Lady Killer

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Elsie is too kind,” Tremaine said, glancing up. “She is right from the first when I tell her of my plan. She said I must stay at the hotel because I had done nothing wrong. She said to run away would make the police more suspicious.”

  “And she was right,” Murdock said.

  “Entirely so.” Tremaine shrugged. “The trouble is I am excitable. I do not understand such things. I do not wish the police to spy on me. I wish to remain in hiding until this matter of Harry Felton is resolved. When I tell Elsie this she says if I insist on hiding I must come here.”

  Gradually it dawned on Murdock that the explanation might be sincere. He was not convinced that Tremaine was as innocent as he tried to make out but he began to understand the motive which prompted him to disappear.

  “It’s time you straightened yourself out,” he said. “We do things a little differently here than they do in Europe. You fought with the allies?”

  “I did.”

  “Ever in the underground in France?”

  “For a year and a half.”

  “Well, we don’t have any Gestapo or MVD here. In this country you only have to worry about the police when you’re guilty of a crime that can be proved against you. Here you tell your story—if you’re innocent—and you are allowed to put up bail in most cases. Until you are tried and found guilty you have your freedom.”

  He took a chair near the divan and said: “Elsie is not involved in this mess. You are. By coming here you involve her, and some newspapers like nothing better than to write about crime and pretty girls. If you had been found here—and you would have been eventually—the newspapers would print the fact that you had been staying here. The assumption to the readers would be that you had lived here. Nice, huh?”

  Tremaine was watching Elsie anxiously. He worked his hands nervously and had a hard time sitting still. “I did not understand,” he said humbly and then, abruptly, he cocked his head at Murdock. “How did you know I was here?”

  Elsie Russell leaned back on the divan. She was at ease now, waiting for Murdock to reply as was Tremaine. There was no longer any hostility in her face but neither was there any great warmth. She brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead, her glance sober in her inspection of him, thoughtful.

  “I wondered why she kept me waiting in the hall so long,” Murdock said. “She was fully dressed and I thought she was a little—shall we say, apprehensive; unnaturally so. Later I noticed that the ashtrays had been emptied.” He indicated the wastebasket. “There were two kinds of cigarette butts in there, some with lipstick and some without.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “If you hadn’t checked out of your hotel,” Murdock went on, ignoring the interruption, “after you had been told not to, I would have assumed that you—or some man—had been here and gone. As it was—”

  “I understand,” Tremaine said. “What I really meant was, why did you suspect I might be here in the first place?”

  Murdock thought it over and the suggestion of a grin began to work at the corners of his mouth.

  “It was only a hunch,” he said. “But if it had been me, if I wanted to hide out and did not know where to go, and if I had a girl enough in love with me to take the risk—someone I knew I could trust—I might do the same thing.”

  Tremaine looked at Elsie again. Murdock could not see her eyes but what the Frenchman saw in them must have reassured him, for he sighed, straightened his shoulders, and turned back to Murdock.

  “I have made a terrible mistake but you will help me because you are a friend of Elsie’s. You will tell me what I must do so that no one will write any stories about her.”

  “It’s all right, Louis,” the girl said. “Please. You mustn’t worry about me.”

  Tremaine shook his head. “Mr. Murdock will know what to do.”

  “When did you move in here?” Murdock asked.

  “This afternoon.”

  “Then you’d better get out of here and let Lieutenant Bacon know where you’ll be staying. Call the hotel back and see if you can get a room; if not call some others until you do get a room. I’ll give you a lift downtown while you check in the hotel and then drop you off at police headquarters.”

  Tremaine nodded but his expression remained doubtful. He had begun to think constructively and he found a point that bothered him.

  “This Lieutenant Bacon will ask me why I left the hotel.”

  “Probably.”

  “And what can I tell him?”

  “Tell him you decided to move out and stay quiet until the case was solved, but that you got thinking it over and saw that this was the wrong thing to do.”

  “And if he asks me where I have been since noon?”

  “Tell him you checked your bag in the South Station and then wandered around town until you decided to play it straight.”

  There was, Murdock realized even as he spoke, a hole in the plan, a bad one. But there was nothing he could do about it now. It was still important that Tremaine leave here and keep Elsie’s name out of the case. What happened after that depended on many things, two of the more important being luck and circumstances.

  Louis Tremaine rose, his thin dark face resolved and his indecision behind him. He said he would pack his bag if Murdock would call the hotel for him and see about a room.

  17

  THE foyer of the apartment house was empty when Murdock and Tremaine stepped out of the elevator a few minutes later. There was no one to see them as they walked through the entryway and came out into the night, for this was a short and dead-end street and no cars moved along its length.

  They put Tremaine’s bag behind the seat of the coupe before Murdock turned on the headlights, and then he was backing and swinging the car around and heading towards the lighted intersection. Here, as they turned left, there was some traffic and presently they were part of it. Ahead of them a traffic light turned red. Murdock braked behind the car ahead of him and now he felt Tremaine move beside him.

  “The river is this way?” he asked, pointing a finger. “And this street that crosses just ahead of us leads to it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will turn there, please.”

