Let him wait. Awhile longer anyway. She was in no hurry with Girard—and besides, she did not know whether she could get him or not. If she kept her hold, Murdock might get that ten thousand, or part of it. It was worth the effort, because if he did get nasty, she could always—
“I can think of two things,” Murdock said grimly, cutting in on her thoughts.
“What two?”
“I can run out on you. I’ve been thinking of it anyway. I don’t have to stay here, and without your weekly tax you wouldn’t be so keen on holding me.”
“Oh,” Hestor said, and her lip curled. “And how about your girl friend? She’d run away with you, I suppose. And will she be surprised when she finds out what she’s run off with? When you let her down like you did me.”
“She’s different from you, Hestor,” Murdock said, and his voice was thready. “I think she has a slightly different sense of values. The criterion would not be the same.”
“Is that so?” Hestor flashed, and twisted on the chaise-longue so that the robe slipped from the legs stretched straight out and crossed at the ankles. “Well, you won’t run out. You’ve got too good a job right here. You couldn’t pick up another like it, and you know it. If you want your freedom, get the ten thousand. The girl ought to be worth that much. Just because you got me for nothing—”
“I’ve paid plenty.”
Murdock stood up, walked stiffly around the room, came back to the foot of the chaise-longue. He stopped there, spread-legged, hands on hips, fanning out the tails of his topcoat.
“But there’s another way,” he said finally. “So far you’ve been lucky. When we separated I made up my mind to let you live your own life, do as you pleased. You have. I’ve never checked up on you. Frankly, I haven’t been interested. But I am now.” His face was dark, determined; the lips were stiff. “I think if I cramp your style from now on you may change your mind.”
“You? Cramp my style? How?”
“I’ll have you watched. And I’ll be big-hearted about it and tell you in advance. You’ll stop chasing or get caught. Either way is all right with me. Because I know you, and you can’t stop. And with the odds the same for both of us, I can stand it better than you can.”
Hestor’s face flushed with sudden anger. Her lips drew back against her teeth and she seemed about to speak. It was with an apparent effort that she controlled the impulse. She tossed her hips petulantly and one side of the robe trailed off on the floor. Thigh, hip, one firm breast were suddenly bare. She made no move to retrieve the wrap. She just stared at Murdock.
Murdock’s eyes flicked to the nude side of her body and he jerked them up to her face. It was he who colored. Hestor lay there watching him, her pose natural, indolent, her gaze mocking.
She said: “You can’t bluff me.”
“I don’t have to bluff.” Murdock held her eyes. “In fact”—he let his hands slip from his hips and tapped his hat against one leg—“I’ve already started.”
Hestor sat up, yanking the negligee about her shoulders with an automatic and unconscious movement.
“You lie!” Her eyes were glaring slits.
“No,” Murdock said levelly. “I’ve had an idea all along about you. I may have been wrong before, but I’ve got proof this time.”
“Of what?” she challenged.
“You went to Redfield’s party with Girard. You left at three-thirty and I had you followed.”
“You dirty—” Hestor reverted to type, but Murdock hurried on before she could finish.
“I told you, earlier that same night, to watch yourself.”
Hestor glowered at him, crushed out the cigarette stub in an amber ash-tray, then gathered the negligee about her, completely covering her body. One eyebrow lifted as she studied him. When she spoke, her voice was like a sneer.
“All right. What about it?”
“Just this. You came here, and Girard came in with you. He was still here at five-thirty.”
To Murdock’s surprise, Hestor made no immediate answer. For several seconds she merely stared at him. Then, slowly, her eyes widened slightly and there was a curious, enigmatic expression in their depths. The trace of a weird little smile tugged at her sullen mouth.
“You can’t prove it.”
“I think I can.”
“Suppose I said he wasn’t here. My word is as good as yours or any private detective’s. You couldn’t get a divorce on that bit of evidence.”
“Maybe not. I could try—but I don’t know that I shall. Maybe I’ll just let it ride as the first step.” Murdock watched her closely, aware of her peculiar, wary reaction, but unable quite to diagnose the mood. He buttoned his coat. “But a couple more of those little incidents might make the difference; I might be able to do some good.”
Hestor Murdock spoke as he reached the door. “I’m going out with him tonight. Call up your detective and see what he can do for you.”
Murdock opened the door and turned to face her, his hand on the knob. She was smiling at him, smiling with a taunting and superior twist of her mouth. And yet that enigmatic expression remained, as though her brain was puzzling over something that had so far escaped diagnosis. He thought she was going to speak, but when she continued to smile silently, he put on his hat and went out.
17
THE BUXOM Police Gazette nude on the anteroom wall made a focal point for Murdock’s gaze as he slouched down in his desk chair. His study of the figure was unconscious, troubled, and if he was aware of the picture at all, it was because of an automatic association set up by his brain between this photographic reproduction and Hestor.
His new attempt to persuade her to give him a divorce had failed utterly. And she had accepted his announcement of Fenner’s finding with an equanimity that surprised him. Perhaps she was becoming more expert at disguising her feelings. In any case he had, however, planted the seed of doubt. He was sure of that much, and he wondered if he might have shaken her confidence so that, if he could raise part of the ten thousand, say half of it, she would be willing to compromise in her demand.
