Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  Striker objected peevishly. “Why did he go to bed first, then get up and go do it? They don’t usually do that. He took the room for a week, too.”

  The precinct man raised his voice, to show he was a police detective talking to a mere hotel dick, someone who in his estimation wasn’t a detective at all. “I don’t care if he took it for six months! He left this note and hit the sidewalk, didn’t he? Whaddaya trying to do, make it into something it ain’t?

  The manager said, “Ssh! if you don’t mind,” and eased the door to, to keep other guests from overhearing. He sided with the precinct man, the wish being father to the thought. If there’s one thing that a hotel man likes less than a suicide, it’s a murder. “I don’t think there’s any doubt of it.”

  The police dick stooped to reasoning with Striker. “You were the first one up here. Was there anything wrong with the door? Was it forced open or anything?”

  Striker had to admit it had been properly shut; the late occupant’s key lay on the dresser where it belonged, at that very moment.

  The police dick spread his hands, as if to say: “There you are, what more do you want?”

  He took a last look around, decided the room had nothing more to tell him. Nor could Striker argue with him on this point. The room had nothing more to tell anyone. The dick gathered up Hopper’s watch, change and identification papers, to turn them over to the police property-clerk, until they were claimed by his nearest of kin. His baggage was left in there temporarily; the room was darkened and locked up.

  Riding down to the lobby, the dick rubbed it in a little. “Here’s how those things go,” he said patronizingly. “No one got in there or went near him, so it wasn’t murder. He left a note, so it wasn’t an accident. The word they got for this is suicide. Now y’got it?”

  Striker held his palm up and fluttered it slightly. “Teacher, can I leave the room?” he murmured poignantly.

  The stout manager, Perry, had a distrait, slightly anticipatory expression on his moon face now; in his mind it was the next day, he had already sold the room to someone else, and had the two dollars in the till. Heaven, to him, was a houseful of full rooms.

  The body had already been removed from the street outside. Somewhere, across a coffee counter, a cab driver was saying: “I seen him coming down.”

  The city dick took his departure from the hotel, with the magnanimous assurance: “It’s the depresh. They’re poppin’ off like popcorn all over the country this week. I ain’t been able to cash my paycheck since Monday.”

  Perry returned to his own quarters, with the typical managerial admonition, to Maxon and Striker, “Soft pedal, now, you two. Don’t let this get around the house.” He yawned with a sound like air brakes, going up in the elevator. You could still hear it echoing down the shaft after his feet had gone up out of sight.

  “Just the same, “ Striker said finally, unasked, to the night clerk, “I don’t care what that know-it-all says, Hopper didn’t have suicide on his mind when he checked in here at seven-thirty. He saw a show that was full of laughs, and even came home whistling one of the tunes from it. We both heard him. He unpacked all his shirts and things into the bureau drawers. He intended staying. He went to bed first; I felt the covers, they were warm. Then he popped up all of a sudden and took this standing broad jump.”

  “Maybe he had a bad dream,” Maxon suggested facetiously. His was a hard-boiled racket. He yawned, muscularly magnetized by his boss’ recent gape, and opened a big ledger. “Some of ‘em put on a fake front until the last minute—whistle, go to a show, too proud to take the world into their confidence, and then—bang—they’ve crumpled.” And on that note it ended. As Maxon said, there was no accounting for human nature. Striker caught the sleepiness from the other two, widened his jaws terrifyingly, brought them together again with a click. And yet somehow, to him, this suicide hadn’t run true to form.

  He went back up to his own room again with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, that wasn’t strong enough to do anything about, and yet that he couldn’t altogether throw off. Like the feeling you get when you’re working out a crossword puzzle and one of the words fills up the space satisfactorily, but doesn’t seem to have the required meaning called for in the solution.

  The St. Anselm went back to sleep again, the small part of it that had been awake. The case was closed.

  People came and went from 913 and the incident faded into the limbo of half-forgotten things. Then in the early fall of ‘34 the room came to specific attention again.

