Red Gardenias bc-5

by Jonathan Latimer

  A man was standing beside the bed. He must have come through the door on rubber-soled shoes, have tiptoed to the bed. Noiselessly, he put a black bag on the table under the shadow; only his hands were visible.

  Hardly breathing, Crane remained motionless.

  In the lime-colored rays from the lamp the hands were an unhealthy white. Sparse black hair grew from the wrists to the knuckles, sprouted in tufts from the fingers. The fingers were strong and supple. They opened the black case and withdrew an atomizer with a metal snout and an egg-size rubber bulb. This they put on the table, then returned to the bag. Without haste, but quickly, they emerged with a silver hypodermic syringe.

  The right hand held the syringe between the first two fingers. The thumb pressed the plunger a fraction of an inch and fluid bubbled from the needle, fell in two drops to the table.

  "Aaaaaaaanaaahaa," moaned Simeon March.

  The man in the room moved closer to the bed. He held the hypodermic syringe in his right hand; with his left hand he reached for Simeon March s arm.

  "No!" Crane flung himself off the chair, jerked out the revolver. "I ve got you covered! Don t move!"

  Simultaneously, the lights flashed on. Crane aimed the revolver at the man. Miss Edens stood by the door, her left hand on the light switch.

  Holding the hypodermic syringe, Dr Woodrin blinked at them, his pink-and-white face astonished and alarmed. "My God!" he exclaimed. "You gave me a start." He bent over Simeon March and gave him an injection with the syringe. "I thought you were both in the anteroom."

  Crane said, "I thought it was better to wait in the same room."

  "How is he, Doctor?" Miss Edens asked.

  Dr Woodrin put the syringe and the atomizer in the black bag. "The next hour or two will tell. I think he ll live, but how the morning paper can be so sure is beyond me."

  "Newspapers are that way," Crane said. "But maybe the murderer will believe them."

  The white skin over the doctor s nose wrinkled in two V s when he thought. "If there is a murderer… You know I really think these deaths were accidental."

  "Maybe you re right," Crane said. "We ll see. If there was a murderer he won t want Simeon March to recover, particularly if the old man saw him."

  "That s reasonable enough." Dr Woodrin picked up the bag. "Good luck. If you need me I ll be downstairs with Peter and Carmel."

  With the room dark, it didn t take Crane long to become thoroughly nervous again. The encounter with the doctor, although it was all right, hadn t been quieting. He shuddered when he thought of the weird effect made by the doctor s hands in the puddle of light from the night lamp. The effect was like that of those horror movies Universal used to make in which the hero is fastened to an operating table in a cathedral-size laboratory and a mad scientist gets ready to change him into an ape.

  He decided he had never really appreciated the truth of those movies.

  He had, he admitted, for a moment thought the doctor was planning to inject Simeon March with something to prevent his recovery. Yet the doctor, when the lights were on, had gone ahead with the injection. He wouldn t have dared kill the old man before witnesses. And besides, he was definitely not involved in the attempt upon Simeon March.

  He was still thinking about the case when the clock outside struck four. He had a feeling the solution was within reach of his brain if only he could get the facts in their correct perspective. What was the thing he d been talking about earlier that day? Oh yes, the relevant clue. The persistent odor of gardenias; how did they fit into the picture?

  And Ann! What could he do about her?

  He heard a faint noise in the corridor and held his breath. Somebody was whispering; a man said something, a woman replied, and then there was silence. Simeon March no longer moaned, but he was breathing hoarsely.

  He thought about the attack at the Duck Club. Was it really on him? And if it was, why had it been made? He certainly had no information that would make it worth while for the murderer to kill him. Could the attack have been on Dr Woodrin?

  The wind had suddenly died, and the curtains hung limply beside the half-open window. From a switch engine a long distance away came two shrill toots. The room felt as though it had been packed with ice. It felt like a cold-storage vault.

  The nurse came in and stood beside Crane s bed.

  "I m afraid it s a flop," she said.

  "There s still two hours."

  "I fixed you a drink." She handed him a glass. "A Mr Williams sent it up."

