An hour and a half later a taxi stopped on the corner diagonally opposite the St. Anselm, with Striker and a spruce, well-dressed individual seated in it side by side. On the floor at their feet were two shiny, brand-new valises, containing their linings and nothing else.
“Now there it is over there, on the other side,” Striker said. “I’m going to get out here, and you go over in the cab and get out by yourself at the entrance. Count out what’s left of the money I gave you.”
His companion did so laboriously. “Forty-nine dollars and fifty cents.”
“Don’t spend another penny of it, get me? I’ve already paid the cab fare and tip. See that you carry your own bags in, so they don’t notice how light they are. Remember, what’s left is all yours if—”
“Yeah, I know,” said the other man unabashedly. “If I’m alive in the morning.”
“Got your instructions straight?”
“I want an outside room. I want a ninth floor outside room. No other floor will do. I want a ninth floor outside room with a bath.”
“That’ll get you the right one by elimination. I happen to know it’s vacant. You won’t have to pay in advance. The two bags and the outfit’ll take care of that. Tell him to sign Harry Kramer for you—that what you said your name was? Now this is your last chance to back out. You can still welsh on me if you want—I won’t do anything to you.”
“No,” the man said doggedly. “This way I’ve got a chance at a job tomorrow. The other way I’ll be back on the beach. I’m glad somebody finally found some use for me.”
Striker averted his head, grasped the other’s scrawny shoulder encouragingly. “Good luck, brother—and God forgive me for doing this, if I don’t see you again.” He swung out of the cab, opened a newspaper in front of his face, and narrowly watched over the top of it until the thin but well-dressed figure had alighted and carried the two bags up the steps and into a doorway from which he might never emerge alive.
He sauntered up to the desk a few minutes later himself, from the other direction, the coffee shop entrance. Maxon was still blotting the ink on the signature.
Striker read, Harry Kramer, New York City—913
He went up to his room at his usual time, but only to get out his gun. Then he came down to the lobby again. Maxon was the only one in sight. Striker stepped in behind the desk, made his way back to the telephone switchboard, which was screened from sight by the tiers of mailboxes. He sat down before the switchboard and shot his cuffs, like a wireless operator on a ship at sea waiting for an SOS. The St. Anselm didn’t employ a night operator. The desk clerk attended to the calls himself after twelve.
“What’s the idea?” Maxon wanted to know.
Striker wasn’t confiding in anyone this time. “Can’t sleep,” he said noncommittally. “Why should you object if I give you a hand down here?”
Kramer was to knock the receiver off the hook at the first sign of danger, or even anything that he didn’t understand or like the looks of. There was no other way to work it than this, roundabout as it was. Striker was convinced that if he lurked about the ninth floor corridor within sight or earshot of the room, he would simply be banishing the danger, postponing it. He didn’t want that. He wanted to know what it was. If he waited in his own room he would be even more cut off. The danger signal would have to be relayed up to him from down here. The last three times had shown him how ineffective that was.
A desultory call or two came through the first hour he was at the board, mostly requests for morning calls. He meticulously jotted them down for the day operator. Nothing from 913.
About two o’clock Maxon finally started to catch on. “You going to work it all night?”
“Yeh,” said Striker shortly. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t let on I’m behind here at all.”
At two thirty-five there were footsteps in the lobby, a peculiar sobbing sound like an automobile tire deflating, and a whiff of sandalwood traveled back to Striker after the car had gone up. He called Maxon guardedly back to him. “The Youngs?”
“Yeah, they just came in.”
“Was that their dog whining?”
“Yeah, I guess it hadda see another dog about a man.” Maybe a dead man, thought Striker morosely. He raised the plug toward the socket of 913. He ought to call Kramer, make sure he stayed awake. That would be as big a giveaway as pussyfooting around the hall up there, though. He let the plug drop back again.
About three o’clock more footsteps sounded. Heavy ones stamping in from the street. A man’s voice sounded hoarsely. “Hey, desk! One of your people just tumbled out, around on the side of the building!”
The switchboard stool went over with a crack, something blurred streaked across the lobby, and the elevator darted crazily upward. Striker nearly snapped the control lever out of its socket, the way he bore down on it. The car had never traveled so fast before, but he swore horribly all the way up. Too late again!
The door was closed. He needled his passkey at the lock, shouldered the door in. The light was on, the room was empty. The window was wide open, the guy was gone. The fifty-fifty odds had paid off—the wrong way.
Striker’s face was twisted balefully. He got out his gun. He was standing there like that, bitter, defeated, granite eyed, the gun uselessly in his hand, when Perry and Courlander came. It would be Courlander again, too!
“Is he dead?” Striker asked grimly.
“That street ain’t quilted,” was the dick’s dry answer. He eyed the gun scornfully. “What’re you doing? Holding the fort against the Indians, sonny boy?”
“I suggest instead of standing there throwing bouquets,” Striker said, “you phone your precinct house and have a dragnet thrown around this building.” He reached for the phone. Courlander’s arm quickly shot out and barred him. “Not so fast. What would I be doing that for?”
“Because this is murder!”
“Where’ve I heard that before?” He went over for the inevitable note. “What’s this?” He read it aloud. “Can’t take it any more.”
“So you’re still going to trip over those things!”
“And you’re still going to try to hurdle it?”
“It’s a fake like all the others were. I knew that all along. I couldn’t prove it until now. This time I can! Finally.”
“Yeah? How?”
“Because the guy couldn’t write! Couldn’t even write his own name! He even had to have the clerk sign the register for him downstairs. And if that isn’t proof there’s been somebody else in this room, have a look at that.” He pointed to the money Kramer had left neatly piled on the dresser top. “Count that! Four-fifty. Four singles and a four-bit piece. He had forty-nine dollars and fifty cents on him when he came into this room, and he didn’t leave the room. He’s down there in his underwear now. Here’s all his outer clothing up here. What became of that forty-five bucks?”
