Fifth Key

by George Harmon Coxe

  He gave the order and then telephoned Dale Jordan again at her home and Sheila’s and the office. He hung up, took off his coat, and gave Lois Edwards a cigarette.

  When she had a light she said, “It’s about that handkerchief you had. I lied to you about that.” She paused, her glance avoiding him. She cleared her throat, and her voice was quiet. “I came to ask if I could have it. It’s mine, you see.”

  A knock at the door punctuated the statement, and Murdock got up and let the waiter in. When he had signed the check and the waiter had gone, he gave Lois her drink. She watched it but did not take any.

  “You knew that, didn’t you?” she said.

  “You lost it when you moved Sheila. I found it in the closet.”

  “But how could you know it was mine? Then, I mean?”

  “I didn’t. I found out what kind of perfume it was, and Sheila didn’t use that kind so I started to check. I happened to call on you first.”

  “I went there that morning early. About eight-thirty,” she said. “Because I wanted to tell her that if she didn’t give Owen his divorce as she’d promised I would—”

  She let that one the, and Murdock said, “You’d what?”

  “I—I don’t know. I thought I could make Owen try to get the divorce and I was going to tell her so, tell her he had plenty of grounds and could prove it if he had to.”

  She glanced up, straightening her shoulders as she took a breath. “It doesn’t matter, does it? What I was going to do. I didn’t kill her. She was dead when I got there, and all I could think of then was that it mustn’t stop the show from selling. I didn’t know who killed her, nor care. Not then, anyway.”

  “You telephoned the maid.”

  “Yes.” She put her drink aside untasted. “May I have the handkerchief?” she said.

  Murdock shook his head. “I haven’t got it.” He waited, seeing the slow tightening of her lips, knowing she did not believe him.

  “Do you think I killed her?”

  “I don’t know,” Murdock said. “You had as good a motive as anyone else.” He drank the rest of his drink. And anyway what I think isn’t important. It’s what the police think.”

  He watched the dark lights glisten in her auburn hair and inspected frankly her milky skin, speculating upon the softness of her wide mobile mouth and liking the intelligence of her deep and well-spaced eyes. He found himself wondering again if she could have killed Sheila. The necessary ingredients of nerve and courage were there in her make-up, but he did not think she was guilty, and knew that even if she were he wanted her to get away with it.

  “You’re very lovely,” he said. “Owen’s a lucky guy. And I wouldn’t worry about the handkerchief.”

  His digression and the sincerity of his compliment surprised her, and a touch of pink spread through her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, and gathered her coat about her.

  “You can believe I lost it or not,” he added, knowing it would do no good to relate how the handkerchief had been taken from him, since the facts were less believable than a flat denial, “but you must know I can’t use it now. If I had turned it over to Devlin you would have heard about it. And you haven’t, have you?”

  She rose, collecting her gloves and bag. He went over and opened the door. When she looked at him there was understanding in her eyes, and her face was composed and at ease.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t taste my drink,” she said. “Will you finish it for me? And thank you.”

  Murdock went to the window and took a swallow of the highball. The woman’s fragrance still hung in the air, and as he sat down he realized how attracted and impressed he had been. He got her out of his mind by thinking again of others who had wanted Sheila Vincent dead and that brought him inevitably to Miriam Stark. When he had worked himself up to the proper degree of confidence he went to the telephone and asked for long-distance; he said he wanted to get the Mountain Inn at Reno, Nevada.

  Ordering dinner served in his room so that he would be on hand when the call was completed, he ate hungrily and settled down to wait. It was eight-twenty when the operator rang him and said his Reno call was ready.

  An assistant manager answered, and Murdock, knowing that one more infraction of the law would be unimportant in the light of the more severe penalties hanging over him, said, “This is Captain Carney of the New York City police. I’m calling about a Mrs. George Stark who’s been staying with you.”

  “Oh, yes, Captain,” the voice said. “Have you any connection with a Lieutenant Devlin who called this afternoon?”

  Murdock cleared his throat. I should have known it, he thought, and then said, “Ah—yes. We’re both attached to the same department. I just want to recheck a few details.”

  And then, sounding as official as possible, he asked when Mrs. Stark arrived, when she left. He wanted the day and hour of her departure, her means of getting to the airport, and the scheduled time of take-off of her plane. He threw in a few more likely questions to make the call sound important, and when he hung up he knew that Devlin was now in a position to prove that Miriam Stark had indeed left Reno in time to be in New York the evening Sheila Vincent was murdered.

  14

  IT WAS TWENTY MINUTES OF NINE when Kent Murdock left the hotel, and this time he remembered the man who had followed him and decided to dispense with him before he called on Rudy Nagle. He did not glance about as he stepped out on the street, but turned right and walked briskly to the subway entrance at Fifty-First Street.

  He went down the steps, past the change booth, and pushed through the turnstile, angling to the left and the rear of the platform as he went down the remaining few steps. There was no train in sight, and he stood for a while at the newsstand, examining the magazines and pocket-size books, his back to the track. It was a simple matter then to get a corner-of-the-eye glimpse of the platform without appearing to and it was no surprise to find his swart, thick-necked friend idling beside a pillar opposite the stairs.

