Spence: I’m getting scared sitting here alone and I don’t like to keep Charlie waiting when I don’t know how long you’ll be. So I’m going back to your room. Maybe I’ll get there before you get the other note from Victor but if you should come here you’ll know where I am.
Marie
Rankin was out on the street before his brain really functioned and he realized that this note was not good news but bad. Marie had left it for him and whoever had come then to search the house had found it—and knew where she was!
He looked at his watch as he told the carromata driver to step on it. It was then four twenty-five. He had been here perhaps twenty minutes, not longer, and that meant he had missed Marie by no more than twenty-five minutes; had missed the one who had crumpled the note by minutes only.
The driver did very well; he worked with the whip frequently, though he said this was distasteful to him and only the need for speed—and the bonus involved—allowed him to use such tactics. Rankin urged him on and the urgency was riding him too, the tension inside him winding tighter with each block. He thought about Charlie Love and found comfort in the idea that nothing could happen with Charlie around, and when, approaching the café, he saw the familiar sedan at the curb he felt immeasurably better. He paid the driver, his relief making him add a tip to the bonus, and told him he’d done a fine job.
By that time he knew the sedan was unoccupied, and he stuck his nose into the café to see if Charlie was there. Victor caught his eye and signaled and Rankin hurried over. Victor had not seen Charlie.
“But Miss Dizon came back,” he said. “She said she wanted to wait in your room and I thought it would be all right. I sent a boy up with a key.”
Rankin said that was fine and went out. He did not think going up the stairs; he did not want to think until he was sure about Marie. Especially he did not want to think about the crumpled note.
The door was unlocked. He opened it quickly, saying, “Marie,” before he was inside. Then, just over the threshold, he stopped, the door half open behind him.
Marie waited for him in the dingy room. She was on the floor, face down, her thin small body crumpled and still, her yellow-straw handbag open beside her and partly hiding the dark stain on the floor. Marie was dead.
17
VOICES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HALL STAIRS finally startled Spence Rankin into movement. The sound of steps knifed into his consciousness and broke the shocked immobility of his mind and body, counteracting the locked muscles and giving his brain and reflexes a chance.
He found himself clinging to the doorknob. He saw the door was still half open, the key fitted on the inside, and he moved swiftly, not bothering to glance into the hall but pushing the door shut and locking it before he turned away.
Reaction came quickly then and he fought against his mounting sickness by going to the shutter and opening it wide. The emptiness in his stomach verged on nausea and as he started to get a bottle of Scotch he saw that this room, like Marie’s house, had been searched.
He got the bottle open and sat down on the bed, his hands trembling and the perspiration trickling down his sides. He took a long drink and corked the bottle and only then was he ready to look at Marie Dizon and face the thing that had happened to her.
He felt her wrist to make sure there was no pulse, and it was warm and limp and pitifully frail. Then, as his eyes moved on, he found something odd about the way her dress lay across her shoulders and by bending closer he discovered it had been ripped in the front. He made himself look in the bag. The money he had given her was there but no gun, neither the little one she had had the other night nor the .32 she had taken from the Sanchez study and had not—so her note said—replaced.
He straightened in the hot and stuffy room and looked absently for a telephone before he realized there was none. Then, wearily, he unlocked the door and started along the empty hall and down the stairs.
A glance at his watch told him it was five o’clock. The street lay in shadow, the sidewalk under the arched overhang gloomy and quick with life. He stood a moment in the narrow doorway, unaware of the movement about him until he saw Charlie Love’s empty sedan. Then, before he could wonder about it, he noticed the chunky man in the neat khaki suit and wide-brimmed hat.
What Spence Rankin did then was without premeditation. He had no idea of what he intended to accomplish. But this was the man who had followed him at least twice before; the man he had knocked down the other night after nearly getting his neck broken. And here he was again, leaning against a stone upright, straightening as he saw Rankin move toward him.
Rankin kept going, feeling the violence mushroom within and no longer able to suppress it. For somehow in the turmoil of his mind the man had become an evil symbol that must be dealt with before it was too late. It was time to make him talk, to find out who had hired him and why.
He was only a step away when the man reacted and there could have been no doubt in his mind about Rankin, whose body was set and moving fast. Measuring the distance and the hard and unpleasant eyes, the man took a backward step, bracing himself, his hand inside his coat. When the hand came up it held a gun.
Rankin checked his rush, vaguely aware that the sidewalk traffic had stopped about him and hearing some cry of warning. Then the man opened his coat and held it back and Rankin saw the bright metal badge pinned there.
The man in khaki waited, his gun hand steady, his gaze wary. Rankin stopped, transfixed and eyes bulging. He leaned forward, reading the letters, seeing something that spelled Ma-n-i-l-a and P-o-l-i-c-e.
He did not know what he said then nor could he remember how he felt, but somehow he had the man by the arm and was dragging him toward the stairs, the other making no protest as he sensed the urgency of the moment.
There, in the little entryway where no one else could hear, with the people moving along the sidewalk again and paying them no attention, Rankin spoke his piece and only when he questioned this man, who said his name was Silvestre, did he appreciate his extreme good fortune.