  A young fellow in his early twenties, a college type, arrived in a roadster with just enough baggage for overnight. No reservation or anything. He signed in as Allan Hastings, Princeton, New Jersey. He didn’t have to ask the desk if there were any shows. He knew his own way around. They were kind of full-up that weekend. The only red vacancy-tag in any of the pigeonholes was 913. Dennison gave him that—had no choice.

  The guest admitted he’d been turned away from two hotels already. They all had the S.R.O. sign out. “It’s the Big Game, I guess,” he said.

  “What Big Game?” Striker was incautious enough to ask.

  “Where’ve you been all your life?” he grinned.

  Some football game or other, the house dick supposed. Personally a crackling good super-science story still had the edge on twenty-two huskies squabbling over a pig’s inflated hide, as far as he was concerned.

  Hastings came back from the game still sober. Or if he’d had a drink it didn’t show. “We lost,” he said casually at the desk on his way up, but it didn’t seem to depress him any. His phone, the operator reported later, rang six times in the next quarter of an hour, all feminine voices. He was apparently getting booked up solid for the rest of the weekend.

  Two girls and a fellow, in evening clothes, called for him about nine. Striker saw them sitting waiting for him in the lobby, chirping and laughing their heads off. He came down in about five minutes, all rigged up for the merry-merry, even down to a white carnation in his lapel.

  Striker watched them go, half-wistfully. “That’s the life,” he said to the man behind the desk.

  “May as well enjoy it while you can,” said Dennison philosophically. “Here today and gone tomorrow.”

  Hastings hadn’t come back yet by the time Striker went up and turned in. Not that Striker was thinking about him particularly, but he just hadn’t seen him. He read a swell story about mermaids kidnapping a deep-sea diver, and dropped off to sleep.

  The call came through to his room at about four-thirty in the morning. It took him a minute or two to come out of the deep sleep he’d been in.

  “Hurry it up, will you, Strike?” Maxon was whining impatiently. “The young guy in nine-thirteen has taken a flier out his window.”

  Striker hung up, thinking blurredly, “Where’ve I heard that before—nine-thirteen?” Then he remembered—last year, from the very same room.

  He filled the hollow of his hand with cold water from the washstand, dashed it into his eyes, shrugged into some clothing, and ran down the fire stairs at one side of the elevator shaft. That was quicker than waiting for the venerable mechanism to crawl up for him, then limp down again.

  Maxon, who was a reformed drunk, gave him a look eloquent of disgust as Striker chased by the desk. “I’m getting off the wagon again if this keeps up—then I’ll have some fun out of all these bum jolts.”

  There was more of a crowd this time. The weather was milder and there were more night owls in the vicinity to collect around him and gape morbidly. The kid had fallen farther out into the street than Hopper—he didn’t weigh as much, maybe. He was lying there face down in the shape of a St. Andrew’s cross. He hadn’t undressed yet, either. Only his shoes and dinner jacket had been taken off. One strap of his black suspenders had torn off, due to the bodily contortion of the descent or from the impact itself. The white of his shirt was pretty badly changed by now, except the sleeves. He’d had a good-looking face; that was all gone too. They were turnin
g him over as Striker came up.

  The same cop was there. He was saying to a man who had been on his way home to read the after-midnight edition of the coming morning’s newspaper: “Lemme have your paper, Mac, will you?”

  The man demurred, “I ain’t read it myself yet. I just now bought it.”

  The cop said, “You can buy another. We can’t leave him lying like this.”

  The thing that had been Hastings was in pretty bad shape. The cop spread the paper, separating the sheets, and made a long paper-covered mound.

  The same precinct dick showed up in answer to the routine notification that had been phoned in. His greeting to Striker was as to the dirt under his feet. “You still on the face of the earth?”

  “Should I have asked your permission?” answered the hotel man drily.

  Eddie Courlander—that, it seemed, was the police dick’s tag—squatted down, looked under the pall of newspapers, shifted around, looked under from the other side.

  “Peek-a-boo!” somebody in the small crowd said irreverently.

