock would have been hard pressed to explain to an outsider. On his way back to the office with some unimportant pictures of an Industrial Exhibit he passed within two blocks of his apartment. And just about that time he decided he was thirsty.
For the first time in three days there was no one to greet him as he opened the door. Ever since the night Howard had come to take his sister home, the argument between Murdock and the girl had continued. But each time she won out, at least to the extent of staying on.
She was, he realized, as stubborn about this one thing as he was. It had become a complex. She would stay, she ruled, until Howard had the decency to drop his affair with Rita Redfield. It was no longer a question open to reason. Howard Archer’s actions could be justified or not, but Joyce had determined her own course and she hewed to the line. So far it had done no good. Howard Archer had not come back.
Murdock placed the camera and plate-case on the floor just inside the door, tossed his hat into the wing chair, and lit a cigarette. He was, he realized, no longer thirsty. He sat down, crossed his legs. The past three days had been much the same as before. He worked; he did not know how she spent her time. It was the evenings that made the difference. They had dinner together each night. After that they came home and read—except the time when they went to the movies and stopped for a few dances at the Copley.
There was no longer any uncertainty about the ending of the evening. Each time she was the first to uncurl from her spot on the davenport and go into the bedroom. And, after the first night, she brought out a sheet and a blanket and a pillow and made a bed for him. Nothing was said, directly or by inference, about that first night.
“I hope she took her bag with her,” Murdock said, and straightened his legs. “I’m about due for a good night’s sleep.”
He stood up and went out to the kitchen, resisting the almost overpowering impulse to look in the bedroom. He’d done his part, hadn’t he? He had given in to her all along the line, treated her decently, considerately. He knew she liked him for this acceptance, this manner of treatment. But the thing couldn’t go on indefinitely. She was old enough to know that.
He spent a long time with the drink, dumping the ice cubes, rinsing three of them, pouring the Scotch, and squirting in the foaming soda from the siphon. It was a relief, all right, to be alone and feel he could do as he pleased, forget everything else. Newspaper
work and living alone were making him crusty, set in his ways. He had to watch his language when she was around or he’d be talking like a photographer.
Tasting the drink, he went into the living-room. It seemed empty. He’d been there too long, that was it. His odd, virulent mood sought an outlet in criticism and he glanced around, an expression of distaste on his wide mouth. Nearly two years now. Since Hestor. One thing: nothing of her influence remained. She had taken most of their things with her. The few she had left he had gradually replaced. But he needed a change. Rents were a lot cheaper now. He could do better with a quieter place, or one higher up. Get a bigger place for the same money.
He drank some more of his drink, paced the floor with the glass in his hand, finally stopped at the davenport and stared morosely at the print of Cameron’s Whitby Bridge which hung above it. A newspaper photographer, huh? A button-pusher. Even some high-hat reporters disdained the craft. The college training. What good was it? Taught him how to be dissatisfied, taught him to like good clothes, to appreciate good books and pictures; taught him very little about how to get these things.
He turned abruptly. What the hell made him so restless? Then the answer which had repeatedly pounded against his consciousness broke through and he grunted softly, his lips dipping at the corners.
“Watch yourself, fella!” he said under his breath.
The object of this cautionary soliloquy burst into the room and startled him as he finished. She had on a dark, tight-fitting dress, a mannish polo coat, a trim dark brown hat. Her face was quite pale; her eyes were bright, glaring.
Murdock started to grin. “Hello.”
Joyce Archer began to peel off her gloves. She put them together and slapped them against her palm and turned on him. She seemed to have trouble speaking. In that moment Murdock had a hard time remaining where he was. To try to live up to his resolve, he raised his glass, finished his drink, and made his voice casual.
“I was on my way to the office and decided I was thirsty.”
If Joyce Archer heard him she gave no sign. “They’re running away.” The words were throaty, sharp.
“Who?” asked Murdock although he knew what she meant.
“Howard—Rita.”
She came to him, held out her wrists. Red finger-marks stood out across them above the tan of her skin. She jerked her hands back, spun about, and started to pace the floor.
“He had to drag me out before I’d go. He’s beastly, insane. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I went home and saw his trunk packed, two of his bags gone. I found them upstairs. And Mark Redfield buried yesterday.”
Trouble settled over Murdock. He sat down on the davenport, put his empty glass at his feet, his forearms on his knees so that the wrists were limp, dangling the hands between his knees.
“I told him what I thought. I can’t understand him. It isn’t only Rita. He’s been this way ever since he came back from England. He’s got just enough money tied up from father’s estate to have the good time he wants. He’s mad. And she—”
The girl broke off, stopped pacing to face Murdock.
“It’s her fault too. I told her so. And if Howard had kept his hands off me I—” She checked herself. “You’ve got to stop them.”
Murdock looked at her without raising his head, and in looking his brows furrowed, giving him a hard, quizzical expression. “He ought to know better. He’s a witness, a material witness. If he runs out, the police will drag him back. Let him go.”
“I can’t. Not that way. And have him hunted as if he were a criminal? He knows nothing of the murder.”
“He hasn’t convinced Bacon of that yet.”
“But you don’t think—” Her mouth went slack.
“It makes damn little difference what I think. If you want to stop him”—Murdock stood up, his face somber and a roughness in his voice—“call police headquarters.”
She gasped at that and he crossed to the telephone. “No!” she said, frightened now. “Please.”
Murdock did not pick up the instrument. He stood there waiting.
