“My day off,” Curly said, and started away. He had a big bundle of laundry under his arm. Pete caught sight of him and came over.
“Your room on the second floor, Curly?” Pete said.
“Yeah,” said Curly, looking straight at Pete. “What about it?”
“East side, or west side?”
“East side.”
“Back?”
“That’s right.”
“You in it all night?”
“What’s it to you?”
Pete was a little embarrassed. He’d started out to play detective and then lost his nerve.
“Oh, nothin’, I was just wonderin’,” he said.
Curly started off again.
“Oh, Curly,” Pete said.
“Yeah?”
“You be around later?”
“Maybe.”
“You better drop in around noon. Man here may want to talk to you.”
“Yeah?”
Curly looked at Pete a moment and then went out, the bundle tight under his arm, letting the door slam behind him.
Harry came up then.
“Curly’s a pretty tough boy,” Harry said.
“Hmn,” said Pete.
“One mornin’,” Harry said, “Nancy was cleanin’ up and she found Curly’s sheet covered with blood. She come runnin’ down here and made a fuss, and when Curly come in that night I asked him about it. “’Twasn’t nothin’,’ he said. ‘Had a smashed fingernail, kept me awake. I took a knife I had up there and cut the damn thing off.’”
“Curly ever give you any real trouble?” Pete asked.
“Never. Curly is a nice, quiet boy.”
I grinned at that, thinking of the stories I’d heard about Curly. He’d go up to the City and set a whole jointful of the toughest mugs in town by the ears. But I guess that around Preston he was a quiet boy.
“You’d better get Jack Pritchard over here, too,” I said.
“He won’t like it,” Harry said.
“So what? Did you get that liquor?”
“Here.”
I took the two bottles.
“When the county law comes,” I said, “cooperate with them, but don’t go out of your way. I’m going back to the suite. If they want to see me, call me on the phone first.”
I went into the sitting room. I opened one of the bottles and got out two glasses. I rang for Dora and told her to get some ice cubes out and be ready to bring them in fast when I rang again. Then I sat down at the desk and got out some paper.
I began to write down everything that had happened from the time Pete brought those kids in early in the morning to the time I left Harry and Pete at the desk a few minutes before. I drew a little diagram of the murder room and listed everything I could remember seeing.
This was a tough job and I was only halfway through it at one o’clock when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I said.
It was Harry Baird.
“The District Attorney’s here,” he said.
“Weaver?”
Harry nodded.
“He bring a gang with him?”
“Four guys.”
“You take him up to Miss Mason’s room?”
“Yes.”
“You call Jack Pritchard?”
“I did. He said he’d be over.”
“All right. Go back to the desk and keep your eyes open.”
Harry closed the door. I went back to my job.
* * * *
The house phone on my desk rang. I picked it up. It was Harry.
“The District Attorney would like to see you now,” he said.
“Stall for about three minutes and send him in,” I said. “Don’t hang up yet. Pretend you’re still talking to me.”
I laid the phone down, picked up my story of recent events, the bottle of whisky and a bottle of mix, and rang for Dora. I went into Singer’s room. He was still sitting in his chair by the window reading one of his ancient books. I threw my papers into his lap.
“Here,” I said. “I wrote it all out for you. Now you got it in a book. Who killed the beautiful schoolteacher? And if you get interested—” Dora came in with a bowl of ice. I dropped some in Singer’s glass. “If you get interested, here’s something to wash it down with.”
Singer was shaking his head.
“No. It won’t work, Joe. I don’t want to get into—”
“All right,” I said. “Forget it.”
But I left the stuff with him and when I went out I didn’t close his door all the way. I left it open a crack.
The whisky was in case Singer got interested. He hated to get started on a murder case so much that he needed the liquor to bolster him up. It was the only time he ever drank. Then he really put it away. Still, I’ve never seen him drunk.
I took the bowl of ice back to the desk, put some in my glass and was mixing my drink when the door opened and four men came in. One of them was in uniform. Two were plain-clothes men and the fourth was the District Attorney—Gerald Weaver.
“Well, well,” I said. “The whole county government. Will somebody have a drink?”
The two plain-clothes men looked at Weaver. He shook his head and they looked at the bottle and shook their heads, too—slowly.
“Your name Joe Spinder?” Weaver asked.
“Yeah.”
“I want to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure,” I said. “But don’t be nasty about it. You’re a guest in this hotel.”
“I won’t be here long,” he said.
“That’s good.”
Weaver was a pompous little guy with a pot belly and pig eyes. I’d run into him a year before when Singer figured out for him who killed the man and wife in Montpelier. I hadn’t liked Weaver then and I didn’t like him now. Of course, I’ve got an ingrown prejudice against cops. Years of hoboing made me pretty sour.
“Sit down,” I said.
“You watch the door.” Weaver motioned to the uniformed cop, who set his back against the door to the lobby.
