The complete assurance of the woman’s manner ruffled Murdock and he went on stubbornly:
“It’s not so simple with you, Archer. If it’s of any interest to you, I’ve been pretty close to the police on this thing. They’re not at all satisfied with your story. I know this. Run out on them like this—even if you get away with it—and they’ll bring you back.”
Archer’s chin came out. “Get out of the way!”
“Understand,” Murdock went on grimly, “it’s nothing to me personally. I don’t like you and I never did. But Joyce asked me—”
“It’s Joyce now, is it?” Archer leered. “Well, get this, Murdock: You practically threw me out of your place the other night. There was nothing I could do. If she wants to give herself to a fellow of your class, a newspaper photographer—”
“Watch your words!”
“—I suppose it’s her affair. But for you to presume that you can come up here and—” Archer broke off as his rage got the better of him. “Get out of the way!”
Murdock’s lips pulled back in a weird little smile. Then Archer hit him, a quick straight punch full on the mouth.
The blow was not hard, but coming as it did, with Murdock off balance and unable to get set, it staggered him. He took a backward step. Blood came out on his lips, and his face darkened. His reaction was instinctive and he caught himself in time to stop his counter-punch. He dropped his hand.
Archer’s face was white, his lips set. He was afraid of what he had done or what he thought might happen. It was in his eyes; he was afraid. As though he realized there was more to follow, he moved back a step and whipped a small automatic from the pocket of his raglan topcoat.
“Get out of that doorway or I’ll shoot!” he said huskily.
“They’d bring you back for that, too,” Murdock said, trying to keep a check on his temper and natural anger.
“I wouldn’t have to kill you. A bullet or two in the leg—”
“They’d bring you back.”
“They’ll probably try and bring me back anyway.”
Murdock held Archer’s furious gaze a moment, then shrugged and stepped aside. “You’re not scaring anyone,” he said as he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his bleeding lips, “waving that gun. But if you should be fool enough to shoot, it would be difficult all the way around, particularly for Joyce.”
Archer turned to Rita.
“Can you carry one of the bags?” She picked up one and he managed the other three since they were neither heavy nor bulky. He still clung to the gun. “Don’t try to follow us. You stay here until—”
“You might have some justification for shooting here,” Murdock said disdainfully, “since I rather broke in on you. But outside, Archer, I’ll do as I please.” He waited until the two of them left the room; then he followed. At the outer door he picked up his camera, slung the plate-case over his shoulder.
All three waited for the elevator. Murdock cocked one eyebrow at Rita Redfield, smiled. “I hope the rest of your trip is less melodramatic.”
She returned his smile with a certain hauteur, more than a little amusement. Murdock glanced at the still glowering Archer, who was looking somewhat ridiculous and beginning to sense it. “You’re going to look funny barging through the lobby with that thing in your hand,” he said dryly. “Suppose it went off?”
14
KENT MURDOCK OPENED his camera as he followed Archer and Rita Redfield through the downstairs lobby. As he stepped under the marquee, he saw that there was a taxi at the curb, but no other in the block. While the doorman pitched baggage into the front seat, Murdock adjusted his shutter, focused the camera, and threw it up to his shoulder.
He called: “Archer!”
Rita Redfield had one foot on the running board, one foot on the floor of the tonneau. Archer was right behind her, his right hand on the door-handle. Both turned at the call, and in that instant Murdock pressed the shutter-release. Rita Redfield disappeared in the cab; Archer’s mouth worked silently and his blond mustache twitched like a thing alive. Then the mouth clamped shut. He flung himself into the cab and slammed the door.
The little smile on Murdock’s lips and in the depths of his dark eyes was static. He reversed his plate-holder and again put the camera to his shoulder as the cab slanted into the middle of the street. His next picture caught the back end of the car—and Rita Redfield’s face pressed against the rear window.
Murdock had to walk to Commonwealth Avenue before he caught a taxi. He said “Courier-Herald,” and flopped back on the seat. The smile disappeared. The reason was not that he had failed with Howard Archer. He felt sure, when he had promised Joyce, that there was small chance of success. He had done the best he could under the circumstances, but the only sure way to stop Archer was to call Bacon—to have called him before he left his apartment.
It was this thought that erased his smile and filmed his eyes with trouble. For the first time he was not playing ball with the police. And Bacon—Damn it! He justified his actions, tried to justify them, with the thought that this case was different. In the first place, he was out to collect something in the way of a reward, at least a part payment to Hestor—if he was lucky. In the second place, there was Joyce.
He had crossed Bacon by hiding her at his apartment. True, it had not mattered in the end. And he was crossing Bacon again. With this sort of information about a stranger, Murdock would surely have tipped off the police. And Archer could have killed Mark Redfield. He grunted savagely and stared morosely out through the cab window at the traffic jam on Tremont and Boylston.
“For a guy who’s supposed to be on the level,” he grunted in his throat, “you’re turning into a lousy, double-crossing heel.”
By the time he had reached the office, Murdock had made his decision. He could check up himself and see just what Archer was going to do; and he could go part way with Bacon, do a little something to salve his conscience. He called headquarters as soon as he reached his desk.