  "That was thoughtful of him."

  The whisky, well diluted with water, was smooth. It warmed his throat, his stomach, made his mouth feel clean. He felt better immediately. She took the glass, returned to her room.

  He felt a little sleepy. He was no longer scared; the whisky had fixed that, and there was only a mild feeling of excitement. He supposed that he had been over-ambitious in his plans for the murderer s capture; the murderer must have known about them. Yet who did know? He and Williams, Dr Rutledge and Dr Woodrin, and the nurse. That was all; not even the men guarding the hospital knew.

  A dog two blocks away was barking at something. His barks came in bursts of threes, finishing up on an interrogative note, as though he wasn t sure what he was barking about. The queer blue shadow of a man with a cloak was still on the ceiling by the transom.

  Crane twisted his body so he was sitting on his left hip and thought: to hell with it all! To hell with the blue man in the cloak! To hell with all the various and sundry noises! A hospital was the last place he d ever go for a rest.

  He wondered, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, about Ann. He knew she was being held, or was dead. He knew he d be through if she was dead. Never again, if he got out of this mess, would he work on a case with somebody he cared for terribly. What was it Delia Young had said? "I feel hollow inside." That was the way thinking about Ann made him feel.

  Who could be holding her? He wondered if Williams was doing anything about her. He hadn t seen him all evening. He wondered what he would do when daylight came. He d have to call in the police. Imagine a private detective asking help…

  A scream, so brief he hardly believed his ears, sounded in the corridor. The sound was not repeated. What the hell? He found his revolver and slid out of the chair.

  At the same instant the door to the room opened. Sudden draft made the muslin curtains dance wildly. A bulky woman with a floppy hat and a fur coat tiptoed toward the bed, a pillow in her hands. Crane said, "I ve got you!" The woman dropped the pillow, fired two shots in his direction. The yellow flare of her gun blinded Crane. He crouched under the fluttering curtains and fired a shot at the door. His revolver made a deeper noise than the woman s. Acrid smoke stung his nose, his eyes. Together, making an enormous noise, he and the woman fired again.

  "You bastard!" said the woman. Her voice was husky, like Delia Young s.

  She let go one more shot, shattered the windowpane and fled. Crane ran to the door, stepped out into the corridor. The woman was three quarters of the way down the corridor in the direction of the elevator. She was running, and a blue skirt flared out under the brown fur coat. She was a big woman with muscular legs. Her hat hid the color of her hair.

  Swinging down his revolver in a smooth arc, Crane took a careful shot at her. The revolver made a swell echo in the corridor. He didn t see that the shot had taken effect, though. Still running, the woman rounded the turn by the elevator.

  Miss Edens was behind Crane. "Who was it?"

  "I don t know."

  He started to run along the corridor. She ran after him, said:

  "It sounds like the fall of Shanghai."

  Their progress was abruptly halted by the woman. She leaned suddenly around the corner, took a pot shot at Crane. Floppy hat, coat collar, shielded her face. Miss Edens ducked into her anteroom. Crane, further along, leaped for the door to Room 417, opened it, backed into the room.

  The woman fired another shot and Crane went further into the room. Behind him a
woman began to scream.

  "For God s sake, lady!" he said. "I won t hurt you."

  He stuck his head out the door; the woman was gone. He stepped into the corridor. Nothing happened. He heard the whine of the elevator. He ran down the corridor, almost tripped over the body of a woman in a nurse s uniform. She was lying on the cement floor beside a table with a telephone on it, her head in a pool of blood. A chair had toppled across her feet.

  The elevator was an automatic one. The golden arrow on the circle of Roman numerals above the glass doors was moving counterclockwise between III and II. Crane seized the phone.

  "Hello. Hello! Goddamn it! Hello!" His thumb jiggled the hook. "Hello. Are there guards from March amp; Company in the lobby?… Well, tell em to stop whoever s coming down in the elevator. Quick!"

  He dropped the receiver. Miss Edens was bending over the floor nurse.

  "Is she dead?" he asked.