Weaver sat down in the leather chair by the window near Singer’s work table. The two dicks sat on the love seat on the other side of the table. They were all staring at me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“How long have you lived in Preston?” asked Weaver.
“Five years.”
“Been running this hotel all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you happen to come here?”
“I drifted in one day and it looked like a nice little place to settle down.”
“What were you doing before you came here?”
“Just traveling,” I said.
“Just a bum, eh? You spent your first night here in jail, didn’t you?”
I set my drink down on the desk and looked him over.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s going to be like that. Okay, I’m through. I’m willing to cooperate—to help solve the crime. But no goddam two-penny cop is going to push me around. You can stay out of my life and go on about your business.”
One of the dicks got up from the love seat, walked across the room and slugged me with the back of his hand. My chair tipped sideways and I got up and let it fall.
“Why, you dirty bastard!”
Just as I went for him he backed away, and Weaver said:
“Come back and sit down, Olson. We won’t have any trouble with this guy.”
“The hell you won’t.” I picked up my chair and sat down again. “You’re pretty cocky,” I said. “You talk like you’ve got this thing all figured out.”
“I think I have.”
“Yeah? Who killed her?”
“You.”
I took a long drink.
“You are nuts,” I said.
“Am I?” He leered at me. “Tell me—when did you and this Mason woman plan to get married?”
I could only stare at him.
“Well?”
“My God!” I said.
> “Answer the question,” Weaver snapped, pulling a paper out of his pocket. “When did you plan to get married?”
“You’re all wrong,” I said. “We’ve been married eighteen years. I met her in London back in the spring of ’ninety-eight. We went to Niagara Falls and then to Paris. Spent five years in Darkest Africa. I was looking for Livingstone at the time.”
“Very funny. Maybe you won’t feel so funny when you see this evidence. It’s a marriage license, made out in Montpelier for Marian Mason and Joe Spinder. Dated yesterday.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In the top bureau drawer in the dead girl’s room.”
I thought it over. “So I killed her?”
“I think you did,” Weaver said.
“So I was going to marry her in a couple of days and so I killed her.”
Olson got up again. I was so sore I couldn’t see straight. I poured out half a glass of bourbon and started to drink it neat.
“Why, you cheap half-baked lousy goddam two-faced pimply politician,” I said, “you haven’t got the sense of a pigeon. That is so ridiculous it stinks from here to Hollywood. I wouldn’t answer any more stupid questions for you if my life depended on it. And to start things off, you can get the hell out of here.”
Olson was standing by my chair.
“You keep your eye on him, Olson,” Weaver said. “Now then, when did you get home last night?”
“Get out of here,” I said. “Scram. Beat it, or I’ll fix it so you won’t have a job the rest of your life.”
“I should think,” he said, “that a man under suspicion, as you are, would be more careful—”
“Who’s under suspicion?”
Weaver was losing his temper, too.
“You killed Marian Mason.”
“Like hell I did.”
“Now you listen to me—”
And then suddenly there was a new voice, saying, “Gentlemen. Gentlemen, let’s be sensible about this thing.”
I looked. It was Singer Batts, standing in the doorway of his room, surveying us. In one hand he held the sheaf of papers I’d given him, and in the other, a drink. I could hear the ice tinkling in the glass. And when I saw that glass and heard that ice tinkling, I knew that from now on everything would be all right.
CHAPTER 4
Everybody was staring at Singer. Weaver was the first one to speak and all he said was, “Oh. It’s you.”
He remembered all right. A guy never likes somebody who does the work he gets the credit for, and Weaver took the credit in Montpelier for solving the crime that Singer really solved.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you,” Singer said. “It seems to me you were making some rather hasty assumptions.”
“Does it? I think I have plenty of reason to arrest Spinder, here, for murder.”
“Have you established the fact of murder?” Singer asked. “Have you held an inquest?”
“We’ll hold an inquest. Don’t worry. But that doesn’t have any bearing on my suspicions of Spinder.”
“I’m afraid you’d have a hard time building up a court case against Spinder.”
“Just what makes you think so?”
Singer lifted the papers I’d given him a few minutes before.
“I have here a complete record of certain events that have occurred in and around this hotel during the last ten hours.”
“How do you happen to have such a record?” Weaver asked, suspicious, his little pig eyes half closed.
In his quiet, easy way Singer said, “I am the owner of this hotel. I live in it. I have a certain interest in what takes place under my own roof. When a murder is committed in the hotel, I think I am within my rights in conducting an investigation.” That didn’t go down well with Weaver at all.
“So you’re going to play detective again.”
Singer smiled.
“Perhaps. I had determined to have nothing to do with this murder beyond cooperating with the law as a private citizen. I told Joe Spinder that I would not inject myself into it in any way. But I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“When I heard you making extravagant and ridiculous charges against Joe Spinder, I could no longer help myself. I was bound to come to Joe’s defense.” Weaver was running out of sarcasm and beginning to think it over.
“You have some reason,” he said, “to think Spinder is innocent?”