  Murdock felt the hard round object press against his ribs. It came as Tremaine spoke and he stiffened slightly against the pressure but otherwise he did not move.

  “You feel the gun?”

  “I feel it,” Murdock said.

  “There will be no trouble if you do as I say.”

  Murdock watched the light change, saw the cars ahead move. He let in the clutch, anger rising in him. For another moment he hesitated while he considered the alternative. He thought he might have a chance if he snapped his right elbow down and back; he might be able to knock the gun against the seat before it went off. Then the temptation passed and he put out his left hand and started his turn. When the pressure on his ribs eased somewhat he let his elbow inch downward as he drove.

  “Your hands,” Tremaine said. “Keep them high on the wheel and your elbow up.”

  Murdock obeyed, watching an intersection go by and the approach to the bridge open up. He had the light with him here and went on up towards the Cambridge side and the electric signs on the right which were reflected brightly in the calm black waters. He was nearly halfway across when the pressure on his ribs increased.

  “Stop!” Tremaine ordered. “Pull over to the side as far as you can.”

  “You’re not supposed to stop on the bridge.”

  “We will only be a minute.… This is good right here.”

  Tremaine opened the door as the car stopped. He did not get out. His right hand, which had been in his pocket, moved swiftly and he threw something away from him, something bright and gleaming that cleared the rail beyond the sidewalk and fell into the river.

  Murdock moved as the Frenchman did. For Tremaine turned as he threw and before he could turn back Murdock was on top of him, one hand closing around the other’s left hand and holding it still while he j
ammed his other forearm hard against Tremaine’s throat under the chin.

  The Frenchman was pinioned rigidly against the corner of the seat now, and while he tried to pry Murdock’s arm from his windpipe with his free hand, the photographer was working his fingers into the other’s pocket, still holding the hand firm but squeezing downward until he could feel the object which had threatened him.

  He heard Tremaine wheeze as he struggled to breathe and he hung on for another second or two, his exasperation and disgust forcing him to punish the man a little longer. Then, as Tremaine began to choke, Murdock let his arm drop. He pushed back behind the wheel, still muttering as he examined the straight-stemmed pipe he had wrenched from the other’s pocket.

  He felt like throwing it out of the window but he didn’t. He tossed it back at the Frenchman and shifted gears. “Some trick,” he said, beginning to wonder if Tremaine was a little crazy or whether it was his nature to do everything the hard way and dramatize each action a little in the process.

  “I—I had to get rid of the knuckle,” Tremaine said, rubbing his throat gingerly.

  Murdock said nothing. He turned right when he could and went along the drive and the river towards Longfellow Bridge, wanting nothing more now than to be rid of the Frenchman and his unpredictable methods.…

  Tremaine was able to get a room in the same hotel in which he had originally registered, and while he went up to get rid of his bag Murdock telephoned the Rendezvous and asked if Bert Carlin was around.

  “He was around,” his informant said, “but the boss sent him home because he was too drunk to play.”

  Murdock asked if Ray Wylie had been in, and when the answer was no he asked for Carlin’s telephone number. There was no answer when he called it, though he let the distant instrument ring eight times before he hung up, and for a little while then he considered going out to Carlin’s place to make sure the piano player was not home. In the end he vetoed the idea. He had chased around too much already on these wild-goose hunts of his; he was tired and thirsty and he made up his mind to go home, get some much needed sleep, and mind his own business.

  He did just this after he had dropped off Tremaine in front of police headquarters; at least he made a good start. He went directly to his place. He left the car in the street—against regulations—and only when he stepped out to lock the doors did he realize that he had a caller. For while the rest of the narrow-front building was dark at this hour, behind the drawn curtains on the second floor light glowed translucently.

  He stood a moment, looking up, thinking back to Ginny Arnold’s call and wondering if he had left the front room lights on by mistake. It was possible, he realized, but unlikely, and it seemed now that either someone was up there waiting for him or someone had been there earlier, without his permission, and forgot to turn the lights out.

  In any case he hesitated no longer but went up the steps and into the semi-darkness of the entryway. He opened the door and started climbing, reaching for his keys as he did so. He did not knock when he reached his door but fitted the key and turned it. Then he was in a lighted living room which had indeed been visited in his absence, and by someone who had not only searched the room but had done so recklessly and with no eye for neatness.

  The cushions were tipped out of the big chairs and the davenport was pulled over on its face on top of the cushions. The desk had apparently been examined thoroughly, since some of the drawers were out and the contents strewn about. Most of the books from the shelves adjacent to the record-player were stacked on the floor but a few still remained in place; the same thing had happened to the cabinet which held the records.

  Murdock saw all this as he closed the door and then his glance lifted and he saw that the light was on in the bedroom off the hall. As he stood there with the resentment growing inside him a figure blocked the doorway and strolled easily into the hall, ducking a little as it came into the room. Then Lee Hammond was leaning against the casing, hat shoved back from his low forehead and his coat fanned out.

  “How’d you get in?” Murdock said because it was the first thing that occurred to him.

  “Keys.” Hammond took a bunch of a dozen or more from his pocket and tossed it lazily in the air. “It was a cinch.”