“Anything new?”
“Naw,” Bacon grunted.
“Pick up Tripp?”
“Didn’t I say there was nothing new?” Bacon was almost petulant.
“Then get a load of this and don’t say I’m holding out on you. Archer skipped out this afternoon—with Rita Redfield.”
Murdock waited until Bacon’s explosion subsided.
“I can’t tell you,” he said in answer to the Lieutenant’s demand for more information. “All I know is that they pulled out of the Embankment Arms about ten minutes ago with four bags. Maybe they’re going to hide out; maybe they’re leaving town.”
“But what—”
“How do I know?” Murdock cut him off before he could state the question. “Do I have to do all the leg work for the police department? Check it—and quit crabbin’!”
He hung up on Bacon’s “Thanks.” Staring at the mouthpiece, he said: “That’s the best I can do.”
Wixon, another camera man, who had his feet cocked on a desk across the room and was reading the sports page, said: “What?”
Murdock said: “I was thinking out loud.”
“It’s possible then, huh?” Wixon asked, grinning.
Murdock opened his plate-case and took out his exposed plates of Archer, of the Industrial Exhibit. He went down the narrow corridor connecting a row of adjoining dark-rooms. He turned into the black cubicle at the end and set to work. All of the pictures were good, and when he had made the prints, he took them into the photo-engraving room and dried them over a flame. The assignment pictures he sent upstairs; the two of Archer and the taxi he studied a moment, then put in a call for the Green and White Taxi Company.
It was dark when Murdock located the driver of Archer’s taxi in a stand at the corner of Boylston and Providence Streets. The driver, a beetle-browed husky with a fog-horn voice, was suspicious, surly, when Murdock started to question him.
“Sure,” he blustered, “sure I had a fare from the Embankment A
rms. What about it?”
Murdock described Archer and Rita Redfield.
“Suppose it was them?”
“I want to know where you took them,” Murdock rapped, irritated by the man’s manner.
“All right,” scoffed the driver, “you want to know. So what? You’re no copper.”
“Listen,” Murdock said, “you’re not smart—just dumb. And it bores me to hear you talk. But I want some information. I work for the Courier-Herald. I’m willing to give you a fin, but if you’re not interested I’ll go to headquarters and you’ll tell them for nothing. So make up your mind.”
“That’s different,” the driver said. “Hell, why’n’t you say you was a newspaper guy.” He eyed the bill in Murdock’s hand. “They went over to the airport.”
Murdock climbed into the cab. “Let’s go.”
When the driver skidded the wheels to a stop on the cinder bed of the airport, Murdock went into the administration building, showed his press card, said: “You keep the names of passengers, don’t you?”
The clerk said they did, that the last plane had left an hour ago. Murdock asked for the passenger list, found only one woman in the group. He asked the clerk what she looked like.
“Middle-aged,” he said. “Sort of fat and wore glasses.”
Murdock lit a cigarette, frowned thoughtfully. “Who rents planes around here? I mean for fairly long trips? The people I’m looking for hired one around four-thirty or so and—”
“Sure,” the clerk said, brightening. “I remember. A Tri-State outfit job. They’re down in that second hangar, that blue one. I don’t know if there’s anyone there, but—”
Murdock went out before the clerk finished. An east wind whipping in from the ocean tucked his coat-tails between his legs and he had to buck it all the way to the blue hangar, which, in the shadows of the floodlight on the peak of the roof, looked all black.
There was no one there except a mechanic, but he gave freely the information Murdock sought.
“Yeah. Shorty Regan took off with ’em in a three-place Eagle. He was supposed to take ’em to Newark. Funny, too. If they’d waited a half-hour they coulda got the transport. I had a hunch maybe they were honeymooners or something.”
Murdock passed the man a dollar bill and snapped up the collar of his coat. “Not a bad hunch either.”
Phil Doane slid off of Murdock’s desk in the photographic department anteroom, his round, good-natured face eager, flushed with excitement.
“Hey, you know what?”
“Yeah. What?”
“Archer skipped out—with the Redfield dame.”
“Yeah?” Murdock looked surprised. “How did you tumble?”
“I was lookin’ for you at the Embankment Arms—Where the hell you been?” Doane did not expect an answer. “And Bacon and Keogh and a couple others swarmed into the place. For once I was right there when it happened and Bacon gave me a break. Told me to get a coupla pics from the morgue and run them too. And Van Husan,” Doane continued elatedly, “was tickled silly.”
“Did he say so?” Murdock asked dryly.
“Well, no,” Doane said, sobering a little. “He said: ‘It’s about time.’ But all he did to the yarn was put a head on it and make a couple minor changes.”
“That’s swell,” Murdock said. “You’re safe for another week. Now beat it, will you? I got things to do.”
Doane did not protest. He started out whistling, stopped at the door. “But don’t forget—on this other thing. You’re gonna let me in on it if—”
“Go ’way!” Murdock said, but the way he said it amounted to yes, and Doane knew this and went out, picking up the whistle contentedly.