“Listen, Kent.” Joyce Archer came to him and took both of his arms above the elbows. “Do this for me, will you? He’s running away. You can stop him. But I can’t call the police. If they see that he’s going, it will make it all the harder; it will make him look guilty. You see that?”
Murdock just nodded, watched her humidly. Traces of resentment appeared among his thoughts. He felt jealous of Archer and his hold on the girl; and then he felt ashamed of his jealousy. She spoke first.
“It’s not just this. I never had many friends. Travel. Packed off to school, and kept in school—abroad most of the time. To get me off my parents’ hands. But Howard was close to me. There’s seven years’ difference in our ages, and that matters a lot to a girl growing up. And he was sweet to me. He’d come to Paris on his vacations. He made me feel as though I was his girl. He had lots of others, yes, but he had a little time for me too. I think he knew I was lonely. And now he’s changed and I’ve changed and I know he’s beastly and acted like a cad to you, and yet, next to you, he’s the only one. Maybe if I could make him see this other thing through he’d have time to—” Her voice choked slightly as it trailed off.
Murdock’s palms were damp and he rubbed them against the outside of his coat pockets. There was an unnatural thickness in his throat, a lumpy something that made it hard to swallow. A faint perfume rose from her hair, bothered him. He pulled gently from her grasp, stepped over to the wing chair, and picked up his hat.
She followed him. “You’ll try?”
“Yes,” Murdock said, and because he felt a certain helplessness before the unashamed display of her emotions, because he could not cope with the genuine reaction set up within him, his voice was unnecessarily gruff.
“But even if you have the right to meddle with his life, with two lives, this way; even if you have—and you haven’t—I think you are overconfident about my powers of persuasion. Why should I succeed with him when he failed with you the other night?”
Her eyes, fixed upon his as he began to speak, were trusting; and then, when he finished, he read the hurt in their depths. He forgot about everything else. His arms went around her waist. They were standing close together and he drew her tight against him with a quick rough embrace. Her back arched and as he kissed her, the lips were stiff for a fraction of a second; then they were alive and hot and her arms were around his neck, straining so that the hardness of her muscles surprised him and he felt a twinge of pain in the cords of his neck.
He dropped his hands, pushed her away, and caught his breath. His face was hot. He stooped, snatched up the camera and plate-case. He had to look at her as he opened the door. Her eyes held him. They were bright and shiny, just a little frightened from reaction. Or it may have been something else; he could not be sure.
The maid who opened the door, a small, sandy-haired girl with a generous waist and plump arms, said: “Mrs. Redfield is not in.”
Murdock slipped through the doorway in front of her, put the camera and plate-case on the foyer floor. “I’ll go in and wait.”
The maid closed the door hurriedly and then had to run to intercept him. “But—but she’s not—she won’t be—”
“I know,” Murdock said, reaching for the door-knob; “I’ll wait.”
His confidence shattered the maid’s resistance. He opened the door and stepped into the huge living-room beyond. Rita Redfield and Howard Archer were at the opposite side. His arm was about her waist, her hand on his arm, and, facing the terrace windows, they turned their heads and looked at Murdock over their shoulders.
Archer dropped his arm. Murdock kept coming across the room. There was a silver tray on a small table, a tall cocktail-shaker, two glasses. Beside the grand piano four compact, light-weight traveling-cases stood in a row.
Archer stopped stiffly in front of Murdock, blocking his path. The thin, tanned face was angry, the pale-blue eyes hard, like steel disks. “S
orry,” he said curtly. “We were just going out.”
“Yes,” Murdock said. “Your sister told me.”
“She sent you up to—”
“She thought I might be able to persuade you to postpone the trip until this—this murder case is cleared up a bit.”
“Sweet of her,” Archer said irritably. “But in the light of what happened the other night—”
“I understand she had a reason for that too.”
Archer turned. “Ready, Rita?”
Rita Redfield came towards him, stopped to one side and slightly behind Archer. Murdock’s eyes moved to her; it was difficult to look elsewhere. Her beauty, in spite of its showiness, the vital fullness of the figure beneath the severe line of her oxford-gray two-piece suit, was commanding. Her dark eyes, full on Murdock now, were expressionless—or so they seemed. The expression came from the droop of the painted mouth, the lifted arch of her brows over the upward-slanting eyes. Here was a woman. Murdock was at once aware of her allure, could understand better now than before just why Archer had planned to go with her. In some ways, and he had time in his study of her to think of this, he did not blame the fellow. One thing: they had much in common. They might get along.
“And waiting,” Rita Redfield answered without taking her eyes from Murdock. “I’ll have Williams take the bags down.”
“Never mind,” Archer said. “I’ll take them myself.” He turned, juggled them up so he had one under each arm, one in each hand. Murdock moved back to the door, stood in front of it. Archer had to put down the bags again. His voice snapped dangerously.
“You’re being damned obnoxious and—”
Murdock said: “Wait just a minute. Let’s leave out all personalities. Let’s see if there is any logic in this business.” He looked at the woman. “Your husband was buried yesterday, and, passing over any moral question, are your affairs in shape to run out so soon? How long do you plan to stay?”
“Indefinitely,” Archer snapped.
“There is very little to be cleared up,” Rita Redfield said, and there seemed to be something of amusement in her gaze, as though, somehow, she enjoyed this set-to between the two men. “And fortunately I insisted upon a trust fund when I married him.”
Murder with Pictures Page 12