  Courlander looked up threateningly. “Who said that? Gawan, get outa here, wise guys! If it happened to one of youse, you wouldn’t feel so funny.”

  Somebody’s night-bound coup6 tried to get through, honked imperiously for clearance, not knowing what the obstruction was. The cop went up to it, said: “Get back! Take the next street over. There’s a guy fell out of a window here.”

  The coup£ drew over to the curb instead, and its occupants got out and joined the onlookers. One was a girl carrying a night-club favor, a long stick topped with paper streamers. She squealed, “Ooou, ooou-ooou,” in a way you couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified.

  Courlander straightened, nodded toward Striker. “What room’d he have? C’mon in.”

  He didn’t remember that it was the same one. Striker could tell that by the startled way he said, “Oh, yeah, that’s right too!” when he mentioned the coincidence to him.

  Perry and the night porter were waiting outside the room door. “I wouldn’t go in until you got here,” the manager whispered virtuously to the cop, “I know you people don’t like anything touched.” Striker, however, had a hunch there was a little superstitious fear at the back of this as well, like a kid shying away from a dark room.

  “You’re thinking of murder cases,” remarked Courlander contemptuously. “Open ‘er up.”

  The light was on again, like the previous time. But there was a great difference in the condition of the room. Young Hastings obviously hadn’t had Hopper’s personal neatness. Or else he’d been slightly lit up when he came in. The daytime clothes he’d discarded after coming back from the game were still strewn around, some on chairs, some on the floor. The St. Anselm didn’t employ maids to straighten the rooms after five in the evening. His patent-leathers lay yards apart as though they had been kicked off into the air and left lying where they had come down. His bat-wing tie was a black snake across the carpet. There was a depression and creases on the counterpane on top of the bed, but it hadn’t been turned down. He had therefore lain down on the bed, but not in it.

  On the dresser top stood a glittering little pouch, obviously a woman’s evening bag. Also his carnation, in a glass of water. Under that was the note. Possibly one of the shortest suicide notes on record. Three words. What’s the use?

  Courlander read it, nodded, showed it to them. “Well,” he said, “that tells the story.”

  He shrugged.

  In the silence that followed the remark, the phone rang sharply, unexpectedly. They all jolted a little, even Courlander. Although there was no body in the room and never had been, it was a dead man’s room. There was something macabre to the peal, like a desecration. The police dick halted Striker and the manager with a gesture.

  “May be somebody for him,” he said, and went over and took it. He said, “Hello?” in a wary, noncommittal voice. Then he changed to his own voice, said: “Oh. Have you told her yet? Well, send her up here. I’d like to talk to her.”

  He hung up, explained: “Girl he was out with tonight is down at the desk, came back to get her bag. He must have been carrying it for her. It has her latchkey in it and she couldn’t get into her own home.”

  Perry turned almost unconsciously and looked into the dresser mirror to see if he needed a shave. Then he fastidiously narrowed the neck opening of his dressing gown and smoothed the hair around the back of his head.

  The dick shoved Hastings’ discarded clothes out of sight on the closet floor. This was definitely not a murder case, so there was no reason to shock the person he was about to question, by the presence of the clothes.

  There was a short tense wait while she was coming up on the slow-motion elevator. Coming up to see someone that wasn’t there at all. Striker said rebukingly, “This is giving it to her awful sudden, if she was at all fond of the guy.” Courlander unwittingly gave an insight into his own character when he said callously, “These girls nowadays can take it better than we can—don’t worry.”

  The elevator panel ticked open, and then she came into the square of light thrown across the hall by the open doorway. She was a very pretty girl of about twenty-one or-two, tall and slim, with dark red hair, in a long white satin evening gown. Her eyes were wide with startled inquiry, at the sight of the three of them, but not frightened yet. Striker had seen her once before, when she was waiting for Hastings in the lobby earlier that evening. The other man of the original quartette had come up with her, no doubt for propriety’s sake, and was standing behind her. They had evidently seen the second girl home before coming back here. And the side street where he had fallen was around the corner from the main entrance to the hotel.

