“And at the picture show: You see anybody there that you knew?”
“No.”
“So if somebody didn’t want to believe you, you wouldn’t have any way of proving you and Miss Warren did just that, would you?”
“Why should I have to prove anything?”
“Keep your shirt on. I was just asking. Cops think that way. Now about this Ethel Brower . . . ”
I stood up. I said, “I don’t know any such person. I’ve answered all your questions. Now I’m asking you one. Why I should know a girl named Ethel Brower?”
“I’ll tell you.” He leaned back in his chair and focused his eyes on my face. Hard. “The reason I figure you ought to know her,” he said, “is because she’s in your apartment. Right now. And she’s dead as hell. She’s been murdered.”
CHAPTER V
MAX GOLD’S keen, black eyes never left my face. If I had anything to give away, he was going to get it. I don’t know what he was thinking. I don’t know what I was thinking, either.
If he had planned to throw a surprise into me, he had succeeded admirably. I stood there blinking at him, my mouth open and my brain refusing to function. A girl named Ethel Brower—a girl I’d never heard of in my life—dead in my apartment. Murdered. The thing was fantastic. The deposit of one hundred thousand dollars to my account in the bank had been fantastic, too, but not this way.
He waited patiently while I did the conventional things. I moistened my lips. I looked at Dana and she looked at me. I tried to say something and the words stuck. I sat down in a chair. It was his voice which punctured the silence. He said, “I didn’t mention it before, but I’m on the homicide squad.”
That made everything just dandy. It made me feel fine. If I’d been guilty, I couldn’t have felt any guiltier.
He said, smoothly, “You still don’t know her?”
“No.” The word came out suddenly, like a cork being popped out of a champagne bottle.
“You haven’t been to your apartment tonight?”
“No.”
“Not even for a few minutes after you finished dinner?”
The answer was still No.
It was Dana who did the first talking for the pair of us. “He’s been with me all evening,” she said. “We haven’t been near his apartment.”
“You and him . . .” Gold’s voice was flat. “You’re sweethearts. You alibi him and he alibis you. I’d like it to be better than that.”
I realized suddenly that Dana was caught right in the middle of this mess. I said, “Look, lieutenant: She wasn’t anywhere near that apartment. She doesn’t know anything about it.”
“About what?”
“This girl; this Ethel Brower.”
He said to Dana, “You never heard of her, either?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as queer she’d pick the apartment of a perfect stranger to get murdered in?”
I made an effort to pull myself together. I’m a big boy, and I can look after myself under ordinary circumstances. But I had been thoroughly shaken by this cold, impersonal man with the piercing eyes and the curly black hair.
I said, “Would you mind telling me what happened? And how you heard about it?”
He thought that one over. He said, “Your apartment house is pretty big, Douglas. Have you ever left an order that the package-room could put things inside if you weren’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s how they found out. The boy from the grocery store delivered some stuff for you. You weren’t there. He took it to the package-room. The package-room boy telephoned your apartment. No answer. He told the night superintendent. They went up together. They went in. The place was dark, so they switched on the ceiling light. They seen this girl—this Ethel Brower—in that gray chair you got near the reading light. She was fast asleep. Only she looked kind of funny. The super took another look. He seen right away that she was dead as a mackerel. It wasn’t until after he reported it and our medical examiner got there that we found out how she died. She’d been strangled. And I suppose you’re still surprised, aren’t you?”
Dana reached over and took my hand. I said to the detective, “Are you arresting me?”
“Nope. Not now, anyway. I’ll come clean. We ain’t got a thing on you except it happened in your apartment. We wouldn’t want you to be going off on another trip right away, but we don’t like to arrest anybody if we can’t make it stick.”
I said, “Thanks.” And I meant it. This was my first experience with New York policemen; and if Max Gold was a sample, I liked ’em. He was a hard, efficient man doing a job.
He said, “I’d like you to go over there with me, Douglas. You too, Miss Warren, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” Dana stood up before I could argue against it. She smiled at me. “I know it won’t be pleasant, Kirk. But I think the lieutenant wants me . . .”
“Yes, Miss. Maybe you might recognize her. She ain’t bad to look at. Sort of asleep-looking, like I said. At first we thought maybe it was a natural death.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t?”
“We’re sure.”
I said, “But if she was strangled there must be fingerprints on her throat. They would prove . . .”
“Sorry. It doesn’t work out that way. We get fingerprint traces off a dead body, but there ain’t enough characteristics left to identify ’em. It’s something we ain’t solved yet. But the minute somebody dies, the fingerprints on the flesh ain’t any better than if they wasn’t left there in the first place.” He got up, put his hat on. “If you’ll come along with me . . .”
There was a car parked a short distance down the street from the club. It was a plain black sedan. Lieutenant Gold held open the door, then joined us in the back. To the driver he said, “On your way, Joe. Back to the apartment.”
Dana and I huddled together. We didn’t say anything, but I knew she was thinking as hard as I was, which was plenty hard.