His mind hung suspended on this thought until, after a while, he laughed aloud, a short brittle explosion that held no mirth.
He was right back where he started from. Solve the Redfield murder and he could collect. Not ten thousand, but perhaps half of it. The Bar Association offer was just one of those things that sound good, but are seldom realized. For the arrest and conviction. That, with luck, would mean an indefinite wait; any money would undoubtedly be split several ways. Wyman’s offer was different. Here he could collect, but—the contingency was the same: Solve the case.
Murdock stirred in the chair and lit a cigarette. The smile became fixed on his lips. “Fat chance,” he said half-aloud. Exclusive stories of this nature were much like action pictures. It was generally some amateur who collected. Stories resulting in arrests came from insiders, or neighbors, or friends of the criminal who double-crossed him. Any pictures of violence, bank robbery, accidents, generally came from some fellow with a box camera who was taking a picture of the building across the street when it happened.
Actually to go out with the express purpose of finding Redfield’s killer, to get the story and pictures, seemed ridiculous. Yet what else had he left? If he failed, and he probably would, he would at least have the knowledge that he had tried. And he didn’t get pictures sitting around the office wishing for them. The point was that for the past two or three days he had thought about the case, but not constructively. He had an idea or two; but these ideas were hazy, general, with more hope than reason behind them. But now he was sure about Joyce, and Hestor remained adamant and…
The combination of thoughts spurred Murdock’s brain to a receptive clearness. He sat up, puffed smoke clouds around his head and began to review each single incident of the case, until the germ of an idea crept into his brain, began to blossom. By the time he crushed out his cigarette he thought he had a starting-point.
Any general investiga
tion, any attempt to solve each angle of the case, would be fruitless, silly. Contrary to newspaper stories and fiction, the police department of any large city is an efficient organization. It has the manpower, the equipment, the specialists, the right channels of information, the authority to go out and do things.
Murdock lacked all of these. What he did extract from the mass of facts and incidents that unwound in his brain was one feature that, so far as he knew, the police either had ignored or, more probably, had passed up temporarily in favor of more important clues.
Concentrating on this point, he began to see the importance of an answer. The more he thought, the more interested he became. Then, finally convinced of the importance of this potential clue, he struck a snag in visualizing some method to run it down. Single-handed, it would take him weeks.…
The answer—surprisingly simple when it arrived in completed form—came a half-hour later. The means lay within the organization of the Courier-Herald.
Murdock’s dark eyes were bright when he finally stood up. The smile which still etched itself on his lips began to narrow the corners of his eyes. Determination had kept pace with his prodding thoughts; his interest was keen and made hopeful by imagination.
Opening a desk drawer, he pulled out the picture of Archer, taken at headquarters on the afternoon of the questioning. It had not been used, but he was glad, now, that he had it. He slipped it into his pocket, went upstairs to the morgue and library adjoining the front corner of the city room, which was now blazing with light, reverberating with the sharp, persistent clatter of a half-dozen typewriters.
With the help of Jerry, the librarian, a stoop-shouldered veteran, Murdock collected a picture of Nate Girard, one of Sam Cusick, another of Spike Tripp. He went back down to his department and out into the photo-engraving room. Squinting his way past the blue-white brightness of the high-watt bulbs, he found the foreman.
“Ben.” Murdock drew the foreman over to a table at the side of the room and placed the four photographs in a row. “Make me a plate of these.”
The foreman, a thick-chested husky in overalls and a blue shirt, pulled at a heavy red nose and scowled. “It ain’t gonna look good. They’re all different focus.”
“Who cares?” grunted Murdock.
“What do you want ’em for?”
“For my own use. I want one plate—say four inches high and let the width come. They don’t have to be jammed right together, just so they’re reproduced on one sheet.”
“If you say so,” Ben said, shrugging and picking up the prints.
“Thanks, Ben.” Murdock slapped the foreman’s shoulder. “And when you get it done, get about six or eight good proofs and leave them on my desk—with the plate.”
The mezzanine floor was deserted, gloomily lighted by a single bulb in the hall ceiling. At the far end of the corridor a yellow rectangle of light slashed across the opposite wall from the frosted glass pane of a private office. Murdock entered here without knocking.
The office was small and bare, boasting one desk, two chairs, a filing-cabinet, and a large map of the city which hung on one wall. Lolling far back in a spring chair, his heels cocked on the desk, was a short, plump man with black hair and eyes, and jowls made blue by a heavy beard. His coat was off, and his sleeves were rolled up; the unlighted stump of a cigar was wedged in one corner of his mouth, and his discolored felt hat was pushed forward so that it did not seem possible that he could read the newspaper he held spread out before him. He did not look around until Murdock said:
“Hello, Mac.”
MacShane, city circulator of the Morning Herald, glanced over his shoulder, and his black eyes slid up and down Murdock’s figure with a sort of surprised indifference before he spoke.
“My gawd!” He brought the paper together. “How the hell did you find your way down here?”
“I heard,” Murdock said, grinning, “I heard there was a circulation department some place in the building. I wanted to be sure. Carson around?”