  An uptown train rumbled into the station and ground to a stop across the way, and as it pulled out twin lights rocked down the track, and the downtown train slammed past him and halted its rear car opposite him. He stepped into the front door, noticing as he did so that his shadow had hurried back to get into the car ahead.

  Murdock waited in the vestibule, his eye on the trainman perched between the two cars. After that it was very simple, for when the man pushed the control operating the doors Murdock stepped out, the rubber edge of the door brushing lightly past his shoulder.

  The trainman made an uncomplimentary remark as the train started. Murdock grinned at him. He did not know whether his late shadow could see him or not but he obeyed his impulse and tipped his hat to the departing train, ran up the stairs, and got into a taxi which had parked beside the newsstand.

  It was two minutes of nine by an electric sign in Times Square when Murdock turned down the street where Rudy Nagle had his office, and once away from the corner the sidewalk seemed darker and doorways more shadowy in spite of the few small neon signs that gleamed from façades and windows.

  The secondhand bookshop was closed now, and the cafeteria looked even more discouraging in the artificial light. The doorway itself was black, with Rudy’s shingle no longer discernible, but somewhere above a light burned, for there was a dim glow visible at the head of the stairs.

  He was not sure just how he intended to handle Nagle or what he expected to prove. He had no more money now than he had that morning, but he could make another token payment if necessary. What he really wanted to know was the identity of Myron Wortman and he was willing to pay something for this regardless of what happened to the pictures Nagle had taken.

  Now, as his steps echoed hollowly through the hall, he had a feeling that this time the visit would be worth while and as he reached the plain wooden door he knocked again as he had that afternoon.

  The shadows were thick here, since there was no light save the single bulb above the landing, but he could st
ill see Nagle’s name on the door and when he got no answer he tried the knob and again found that it turned under his hand.

  He pushed forward, this time into darkness, and took one step beyond. What little light there was spilled past him tepidly, and he saw a chair and the edge of the desk which angled in front of the window. Then he spoke aloud, asking if anyone was there, and took another step, seeing now the lamp upon the desk.

  He never knew what made him stop. That afternoon when two men had been waiting he’d had no premonition of their presence; now, in the very instant of moving, something happened inside him. One moment he was intent upon reaching the light; in the next he had stiffened, every muscle tense and some intuitive force he could not explain warning him that danger was close.

  It shocked him strangely, so acute was the warning, and even as he thought about it he sensed rather than heard the movement beside him and turned instantly toward it, instinct telling him he was not alone.

  But even to turn took time and there was none left. He threw up one arm blindly, knowing now that someone had waited behind the door exactly as it happened hours earlier.

  He tried to duck. He felt the stir of air close by and by some magic of vision caught a blur of motion in the wretched light from the hall; then a fist smashed solidly against the side of his jaw, and he went back, stumbling, off balance and fighting to regain it.

  He took a frantic backward step and started another, still not seeing anything but the vague shadow by the door, and then a chair caught the back of his legs and he was falling. As he struck heavily on one arm and shoulder he heard the door slam and the darkness closed in on him.

  It seemed then that it took him forever to untangle himself, to kick the chair aside and get his feet under him. In reality it was perhaps three seconds before he could stand, another two before he could grope his way to the door.

  And in that he was fortunate. For a door opening makes a sound, and the intruder must have heard it and been warned. Murdock, not thinking or perhaps not caring, started through the opening and what happened then proved that his luck was not all bad.

  He did not reach the hall, not then. He did not even get a chance to look down its length. For it was then, as he poked his nose out, that the slug smacked into the woodwork inches from his head and the gun hammered in the hall.

  Later Murdock had reason to be grateful for the seconds he had wasted. Had he been quicker, the range would have been correspondingly shorter and perhaps more deadly, but he did not think of this now but recoiled instantly, reeling back and ducking low. Held there by the threat of the gun, he saw vaguely the ugly hole in the casing and so, not daring to stick his neck out, he listened, hearing the steps on the stairs now, not the hurrying steps of a man in flight, but cautious ones, as though the gunman was retreating backward, his eye on the doorway.

  Not until he heard the faint tapping sequence, which in his mind’s eye told him the gunman was running down the last few steps, did Murdock move into the hall, and then he was running, too, gaining the head of the stairs and starting down until, halfway to the vestibule, common sense saved him further effort.

  He stopped, knowing that the seconds he had been forced to wait in the shelter of the doorway were too great a handicap. Below him the entryway was empty. Two men walked past, the lower half of their legs visible. A woman came by from the other direction, skirt swinging. Murdock turned wearily and let his breath out, a little amazed that no one had paid any attention to the shot.

  He climbed five steps and went along the hall, his head throbbing a little now and the tension coming back as his mind began to speculate. He flexed his jaw, and it worked. He stopped at the open door, his eye flicking past the splintered hole in the edge of the casing and telling him again that his luck, after all, had been good. He left the door part way open to take advantage of what light there was, found the desk light, and snapped it on. Then he saw Rudy Nagle.

  Rudy sat in his desk chair, one arm dangling, his face on the desk top, the neck twisted so that the head turned sideways.