Too much was happening too fast. There were too many questions and too few answers. The hundred thousand dollars in my name at the bank commenced to frighten me. I believed that it was connected with the dead girl in my apartment. It couldn’t be coincidence. I said, “Whoever it was: I wonder why they picked on me.”
“Yeah.” That was Max Gold speaking. “I been kinda wondering that, too.”
Only once more did he speak during our trip to the West Side. He addressed Dana. “On account it’s murder,” he said, “I got to ask personal questions: Even if you ain’t living with your husband, wouldn’t you figure him to get sore if he thought you were playing around with Mr. Douglas here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean a thing to Ricardo. I’m just his dance partner. He knows all about Kirk and me.”
Max said thoughtfully, “But with a name like that. You know, hot Latin blood . . .”
“He was born and raised in Brooklyn.”
“I thought that was a gag.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then the name is a phoney?”
“No. His father was Puerto Rican.”
“Then we could say his blood might be half hot, huh?” Max chuckled dryly. “He could maybe of been madder than you think. He could maybe of seen this dame going to Douglas’s apartment and followed her in, thinking it was you . . .”
I said sharply, “That’s ridiculous. If he’d been that kind of a person, he’d have done something long ago. Besides, you can’t strangle a woman without knowing who she is—or isn’t. And what’s more, you don’t believe it yourself.”
“I didn’t say I did. Me, I just try to find out.”
We reached the apartment house. There were no police cars, no policemen. The doorman looked at me peculiarly and the elevator man was obviously in on the know. The hallway was empty. It was all very tranquil.
I unlocked the door and let them in. A huge man blocked our entrance. Then he recognized Max Gold and said, “Hi, lieutenant.�
�
Gold nodded. “Any telephone calls since I been gone?”
“No.”
“Fingerprint boys and D.A. men all finished?”
“Long ago.”
“Okay . . .” Gold led the way. Dana and I followed, pressing each other’s hands.
The room looked just as it had when I’d left, except that on the floor near the kitchenette was a box of groceries. Just a box of groceries and a very ordinary-looking girl asleep in the chair by the reading light. I didn’t have to look twice to realize that she wasn’t ever going to wake up.
Max Gold stood against the wall. He was watching Dana and me. So was the man who had been guarding the apartment.
I stared at the dead girl. My guess at her age would have been the very early thirties. She was about Dana’s height. She was thin. She had dark hair. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were because they were closed. I couldn’t see any signs of violence or any bruises on her throat.
She was wearing a black cloth coat with a heavy fur collar which could have been fox or skunk. It was open, and I could see the dark brown dress underneath. She had on a brown hat. Her legs were encased in sheer stockings which looked like nylon, and her feet were swallowed up by galoshes. She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t homely. She looked like the sort of girl you could see a hundred times and never remember. I tried my best to place her and met with no luck. I turned to Max Gold and said, “As far as I can remember, I never saw her before in my life.”
Dana said, “Neither did I.”
Max sighed. “The night super never saw her before, either. Nor the package-room boy. Nor the doorman. Nobody knows her. Or why she came here. Especially me.”
I asked, “How did you know her name?”
“The bag. We went through it. Social security card. A credit tag from a department store. A letter from some girl friend in Moline. It didn’t tell us a thing except her name and address. But we’d still like to know what she was doing here.” He stared at me. “And I also been wondering how she got in.”
I said, “So have I.”
Max sighed. “I guess we’ll cart her off to the morgue.” He said something to the big plainclothesman and that gentleman started telephoning. I said, “What happens now?”
“About what?”
“Me.”
“Nothing. You ain’t under arrest, if that’s what you’re asking. There’ll be an inquest. The District Attorney’s office will probably talk to you. Maybe that’ll lead to the Grand Jury. It usually doesn’t unless the D.A. thinks he’s got something solid to work on.”
“Then I’m not under suspicion?”
“Sure you are. You and Miss Warren both. You gotta be. That doesn’t mean I think you did it. But I can’t get it out of my mind that you’re both mixed up in it.”
“Will it be in the newspapers?”
He nodded. “That’s another thing that can’t be avoided. Also, it might help. Publicity sometimes uncovers a lot of angles we couldn’t find. But for the present Miss Warren will be kept out of it. It ain’t her apartment, and even though the boys are probably lousy with her fingerprints we won’t pay too much attention to that, because you admit that she drops in here lots.”
I thanked him. He was being damned decent. I went into the kitchen, poured a drink of brandy. Dana said No when I offered it, so I made her swallow it. Gold and the other cop compromised for a bottle of beer each.
We didn’t do much talking while we waited for the morgue wagon. I turned Dana’s chair around and did the same with mine, so we wouldn’t have to stare at Ethel Brower.
They finally took her away. Max told us good night. He suggested I let him know if I ran across anything. I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know.
For all his cordiality, for all my innocence: I was afraid.
The way I looked at it, he couldn’t help thinking that I had killed Ethel Brower. He was digging patiently for evidence to use against me. All I had was breathing time.
That seemed to check it up to me. I sat down. Dana came and sat on my lap. She put her arms around me. She started to cry.