Murdock took off his coat and hat, hung both on the yellow-oak hat-rack. He sat down at his desk, slouched there for some minutes, staring at the practically nude figure of a dancer that someone had cut out of an old Police Gazette and pasted on the wall. His eyes followed the generous lines of the figure automatically, but he was not aware of what he saw, of anything but his thoughts.
He stood up and began to walk around in circles, his head down, hands jammed in his coat pockets so that the fabric was tight across the buttocks. He stopped the circular pacing abruptly after a minute or so, went to his desk, and swept up the telephone, his lean face dark, his eyes intense, fixed straight ahead.
When he got his connection he said: “Fenner? Murdock.” A pause. “Yeah, and I’ve got another job for you.”
Another pause.
“No, this isn’t about her. This is easy. But listen, Jack, this is confidential as hell. It’s got to be that way. Between you and me.”
Another pause.
“Sure, I know, but this is important enough to me to make sure you got it straight. Here it is. An Eagle plane from Tri-State Airways took off from the airport about four-thirty this afternoon. A private job, see? The pilot was a lad named Shorty Regan and he was hired to go to Newark. I want you to find out if he did go there. Get him when he gets back—I don’t know when it’ll be—and find out where he went.”
Another pause.
“That’s all. I told you it was easy. Call me when you find out.”
15
A THOUSAND LITTLE THINGS, all of them converging on Joyce Archer, flashed through Kent Murdock’s brain as he crossed the lobby of the Embankment Arms and stepped into the elevator. He would have to tell her about her brother and how he had failed. But he could do that, and she would understand he had done his best for her. He would also have to tell her exactly what the situation was, tell her how much he had told the police and why; tell her about Fenner and the plane.
Maybe she would think he had double-crossed her. He hoped not, but in any case he would have to risk it. She deserved the truth and he could give her that much.
This was decided when he stepped from the elevator. But the other—It all came back to him so that he practically relived the moment. The scent from her hair was in his throat. He could feel the warmth, the sweetness of her lips, that hard young pressure of her arms at his neck. And the thought tormented him. That first night, when he had found her in his bed. The subsequent nights. On the surface, casual, with a friendly intimacy and understanding; below the surface, a strained, unnatural surging and quickening of the pulse that was almost constantly accelerated until it had become a torrent of desire, ungovernable without the strictest concentration.
And if the thing had happened before, if he had not resisted until the impulse broke through his restraint that afternoon…
He stopped in front of his door and took out his keys. He unsnapped the button of the pigskin case, thrust forward the door-key, then stopped it an inch from the keyhole. He stood there rigidly a moment until he realized his breath was short, that he was sweating from the pressure of his coat and his thoughts.
Turning suddenly with an almost savage movement, he jammed the keys into his pocket, glanced around. The corridor was quiet, deserted. He knelt quickly, lowered his head until he could see the crack between the bottom of the door and the sill. The yellow sliver of light from the room told him what he wanted to know.
He stood up and walked quickly back to the waiting elevator. His pace was jerky, stiff-kneed; his lean face was twisted somehow from the tightly pressed lips so that it looked worn and haggard, with a tautness that was reflected in eyes that did not seem quite well.
There was a drug-store two blocks away. Murdock turned in there and walked back to the telephone booth at the far end of the soda counter. Lifting the receiver, he waited until the operator answered, realized finally that he did not know his own number. The interval while he hung up and looked through the directory served to snap his tension. When Joyce Archer’s voice finally came over the wire he had control of himself, and his voice was normal—or just a shade brusque.
He said: “I drew a blank.”
“You what?”
Murdock laughed shortly. “That was the button-pusher talking. What I mean is, I failed you with Ho
ward.”
“Oh.” The voice was dull.
“It was a case of a brawl or nothing. I couldn’t quite see it that way. They were at the point where a little thing like reason is inconsequential. I’m beginning to think I know how it is.”
“How what is?”
“I had to tell the police,” Murdock said, ignoring the question.
“But you couldn’t do that. You—” The voice was frightened and trailed off miserably.
“I couldn’t hold out on Bacon entirely. Try to understand that. But I did not tell all I knew. They would have found out anyway. They were bound to check on him. All I did was to tell them a little ahead of time.”
“Yes,” the voice said listlessly, “I see.”
“There’s something else,” Murdock went on doggedly. “I got a picture of them, the cab they used. I traced it to the airport. They hired a plane to take them to Newark. I’m having a friend hunt up the pilot when he returns and find out for sure where they went.”
“You didn’t tell—”
“That’s just for our own information.”
There was a pause then and Murdock pushed back his hat and reached for a handkerchief. The stuffiness of the booth was oppressive; the air was getting hot and sticky.
“That’s why I didn’t call sooner,” he added.
“I thought a lot about it while you were gone. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. But I’m not surprised really. Disappointed. But it was too much to expect. I guess I set the example.”
“They may hit it off together if—” He did not add: “the police don’t find them.”
“Where are you now?”
“Downtown.”
“Are we going to eat together?” The voice brightened slightly, as though shrugging off its disappointment.
‘Not tonight. I’ve got work to do,” lied Murdock.
“Oh. Well—when will you be out?”
Murder with Pictures Page 13