“You’ve been following me ever since that first day?” he said.
“Almost constantly.”
“And today—?”
“The same.”
Rankin said, “Ahh,” in relief. “Then you know I couldn’t have killed her.”
“If she has been dead more than ten minutes this is so,” Silvestre said. “I will get Sergeant Esteban, as you suggest.”
Within an hour Sergeant Esteban and his men had made their examination and established the salient points of the murder. Now, sitting alone with Spence Rankin, he examined the facts in his possession.
Thanks to Silvestre’s story, Rankin was in the clear, and it was known that Marie Dizon had been killed between four ten and four fifty. The .25 automatic with which she had once threatened Rankin had been found under her body, but it had not been fired.
She had been shot once through the heart, and though there was no gun in the room, an empty .32 shell had been found, indicating that an automatic had been used; when the slug was recovered from her body they would know if it was the same gun that had killed Ulio Kane.
In addition to these points, they knew the room had been searched and so had Marie Dizon—either before or after she was killed—for not only the front of her dress had been torn but so had her brassiere. They did not know what the killer had been after, though it may have been a gun, but the thing that bothered Rankin most was Charlie Love’s disappearance. No one had seen him since noon and yet the keys to his car were found in Marie’s handbag, suggesting that she had driven the sedan to its present place in front of the café.
Rankin mentioned this now but Esteban continued to worry about the missing gun and the story Rankin had told him. “It was a foolish thing, taking that gun from Sanchez’s house.”
Rankin’s eyes were dark and brooding. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees and hands dangling. “I know it,” he said listlessly. “I should n
ever have let her—”
“It’s not that, though it was a police matter; it is that you did not tell her she was not to touch it that makes the difficulty.” Esteban was not angry. There seemed instead a sort of sadness in his broad-cheekboned face, as though he felt that he had failed in his duty. “If I had only known this I could then have got a warrant. We could have convicted Sanchez, I think.”
“You could have searched the house before, couldn’t you?”
“Not the Sanchez house.” Esteban moved his shoulders. “I am sorry to say this but it is true. No one in this city would issue such a warrant without some proof that he had murdered Ulio Kane. No, Sanchez is too—” he groped for a word—“much what you call the big shot.”
“She had the gun in her bag this morning,” Rankin said. “If she still had it the killer used it on her and took it.”
“I will know shortly about the post-mortem. Then we will be sure about the gun. Until then I will assume it is the same. I believe Marie Dizon was careless and the killer discovered that she had the gun and went to look for her.”
“Why should Sanchez look for the gun unless it was in his possession or in his house? You couldn’t trace it to him, could you?”
“Who knows?” Esteban wrinkled his brow, the slant of his eyes increasing. “A murderer often has a guilty conscience. He might not have stopped to consider if the gun could be traced, as you say. He went to Marie Dizon’s house and searched it and found the note she left for you. He came here and found her. We cannot tell whether she tried to hold him off with her own gun, since it may have been spilled from her bag later, but it is plain what happened after that.”
Rankin stood up and took a drink after he had offered one to Esteban and been refused. He put the bottle away, the restlessness and frustration harassing him.
“We could go see Sanchez,” he said.
“We could, though I do not think—”
“Well, what the hell do you think?” Rankin stormed, his self-control crumbling. “What are you doing about it? Why don’t you—” He stopped, hating the sound of his voice and ashamed of the outburst. “Sorry,” he said. “Forget it.”
Esteban sighed and got up. “It is all right, Mr. Rankin. I understand how you feel. We are questioning those on Marie Dizon’s street to see who called there this afternoon. We are trying to locate Charlie Love. If you like, you can go with me now to see Pascual Sanchez.”
Sergeant Esteban parked the police car in front of the steps and walked with Spence Rankin to the open porch as the wrinkled Chinese maid came padding across the floor to meet them.
“Is not here,” she said when Esteban asked for Sanchez. “No.” She shook her head determinedly when he asked if she knew when Sanchez would be back.
A man moved out of the gloomy interior, attracted by the talk. He had a white houseboy’s coat on but a man’s face, sullen and suspicious: He added his negative to the woman’s and offered nothing else.
Esteban displayed his shield and the two glanced once and watched him impassively. Esteban gave Rankin a slanting inspection and shrugged. “I may hear about this tomorrow,” he said with some regret. “But I feel I should be sure. I want to use the telephone,” he said to the crone.
She shook her head but Esteban was. moving and the other man did not touch him as he passed. Rankin kept step and Esteban spoke under his breath, asking where the desk was in which Marie had found the gun.
He went into the study and closed the door while Rankin waited in front of it. The two servants remained in the center of the room watching him and on an impulse he asked if Lynn Kane was home.
“No,” the man said, bluntly omitting the sir.
“Do you know Miss Dizon? Was she here today?”
The man spoke in Tagalog to the woman, nodding when she replied. “No,” he said. “Not here.”
Esteban came out of the study. He thanked the woman for the use of the telephone. “There is an expression I have learned from your soldiers,” he said when they were in the car. “It is ‘no dice.’ I will let you know about the bullet as soon as we recover it from the body,” he said, and let out the clutch.