MacShane swung his feet down from the desk, swiveled around in the chair. “No. He’s got sense. He goes home when he’s through.”
“Well,” Murdock said, “you’ll do.”
“I was afraid of it. I’ll bet it’s trouble.”
Murdock shook his head and sat down on the other chair at the end of the desk. “I want a little help.”
“It’s the same thing,” MacShane groaned. “The only time you guys on the news end know we’re alive down here is when you need help—or when you got a complaint that some friend of your Aunt Emma’s didn’t get his paper.”
Murdock said: “Nuts,” and then his eyes fell upon the map on the wall. He stood up, crossed to it. Locating his own apartment house, he put his finger on it and, taking out a pencil, made four dots. One of these was in the Hill section, one was in Brookline, one was near Westland Avenue, and the fourth was off Arlington, near Columbus.
He beckoned MacShane with a nod of his head. “Come here.”
MacShane stood up wearily and scowled. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
Murdock said: “How many district men you got?”
“Eighteen on carriers, six news-stand men, four—”
“Never mind.” Murdock grunted good-naturedly. “I didn’t ask the right question. Take a look.” He pointed to the apartment location, indicated the four dots. “How many men have you got in that territory?”
“All of it?” MacShane asked. “Four.”
“Hah!” Murdock breathed. “It hadn’t ought to be too hard.”
“I’ll bet it’s plenty tough,” MacShane said. He came back to the desk. “And I don’t like the way you say it.”
“Listen, Mac.” Murdock leaned across the desk, and the grin evaporated. “Can you get these four fellows down here tonight?”
“I doubt it,” MacShane grumbled. “What the hell do you think we do, work all the time? What do you want?”
“I want to check on the telephone pay-stations in that territory.”
MacShane threw up his hands. “There are thousands of ’em! Christ! You must be nuts!”
“Wait,” Murdock snapped, and the crispness of his voice held MacShane. “It’s not as bad as you think. All I want is the places that are open at four o’clock in the morning. Your circulation birds know a city upside down and backwards. Those district men ought to know every brick in the pavement.”
“They do,” MacShane flung out, “but what—”
“I’ll bet there aren’t more than fifty places in that whole district that stay open all night. A few drug-stores, a few lunch-rooms, and—”
“Hotels,” MacShane rapped.
“Yeah.” Murdock’s tone was momentarily discouraged. “Well, they’re probably out. If he went in a hotel—”
“Who?” lipped MacShane, clamping thick jaws on the cigar so that the muscles rippled below his cheek-bones. “What the hell is this?”
Murdock explained tersely. “I’ll give you pictures of four men. You get these district men here and I’ll have copies for each of them. What they’ve got to do is find the all-night places, find the fellow on duty, and show him the pictures. I want to know if any of the four made a pay-station call at four-thirty in the morning. If one of them did, the guy ought to remember it, because he couldn’t be so damn busy at that hour. It won’t be so hard. I tell you there won’t be fifty places open and—”
“It’s hard, even the way you tell it,” MacShane muttered. “Suppose my boys locate all these places, that don’t mean the guy on duty is gonna remember—”
“I know that,” snapped Murdock. “I’ll need some luck. But it’s the only way I can think of. It’s a chance and—”
“What night?”
“Last Friday.”
“So—” MacShane’s eyes narrowed. “Who are the four guys?”
“Cusick, Girard, Tripp, and Archer.”
“Redfield?”
Murdock nodded.
“These dots are where they
live?”
Murdock nodded again.
“Why just pay-stations?”
“I don’t think a man would take a chance on his own phone. It might be checked.”
“What’re you tryin’ to prove? I ain’t had time to read much about it.”
“Then what difference does it make?” Murdock asked. “It’s got to be confidential anyway. I want you to talk to those four district men separately. If they don’t recognize the pictures, so much the better. I’m working alone on this. It’s just a hunch. You can give me a break, Mac. How about it?”
MacShane rubbed one blue jowl and scowled down at the desk; but even with the scowl the eyes were alert, interested. He was a circulation man, MacShane. As such he was accustomed to handling, and on time, the most perishable product in the world: a big city newspaper, which, with five editions, is conceived, born, and forgotten in a few hours.
Time was the all-important element. The answer to the problem, an organization so highly geared that there was no waste motion. When the editor and his reporters and camera men put the paper to bed and went home—or wherever it was they went when they called it a day—MacShane and his crew went to work. It was dirty, strenuous, nerve-racking, thankless work. But to a circulation man, it was his job. District men, carriers, street hustlers, truck-drivers, these were MacShane’s tools; and he knew how to use them. The process made a pessimist out of him, but it did not decrease his effectiveness.
“Well”—he looked up at Murdock and grinned so that the dead cigar butt angled up sharply—“maybe we can do it.”
Murdock exhaled noisily; his lean face broadened with his grin. “Atta boy.”
“Don’t get all hot about it,” MacShane cautioned glumly. “It don’t mean you’ll get what you want.”
“If you can’t do it,” Murdock said, standing up, “it can’t be done. I’ll put a case of liquor in the hat. You can split it with the boys, or I’ll pay their taxi—”
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