  "I don t think so."

  The golden arrow reached I, promptly started up again. Gray smoke swirled through the corridor. Miss Edens lifted the nurse s head, pushed a black leather chair pad under it. The nurse moaned softly. The golden arrow passed II.

  Crane stared at it. "She s coming back."

  Miss Edens said, "She s not!"

  Crane looked at the. 38. He had two shots. "Maybe she ll get off at three," he said.

  The woman in 417 screamed. Her voice was shrill with terror; it made shivers run along Crane s spine. She screamed, caught her breath in a sob, screamed again.

  The golden arrow went by III.

  "You better get the hell out of here," Crane said to Miss Edens.

  He pulled the reception desk from the wall, put a foot against one leg, with his free hand sent it to the floor on its side. Temperature charts zigzagged through the air; pencils, erasers, paper clips, chewing gum, a thermometer slid to the floor; the telephone smashed on the cement.

  The woman in 417 screamed.

  He slid the nurse s feet out of the way, knelt behind the table. She had on half-length silk hose, her thighs were bare. He could see a light behind the semiopaque glass doors of the shaft. He steadied his revolver hand on the upper edge of the table. Miss Edens was standing in a doorway farther up the corridor.

  With a metallic click, the elevator reached IV. Crane crouched behind the table, aimed the revolver at the door. Squeeze the trigger, he kept thinking, squeeze the trigger. The nurse was conscious. She watched him through eyes bright with fear.

  The elevator door slid open and Alice March stepped into the corridor, a sweet smile on her plump face, white flowers in her arms, a floppy hat on her head.

  CHAPTER XIX

  In the porcelain-walled hospital canteen, Crane brooded over coffee liberally laced with whisky. He felt very bad. He blamed himself for the woman s escape; he still didn t know how to pin the crimes on the murderer; he felt he had failed Ann. He wished he wasn t a detective.

  At his table, having coffee and hamburger sandwiches, was practically everyone in any way connected with the case. Dr Rutledge had returned after four hours sleep, and the others were staying all night in the hospital, despite the fact that Simeon March had passed his crisis a few minutes after the shooting and had briefly regained consciousness.

  Alice March was telling the others in her sweet, malicious voice how she felt when she was confronted with Crane s revolver.

  "I really thought he d run amuck," she said. "Especially when I saw the nurse lying in a pond of blood."

  Peter March, his skin dead white under a blue growth of beard, listened to her with a bewildered air.

  "I still don t understand all this," he said.

  Between bites of hamburger, Dr Rutledge told the entire story from the time he had agreed to put Crane in Simeon March s room to the escape of the intruder. He talked mostly to Carmel, whose lovely face again reminded Crane of a tinted mask, aloof and serene, yet somehow watchful.

  Further down the porcelain table was Dr Woodrin. His round face looked tired and some of the pink had faded. He listened to Dr Rutledge and drank black coffee.

  "Crane thought the murderer might come back… " Dr Rutledge said.

  Well, the plan had worked, Crane thought, drinking some of the coffee. Only he had muffed it. He supposed a braver man would have been closer behind the intruder, close enough to see her take the metal emergency stairs leading to the roof.

  He d just about got straight in his mind what had happened. The woman, after driving him into the room with the screaming lady, had run for the elevator, only to find someone (Alice March) had called it down. So she had ducked through a door marked Exit and had run up on the roof.

  He d been so dumfounded when Alice had walked out of the returning elevator, Crane admitted, that he hadn t thought of the possibility of another exit. He d felt as if the woman had blown away like a puff of smoke. He d just stared at Alice s astonished face.

  A second later the guards from March amp; Company had arrived by way of the regular stairs, and he learned from them that Alice was already going up in the elevator when they reached it.

  And it was Alice March who had finally said:

  "Couldn t she have gone through that little door?"

  On the metal stairs they had found traces of blood. A few drops had made… on the steps, and there were two maroon smudges on the steel handrail.

  "Must have winged her," one of the guards said.

  "Not bad, though," the other said.