“I have every reason to think he is innocent and none whatever to think he is guilty. This report contains a good deal of food for thought. It suggests several lines of reasoning—all of which are extremely interesting and none of which points, even by the wildest stretch of the imagination, to Joe Spinder.”
Weaver sat down. “Let me see that report.”
Singer smiled again.
“Ah, no, Mr. Weaver. This is a confidential report, made for me alone. It contains information of a private nature which has no bearing on the murder.”
“You’re withholding evidence,” Weaver said. “A serious offense. Give me the report.”
Singer’s voice sharpened.
“I shall be glad to tell you all the facts I know that bear on the case,” he said. “But I will not give you this report, as written, and you know as well as I that I am not legally bound to.”
Weaver gave up. “All right. Tell me the facts.” Singer looked around the room.
“The place has the air of a prison. Please ask your ruffians to leave.”
The bruisers on the love seat began to pout. Weaver couldn’t make up his mind. So nobody moved. Singer shambled, stoop-shouldered and thin, across the room and opened the door. There was a dead pause for a full minute. Then Weaver’s head dropped forward. The two dicks got up and walked out and the cop in uniform followed them. Singer closed the door and turned back to Weaver.
“Well,” Weaver said, “now that you’ve fixed it up the way you want it, let’s have those facts you were talking about. Then I can go about my business.”
“It won’t take long,” Singer said. “Joe will correct me if I’m wrong…
“At two-forty-five this morning our local constable brought two boys to the hotel and asked Joe to put them up for the night. They had been out on the street, carousing and Pete—our village policeman—didn’t want to put them in jail.”
“That’s what jails are for,” Weaver said.
Singer smiled.
“Of course,” he said. “Joe agreed and he and Pete took the boys upstairs and put them to bed.”
It was right about in here that I began to hear the strange sound. I’m pretty sensitive to any kind of noise in the hotel, and especially to unusual ones. It’s my job.
I knew all about what Singer was telling Weaver and I knew he wouldn’t make any mistakes. So I gave my attention to these noises.
They were faint and far away. I don’t think Singer and Weaver heard them. They came from underneath us, from the cellar under the hotel. I could tell they were coming from the old section of the cellar that we didn’t use any more. The furnace and storeroom were on the other side of the building. That’s why the sounds were unusual. There wasn’t any reason for anybody or anything to be down there.
It sounded like somebody hauling stuff across the floor. There would be a long, slow, faint scraping sound. Then it would stop, and after a minute there would be another. Then some dull thuds—very faint.
I listened. It got under my skin and I got up and went to the door.
“Excuse me,” I said to Singer, “you’re doing all right.”
“Just a minute,” Weaver said. “Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d go play a little bridge with your three stooges,” I said.
“You’re under suspicion, Spinder,” Weaver said. “I’m forced to restrict your movements until the suspicions have been cleared up.”
“Come now, Mr. Weaver,” said Singer. “You have men to guard the hotel. I give you my assurance that Joe will not try to make his escape. The manag
ement of a hotel entails constant vigilance. You surely will permit us to keep our business running.”
Weaver tried to argue, but couldn’t. Singer didn’t leave him any room. Finally Weaver said, “Well—don’t leave the hotel.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I went out to the lobby.
Weaver’s three stooges were gathered around the desk, throwing questions at Harry Baird. Harry kept trying to go to sleep. But they wouldn’t let him. They all looked at me when I came through the door, but nobody said anything.
I went back to the kitchen and through the kitchen to the shed at the back end of the building where the cellar door was. Just inside the cellar door I pushed back a section in the stair rail and hauled out my flashlight. I keep it in that hiding place so I’ll always have it when I need it.
At the bottom of the steps on the east side of the building was the furnace room and coal bin. On the west side was a storage room. These rooms had been floored, and finished off with plaster. But beyond them toward the front of the building it was all just excavation, some pilings, and stone walls and dirt floor, with planks here and there where it was a little damp. Every once in a while there would be a narrow little window just above the ground level. But the windows were too dirty to let any light in. The place was a regular dungeon.
I had heard the sounds again when I went down the steps and as I passed the boiler room, but when I stepped into the old section of the cellar and flashed my light around they stopped. My flashlight wouldn’t reach to the far corners of the big chamber, so I started across a piece of planking toward the front.
Something swished past my face and I ducked and lost my balance and stepped off the plank into mud. I had the hell scared out of me and my heart was pounding like a punch press when I got back on the plank. I flashed my light around the walls near me and then began to breathe easier.
“Goddam,” I said aloud. “Bats. Bats in the basement.” I laughed.
My voice sounded hollow and silly down there, so I stopped making comments and began to move again. After a few steps I ran out of plank. I stood on the end of it, wondering whether it was worthwhile to go any farther and poking around with my light, and suddenly I heard something, different from the first sounds I’d heard—a sort of clomp-clomp, like somebody walking in the mud. It seemed to come from my right and a little behind me.
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