18
THERE WAS A LIGHT ON in the office of the American Press Bureau when Spence Rankin went in at seven o’clock to find Jerry Walsh pounding out some copy with the help of a sandwich and a beer.
“Hi,” he said, squinting past the desk light; then added, “Say, you haven’t seen Lynn, have you?”
“Not since after lunch.”
“Funny.” Walsh picked up his beer and inspected the bottle with concern. “She was working on a story. She went out with you and came back and worked some more on it, and then said she was going out for a while but would be back to finish it before six.”
Rankin sat down and tried not to think. He concentrated on the wall calendar and realized it was the first day of the month. He thought back, counting the days since he had met Ulio. He heard Walsh speak and said, “What?”
“I said she never did it before. Hold me up on a piece. Well—” Walsh scratched his thinning hair and Rankin said:
“Where could I find Howard Austin—if he isn’t in his office?” He watched Walsh jot down an address. “Did you know his secretary?” he said. “Marie Dizon? She was murdered this afternoon.”
“The hell you say?” Walsh put down his beer. “When? Where?”
Rankin told him. He stood up, the fatigue reacting to keep dormant the seed of fear that had been planted in his brain. “You don’t get much coverage here, do you?” he said.
“Not as much as I’d like. But I should have heard—” Walsh stopped, his wrinkles deepening. “Look, pal, would this have anything to do with what happened to Ulio Kane?”
Rankin said he wouldn’t know. He watched Walsh reach for the telephone and heard him talking. He watched Walsh signal him to sit down when he started to leave but he didn’t want to talk to Walsh. He went out and down the stairs and into Charlie Love’s sedan and drove to Howard Austin’s office building.
He had not expected to find anyone here but he remembered the office fronted the street and there was a light on so he went up to find Austin with his feet on the desk, a leghorn hat tipped back on his blond head, and trouble written all over his face.
Austin had no toothy smile to offer but watched somberly as Rankin came up to the desk, not speaking until Rankin asked if he had heard about Marie Dizon. Austin nodded, his voice heavy.
“Sergeant Esteban just left. Why?” he said presently. “What had Marie done to anyone? She wouldn’t hurt a fly unless—she couldn’t have got some lead about Ulio, could she?” he added quickly. “Do you think she got something on Sanchez and got caught?”
Rankin fanned his coat out and sat down. He was cold and upset inside and his head ached and he didn’t want to talk. He said he didn’t know. He said he thought Sanchez killed her but a lot of good it did to think that when you couldn’t prove anything.
“Have you seen Lynn?” he said.
“No.” Austin slumped lower in the chair and the worry in his eyes got worse. “I was going to ask you.”
“Walsh hasn’t seen her either.”
“I had a date,” Austin said. “I was going to pick her up at the house at five thirty. There wasn’t anybody there but the servants.”
“I was there a little after six.”
“But where could she be?” Austin swiveled his legs off the desk. “Christ, Spence, I’m worried. You want to ride out with me?”
“Okay,” Rankin said.
The Sanchez house had a nobody-home look about it when Spence Rankin swung the car up the driveway. No light came from the side rooms and the single ceiling lamp in the middle of the great hall left most of it in shadow. Yet the Chinese crone came out of those shadows to meet them at the top step just as she had met Rankin and Esteban.
Austin said hello and was Lynn home yet. The woman shook her head and the white-coated man came silently up to join her and do the talking.
“Out.”
“Then we’ll wait.” Austin turned to Rankin. “Do you want to, for a little while?”
The houseman made no objection when they sat down but he and the woman retreated to the railing and stood waiting, watching, not moving, until Rankin could feel their hostile stares.
Austin began to talk in low tones about Marie. He speculated and asked questions and passed on the things that Esteban had said. Rankin was noncommittal, saying that obviously she had been looking for him but he did not know why. He could not even guess how she happened to have Charlie Love’s sedan; he only knew that if he had been a little sooner he might have walked in on the killer.
There was nearly an hour of this talk and finally the steady inspection of the servants got on his nerves. “Let’s get out,” he said. “I haven’t eaten. We can come back.”
Austin left reluctantly, saying he was not hungry, and they drove downtown to a place he knew and had two cocktails apiece. It was after nine then and when they had put away their dinner and coffee it was ten.
They reached the Sanchez house at ten thirty. It had the same look, the same light and shadows, the same servants. When the answers were the same Austin lost his temper and Rankin took his arm and calmed him down.
“Take it easy,” he said. “This is no good. They’ve got their orders. Come on,” he said. “We can come back.”
They did come back at eleven thirty and when they finally left, Rankin’s nerves were ragged and Austin was nearly frantic. He had trouble lighting a cigarette in the car and all the way to town he muttered imprecations at the city and the Philippines and especially at Sanchez.
“I’ll kill him,” he said, not raging now but coldly earnest. “If he’s done anything to Lynn I shall probably kill him.”
He had left his car parked near his office and when Rankin let him out, Austin turned and said he had twin beds in his room and would Rankin mind spending the night.
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