  Murdock took off his topcoat, placed his hat on top of it on the nearest chair. His dark eyes were narrowed and unpleasant, and the skin was shiny and taut across the cheek bones. He did not at the moment make any effort to be sensible or to worry much about his own position. The things that had happened to him that day had been piling up on him and now the disordered confusion in the room fanned an already present anger into something that was hot, driving, and uncontrollable.

  He started for the telephone stand near the opposite wall, not hurrying but moving purposefully, his jaw grimly angled. The telephone was closer to Hammond but the big man did not understand Murdock’s intention until it was too late, and by then Murdock was lifting it from its cradle.

  “Hey!”

  Hammond came to attention, his big face cracking in a scowl.

  “Wait a minute!”

  Murdock dialed the operator.

  Hammond stepped forward, left hand outstretched. He had long arms and he got hold of the telephone before Murdock heard the operator’s answer. Then, one hand on the instrument as Hammond sought to wrench it away, Murdock hooked hard with his right, leaning with the blow and grunting a little as he struck.

  It was a good punch, a little high perhaps, but solid and well timed. It jarred his fist all the way to the elbow but it felt good and he saw Hammond’s head go back as the hat flew from it. But Hammond had been hit countless times before. He rocked but he did not go down and his eyes were still clear. Furthermore he clung to the telephone, tearing it from Murdock’s grasp.

  He stood, blinking, and then, as the photographer stepped forward Hammond’s right arm cocked. Murdock stopped, waiting for an opening and finding none. The right still cocked, Hammond slid his foot forward. He seemed a little surprised to find the telephone in his hand and replaced it gently, as though he was a little afraid of it.

  “Cut it out,” he said in his hoarse throaty voice.

  He stooped, eyes still on Murdock, and retrieved his hat. He put it back on his head, tugging a little on the brim this time.

  “I’m going to search the joint,” he said. “I ain’t through with the bedroom yet.”

  “Get out!” Murdock said.

  “When I’m through with the bedroom,” Hammond said, as though he had not heard, “I work on the kitchen, and when I finish with that I’m going to search you, sonny boy.” He pointed to a closed door at one side of the little entryway. “There’s a closet there that I already searched. I want you to step inside so I can lock you in while I finish the job. If I don’t find what I want I’ll open up and search you.”

  Murdock measured the big man. He was still angry though the anger had matured into something stronger and more cerebral. He was thinking a little now, remembering Hammond’s record in the ring. Hammond was never close to championship calibre but he was no setup. He stood better than six foot two and at his best had weighed around a hundred and ninety. Two hundred and thirty would be closer to his weight now but most of the extra poundage was fat. His head was too small for his body and he walked flat-footed, with a sort of locked-knee movement, so that at one point in every step his foot swung through a peculiar pigeon-toed arc.

  Right now he was unworried and supremely confident. His business was using his muscle and not his brain, and he smiled a little, his scarred brows arching.

  “That’s all you’ve got to do,” he said, starting to move again. “Just step in that closet and keep your health.”

  “What’re you looking for?”

  Hammond, apparently unable to think and move at the same time, stopped, his expression surprised.

  “The bracelets, sonny.”

  “What bracelets?”

  “The ones Sid Graham had.”

  “
Oh.” Murdock gave the word a little coating. “The ones you and Sid took away from Harry Felton.”

  “Yeah,” said Hammond and then scowled again, a little annoyed that he should have made such an admission.

  “How would I get them?”

  “You found Sid tonight. Somebody knocked him off.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Hah. I got friends around. I know he got knocked off and I know where it happened because I know where he was hiding out.”

  “So?”

  “So you found him. At least that’s how I got it. You found him and the cops didn’t find no bracelets.” The twisted brows grew hooded and the opaque little eyes were cunning with speculation. “I figure there’s a chance you picked ’em up yourself.”

  “What about the guy who killed him?” Murdock said and now his exasperation was nagging him. “Why don’t you stop being a jerk,” he said, “and get smart? Whoever killed Sid killed him to get the bracelets, didn’t he? And if he did, would he walk off without them?”

  “He might, sonny. He just might. Because maybe he couldn’t find them right away. And maybe you came in and scared him off before he had a chance to do the job right.”

  Murdock considered the premise but not for long. It was ridiculous on the face of it. That there might have been two men in Graham’s place was possible, but the tissue paper on the floor indicated that the bracelets had been taken. He thought again of the silhouetted man he had seen at the end of the alley, a big man—or so he thought.

  He started to argue again with Hammond but the ex-fighter did not listen long. In his one-track mind there was a job to be finished and he was getting impatient.

  “Just step into that closet and behave,” he said. “I’ll search the rest of the place, then you. Then I’ll blow and you can call the cops if you want. Come on.”

  He was close now and he reached out a big hand. Murdock stood where he was, relaxed and immobile. He waited until the hand was six inches from his shoulder and then he stepped inside the arm, pivoting a little and slugging with all he had.

  He was aiming at a spot six inches above Hammond’s belt buckle and he hit it with his right and then with his left, both fists sinking wrist deep.