CHAPTER VI
I LOOKED AT the little white clock on the mantel. It showed five minutes before three. Outside, everything was quiet except for the occasional sound of taxi tires on hard-packed snow. My apartment looked about as usual: everything just so, everything neat. No cops, no Ethel Brower, no anything to indicate that a murder had been committed.
Dana’s slim body was shaking. Her arms were tight. She had held up magnificently while the pressure was on but now that the first act was over, reaction hit her.
I let her cry. I knew it would do her good. I just sat there holding her close. My left arm was around her. With my right hand I patted her shoulder and made reassuring sounds. It would have sounded silly if it hadn’t been so serious.
After a while she stopped crying. Then she got up, crossed to the gateleg table where she had left her bag, and took out compact and lipstick. I just watched her, letting her handle things her own way.
She dabbed at her face with the cosmetics. Her eyes and the corners of her mouth showed evidence of the strain to which she had been subjected. She finished what she was doing and walked toward me. She said, “I’m all right now.”
I got up and poured two brandies. She drank hers and I swallowed mine in a gulp. It burned all the way down and took away some of the chill inside me. But it didn’t make me feel any better, or any less bewildered.
I reached for my pipe and tamped tobacco in the bowl. She took a cigarette. I lighted it for her, then started my pipe going. She said, “You really haven’t any idea who she was, Kirk?”
“No, dear.”
She picked her words carefully. “If you did—you’d tell me?”
“Yes:”
“You wouldn’t be afraid that I’d be jealous?”
“No.”
We sat staring at each other. Dana said, “This . . . and the bank. They must be connected some way.”
“They must be.”
I puffed harder and thought harder. I said, “There’s somewhere I want to go. Right now. I’d like you to come along if you think you can take it.”
She repeated, “I’m all right.” Then she added, “Where?”
“Just a few blocks. The McKinley Hospital. I want to talk to Arthur.”
“Arthur . . . ?” Then she got the idea and nodded. She knew I was referring to one of my few close friends in New York. Dr. Arthur Maybank, five months an M.D. and now serving a nine-months’ interneship. She said, “Didn’t he stay here while you were away, Kirk?”
“Yes. You don’t know what it means to an interne to have a place outside the hospital on his off nights.”
She glanced at the chair in which the body of Ethel Brower had been sitting. “You think maybe Arthur knew her?”
“It’s possible. I want to find out.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I didn’t want to get him mixed up in it. He’s never had anything but bad breaks since he was a kid. Why should I throw him into the middle of this unless he knew the girl?”
“Will he be frank with you?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve known him a long time. I’ll be able to tell.”
On our way out we were stared at again by the elevator operator and the doorman. I could see that they were busting with curiosity and would have given a pretty to ask a few questions. Dana and I walked to the hospital.
The McKinley was a block wide and half of an avenue-block in length. It was an ancient graystone building which once had been New York’s leading hospital. Now it was old and worn out. There had been talk of tearing it down and rebuilding on the same site, but the war had postponed those plans.
There was an old-fashioned iron fence along the front. Two gateways had been cut through it, one for doctors’ automobiles and the other for ambulances. There was a white sign with unkempt black letters which r
ead “Accident Entrance” and an arrow pointing to a double door under a porte-cochère. I said, “Arthur told me he was on accident for three months. If he’s around, we’ll find him here.”
We walked inside. There was a narrow little entrance and a pint-size reception room. A girl sat on a hard wooden bench reading a confession magazine. She wore thick-lensed glasses. At first she paid no attention to us and I thought she must be the friend of a patient. She looked up without interest. “You a doctor?” she asked. I said No, half expecting her to inquire what the hell I was doing there but she didn’t. She had asked her question, got her answer, and was no longer interested. Dana and I rambled around.
To the right of the reception room was a plate-glass window which was the front of a cubicle of an office. A languid young lady sat inside gazing at a typewriter. There was a piece of paper under the platen, but she wasn’t doing anything about it. Nor about us, either.
We went through a doorway and stepped into a big square room. There were four or five surgical wagons standing around forlornly. There was an enameled instrument case with a lot of the enamel chipped off so that it showed black splotches. At the far side of that room was another door through which I could see a double bank of green steel lockers. A man in a blue uniform and a big blond youth in white were smoking and talking. Nobody paid any attention to us.
We went back to the reception room, and I managed to attract the attention of the girl who was doing nothing about the typewriter. I said, “I’d like to speak to Dr. Arthur Maybank.”
She looked at me with blank eyes. Then she said in a bored voice, “He ain’t on duty.”
“Is he in?”
“If he is, he’s sleeping.”
“I’m a friend of his. I wish you’d give him a ring.”
“He ain’t on duty,” she said, and that’s all she did say. She started poking at the typewriter keys. I took Dana’s arm and we went outside again. We walked down the block and re-entered the building through the main entrance.
This was larger than the accident room and not quite as dirty. There still wasn’t any rousing welcome. A worried, middle-aged woman sat in another chair, holding a sleepy little girl. There was another glassed-in cage in which I saw another bored young woman and a switchboard. I walked over and repeated my request for Dr. Arthur Maybank.
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