  The upturned cheek was a pasty white in the bright glare of the lamp. The back of the head was in shadow, but Murdock saw the forehead clearly as he started slowly around the desk. Almost in the center was a small, dark-rimmed hole.

  There was no blood at all on the face. What the back of the head might reveal, was a subject he did not explore.

  It took him a few seconds to do anything more, now that he knew what had happened, but presently he moved closer and leaned down, finding Nagle’s right arm bent under him, the hand wedged in the partly-open drawer. By moving the body slightly he saw that the hand rested on an automatic pistol. Then he knew the killer had sat or stood opposite the detective and shot him before Nagle could get his own gun out.

  He straightened and glanced about, finding the shadows made the room look smaller and more cluttered than it had that afternoon. When he saw the doorway to the darkroom he started for it, drawing on his gloves before he touched the light switch.

  It was a different darkroom now. It was a mess. Drawers had been pulled from cabinets and emptied on the floor, and prints and negatives were strewn all over the place. Murdock started to examine some of these until he remembered it would not do him any good; then he turned off the light and went back to the office, his thoughts bogging down in weariness and dejection, his jaw still sore.

  What he had suspected that morning seemed a certainty now. Nagle had spent a lot of time outside Sheila’s apartment that first night and it seemed now that he had used the camera at least once out on the street.

  It had been his intention all along to collect his petty blackmail from more than one source, and he had made the mistake of letting his greed warp his judgment. For the killer had come prepared to pay off—with a slug instead of cash.

  As he stood there, thinking hard, his mind slid back to an idea that had been dormant most of the day. Upon consideration it took on a new and sharper aspect, and he stepped quickly to the desk and reached carefully up under Nagle’s body until he could slip the wallet from the inside coat pocket. In the bill compartment he found forty-odd dollars and a check. The check was made out to Rudolph Nagle to the amount of one hundred dollars. It was signed by Owen Faulkner.

  Murdock put the wallet back but he did not rise; instead he slapped the dead man’s trousers’ pockets, feeling the outline of some keys in the right one. It took him a while to remove them without displacing the body but he finally made it, and it was worth the effort. There were five keys on the ring, a single door key. On the top this key had a V-shaped cut.

  He took time to replace the keys before he rose and then he stood there, an odd stiffness in his back, his eyes darkly brooding. Inside his gloves his hands were damp, and the room was suddenly close and oppressive. For another moment he waited as his mind fitted other details into place; then he snapped off the desk light and felt his way to the door.

  He found the knob but he did not turn it. He stood still, hand tightening, for it was in that same instant that he heard the steps upon the stairs.

  Carefully, so as not to rattle it, he released the knob. He leaned close, breath held again and ear to the crack. Across his back the muscles began to tighten, for the steps were more distinct and by their sound he visualized their progress up the stairs and along the hall, moving toward him now in a quick, even sequence.

  Silently then, some premonition telling him the steps would stop outside the door, he moved back and now there was no tension in him but only a prickle of excitement that left him poised and oddly confident. The steps faltered near the door as he knew they would. When they stopped he moved swiftly sideways.

  The knock sounded loud against the background of stillness. He turned to get his back against the wall, remembering how the opening door had shielded the others.

  The knob turned, the latch clicked back. A current of air swirled lightly across the floor as the door opened, and he waited, seeing the panel swing and the light from t
he hall slide across a threadbare rug and widen slowly into a broad rectangle.

  He set himself. He slid one foot forward so he could grab quickly. He waited, hearing now the sound of hurried breathing, his impatience growing as the person stopped on the threshold, still hidden by the door.

  There was a whisper of movement. Someone edged forward and stopped. The voice came as Murdock made up his mind. It was just as well, because he was impatient with waiting and ready for action.

  “Are you there, Mr. Nagle?”

  It was a woman’s voice, an anxious, uncertain voice, and Murdock recognized it and stopped in time. He stepped out and reached forward, his hand gentle.

  “It’s Murdock, Mrs. Stark,” he said. He heard her gasp and start to cry out and said, “It’s all right. Don’t be frightened. I didn’t know who it was.”

  He had her arm then, feeling its taut hardness beneath the fabric of her coat.

  “Oh,” she said. “I—”

  “I’ll turn on a light,” Murdock said. “You’d better come in and close the door.”

  He switched the desk lamp on. Miriam Stark stood there blinking, and Murdock was between her and the desk and she did not see Nagle at first. She closed the door, watching him worriedly, not knowing what to do.

  “Isn’t Mr. Nagle here?”

  “Yes,” Murdock said, knowing no other way and standing aside. “He’s here. He was like that when I came.”

  She did not understand at first. She took a tentative step, her upward-slanting brows climbing, eyes staring. Then she caught her breath, and in the glare of the desk light her face was suddenly chalky and sick. Murdock took her arm again.

  “You’d better sit down,” he said.

  “He’s dead,” Miriam Stark said, her voice hushed.

  “Shot,” Murdock said. “There’s nothing we can do. Just sit down for a minute.” When she did not move he put pressure on her arm and made his voice blunt. “Sit down. We’d better have a little talk before we get the police.”