  There had been a guard at the foot of the outside fire escape, and for a time Crane had hoped he might have caught the woman. But the trail of blood drops led two stories down the escape, then perilously crossed to an open window in the Nurses Home adjoining City Hospital. Once in this building, the woman had walked down the back fire escape into the alley.

  Crane took another drink of the spiked coffee. He had only himself to blame. Still he couldn t be expected to surround all the buildings in the neighborhood; he didn t have enough men, anyway. He…

  Dr Rutledge had finished his story. Peter asked Crane, "Where s Ann?"

  Crane said, "She s home, I think." He suddenly felt sick inside.

  "What would she think if she knew you were mixed up in this shooting?" Carmel asked.

  Her attitude toward the attack upon Simeon March, and the revelation that his being gassed in his garage was not an accident, Crane saw, was like the other Marchs, and Dr Woodrin too. They appeared to have known all the time something was wrong and were relieved it had finally been pointed out. But they still weren t discussing the matter.

  He supposed he understood that, especially when the person you were discussing it with might be the murderer.

  He answered Carmel s question. "She d be surprised."

  Alice asked, "Doesn t she know you ve been acting as an amateur detective?"

  Crane shook his head. He wished they wouldn t talk about Ann. He said, "Excuse me," and went to the telephone and called his house. His heart fluttered as the bell rang and rang. There was no answer. He wondered where Williams was.

  They were talking about the floor nurse when he returned to the table.

  "All that blood," Dr Rutledge was saying, "was a simple nosebleed. She s all right now."

  Dr Woodrin said, "Too bad she didn t get a good look at the woman who hit her."

  "She apparently creeps up behind her victims," Dr Rutledge said. "Simeon March didn t see her, either."

  Mr March s brief account of the events in his garage, Crane admitted, had substantiated Williams theory. The old man told them he was getting into his sedan when someone threw a blanket over his head. He struggled, but he was easily overpowered. He was thrown to the floor, tied, and someone started the engine in his sedan. Presently he began to breathe gas… and then he woke up in bed.

  Crane s mind went back to Ann. Why had she disappeared? Was she a prisoner? Could she still be alive? Or was she dead of gas?

  Carmel asked Dr Rutledge when Simeon March would be able to go home. The doctor said n
ot for several days.

  "We ll have to keep the guards here, then," Peter said.

  Alice March said, "That woman will never come back now."

  "I m not taking any chances," Peter said.

  Crane spoke to Dr Woodrin. "If the woman had smothered him with her pillow and escaped without anyone seeing her, would you have been able to tell what had happened?"

  "It would ve been a perfect crime," Dr Woodrin said. "We d have thought it was the gas."

  The idea was pretty horrible. The murderer was smart! And ruthless! Crane felt a conviction that Ann had stumbled upon the truth and had been removed. Well, he d spend the rest of his life…

  Carmel asked him, "Would you like some more coffee and whisky?"

  "I d like some whisky."

  She asked Dr Rutledge for his whisky and filled Crane s cup halfway up. "You look sick," she said. "I am sick."

  "It wasn t your fault the woman got away."

  "I d have caught her if I d been braver."

  "I think you were very brave."

  "I was lousy."

  "No."

  A white-coated attendant tapped him on the shoulder. "You re wanted on the phone, Mr Crane."

  It was Williams. He was very excited about something.

  "I can t hear you," Crane said.

  Williams voice sounded as though he was trying to shout through a long section of pipe. "Damn it! I m telling you I ve got the dame spotted."

  "What dame?"

  "The dame who raised all the hell in the hospital."

  Crane was silent and Williams said:

  "Can t you hear me? The dame who raised…"

  "I hear you, but I don t believe you," Crane said.

  "But, Bill, I spotted her when she came down the fire escape back of the Nurses Home. I saw the gun she had, so I followed her. She went…"

  "Where are you?" Crane broke in excitedly.

  "I don t know as I ll tell you, doubting me like that."

  "Don t be coy," Crane said. "You re wonderful. You re a great detective. You re smarter than I am. I love you. Will you marry me? Will you tell me where the hell you are?"