  She crossed the threshold, asked anxiously, “Is Allan—Is Mr. Hastings ill or something? The desk man said there’s been a little trouble up here.”

  Courlander said gently, “Yes, there has.” But he couldn’t make anything sound gentle.

  She looked around. She was starting to get frightened now. She said, “What’s happened to him? Where is he?” Then she saw the right half of the window standing open. Striker, who was closest to it, raised his arm and pushed it slowly closed. Then he just looked at her.

  She understood, and whimpered across her shoulder, “Oh, Marty!” and the man behind her put an arm around her shoulder to support her.

  They sat down. She didn’t cry much—just sat with her head bent looking over at the floor. Her escort stood behind her chair, hands on her shoulders, bucking her up. Courlander gave her a minute or two to pull herself together, then he started questioning. He asked them who they were. She gave her name. The man with her was her brother; he was Hastings’ classmate at Princeton.

  He asked if Hastings had had much to drink.

  “He had a few drinks,” she admitted, “but he wasn’t drunk. Mart and I had the same number he did, and we’re not drunk.” They obviously weren’t.

  “Do you know of any reason, either one of you, why he should have done this?”

  The thing had swamped them with its inexplicability, it was easy to see that. They just shook their heads dazedly.

  “Financial trouble?”

  The girl’s brother just laughed—mirthlessly. “He had a banking business to inherit, some day—if he’d lived.”

  “Ill health? Did he study too hard, maybe?”

  He laughed again, dismally. “He was captain of the hockey team, he was on the baseball team, he was the bright hope of the swimming team. Why should he worry about studying? Star athletes are never allowed to flunk.”

  “Love affair?” the tactless flatfoot blundered on.

  The brother flinched at that. This time it was the girl who answered. She raised her head in wounded pride, thrust out her left hand.

  “He asked me to marry him tonight. He gave me this ring. That was the reason for the party. Am I so hard to take?”

  The police dick got red. She stood up without waiting to ask whether she could go or not. “Take me h
ome, Mart,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’ve got some back crying to catch up on.”

  Striker called the brother back again for a minute, while she went on along toward the elevator; shoved the note before him. “Was that his handwriting?”

  He pored over it. “I can’t tell, just on the strength of those three words. I’ve never seen enough of it to know it very well. The only thing I’d know for sure would be his signature—he had a cockeyed way of ending it with a little pretzel twist—and that isn’t on there.” Over his shoulder, as he turned to go once more, he added: “That was a favorite catchword of his, though. ‘What’s the use?’ I’ve often heard him use it. I guess it’s him all right.”

  “We can check it by the register,” Striker suggested after they’d gone.

  The dick gave him a scathing look. “Is it your idea somebody else wrote his suicide note for him? That’s what I’d call service!”

  “Is it your idea he committed suicide the same night he got engaged to a production number like you just saw?”

  “Is it your idea he didn’t?”

  “Ye-es,” said Striker with heavy emphasis, “but I can’t back it up.”

  The register showed a variation between the two specimens of handwriting, but not more than could be ascribed to the tension and nervous excitement of a man about to end his life. There wasn’t enough to the note for a good handwriting expert to have got his teeth into with any degree of certainty.

  “How long had he been in when it happened?” Striker asked Maxon.

  “Not more than half an hour. Bob took him up a little before four.”

  “How’d he act? Down in the mouth, blue?”

  “Blue nothing, he was tappin’ out steps there on the mosaic, waitin’ for the car to take him up.”

  Bob, the night man-of-all-work, put in his two cents’ worth without being asked: “On the way up he said to me, “Think this thing’ll last till we get up there? I’d hate to have it drop me now. I got engaged tonight.”

  Striker flashed the police dick a triumphant look. The latter just stood by with the air of one indulging a precocious child. “Now ya through, little boy?” he demanded. “Why don’t you quit trying to make noise like a homicide dick and stick to your own little racket?