Courlander looked at him. “How do you know so much about it? How do you know he couldn’t write, and just what dough he had?”
“Because I planted him up here myself!” Striker ground out exasperatedly. “It was a setup! I picked him up, outfitted him, staked him, and brought him in here. He ran away to sea at twelve, never even learned his alphabet. I tested him and found out he was telling the truth. He couldn’t write a word, not even his own name! Are you gonna stand here all night or are you going to do something about it?
Courlander snatched up the phone, called his precinct house. “Courlander. Send over a detail, quick! St. Anselm. That suicide reported here has the earmarks of a murder.”
“Earmarks!” scoffed Striker. “It’s murder from head to foot, with a capital M!” He took the phone in turn. “Pardon me if I try to lock the stable door after the nag’s been stolen.
. . . H’lo, Maxon? Anyone left the building since this broke, anyone at all? Sure of that? Well, see that no one does. Call in that cop that’s looking after the body. Lock up the secondary exit through the coffee shop. No one’s to leave, no one at
all, understand?” He threw the phone back at Courlander. “Confirm that for me, will you? Cops don’t take orders from me. We’ve got them! They’re still in the building some place! There’s no way to get down from the roof. It’s seven stories higher than any of the others around it.”
But Courlander wasn’t taking to cooperation very easily. “All this is based on your say-so that the guy couldn’t write and had a certain amount of money on him when he came up here. So far so good. But something a little more definite than that better turn up. Did you mark the bills you gave him?”
“No, I didn’t,” Striker had to admit. “I wasn’t figuring on robbery being the motive. I still don’t think it’s the primary one, I think it’s only incidental. I don’t think there is any consistent motive. I think we’re up against a maniac.”
“If they weren’t marked, how do you expect us to trace them? Everyone in this place must have a good deal more than just forty-five dollars to their name! If you did plant somebody, why didn’t you back him up, why didn’t you look after him right? How did you expect to be able to help him if you stayed all the way downstairs, nine floors below?”
“I couldn’t very well hang around outside the room. That would’ve been tipping my hand. I warned him, put him on his guard. He was to knock the phone over. That’s all he had to do. Whatever it was, was too quick even for that.”
Two members of the Homicide Squad appeared. “What’s all the fuss and feathers? Where’re the earmarks you spoke of, Courlander? The body’s slated for an autopsy, but the examiner already says it don’t look like anything but just the fall killed him.”
“The house dick here,” Courlander said, “insists the guy couldn’t write and is short forty-five bucks. He planted him up here because he has an idea those other three cases—the ones I covered, you know—were murder.”
They started to question Striker rigorously as though he himself were the culprit. “What gave you the idea it would happen tonight?”
“I didn’t know it would happen tonight. I took a stab at it, that’s all. I figured it was about due somewhere around now.”
“Was the door open or locked when you got up here?”
“Locked.”
“Where was the key?”
“Where it is now—over there on the dresser.”
“Was the room disturbed in anyway?”
“No, it was just like it is now.”
They took a deep breath in unison, a breath that meant they were being very patient with an outsider. “Then what makes you think somebody besides himself was in here at the time?”
“Because that note is here, and he couldn’t write! Because there’s forty-five dollars—”
“One thing at a time. Can you prove he couldn’t write?”
“He proved it to me!”
“Yes, but can you prove it to us?”
Striker caught a tuft of his own hair in his fist, dragged at it, let it go again. “No, because he’s gone now.”
The other one leaned forward, dangerously casual. “You say you warned him what to expect, and yet he was willing to go ahead and chance it, just for the sake of a meal, a suit of clothes, a bed. How do you explain that?”
“He was at the end of his rope. He was about ready to quit anyway.”
Striker saw what was coming.
“Oh, he was? How do you know?”
“Because he told me so. He said he was—thinking of the river.”
“Before you explained your proposition or after?”
“Before,” Striker had to admit.
They blew out their breaths scornfully, eyed one another as though this man’s stupidity was unbelievable. “He brings a guy up from the beach,” one said to the other, “that’s already told him beforehand he’s got doing the Dutch on his mind, and then when the guy goes ahead and does it, he tries to make out he’s been murdered.”
Striker knocked his chair over, stood up in exasperation. “But can’t you get it through your concrete domes? What was driving him to it? The simplest reason in the world! Lack of shelter, lack of food, lack of comfort. Suddenly he’s given all that at one time. Is it reasonable to suppose he’ll cut his own enjoyment of it short, put an end to it halfway through the night? Tomorrow night, yes, after he’s out of here, back where he was again, after the letdown has set in. But not tonight.”
“Very pretty, but it don’t mean a thing. The swell surroundings only brought it on quicker. He wanted to die in comfort, in style, while he was about it. That’s been known to happen too, don’t forget. About his not being able to write, sorry, but”—they flirted the sheet of notepaper before his eyes—”this evidence shows he was able to write. He must have put one over on you. You probably tipped your mitt in giving him your writing test. He caught on you were looking for someone who didn’t write, so he played ‘possum. About the money—well, it musta gone out the window with him even if he was just in his underwear, and somebody down there snitched it before the cop came along. No evidence. The investigation’s closed as far as we’re concerned.” They sauntered out into the hall.
“Damn it,” Striker yelled after them, “you can’t walk out of here! You’re turning your backs on a murder!”
“We are walking out,” came back from the hallway. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!” The elevator door clicked mockingly shut.
Courlander said almost pityingly. “It looks like tonight wasn’t your lucky night.”
“It isn’t yours either!” Striker bellowed. He swung his fist in a barrel house right, connected with the city dick’s lower jaw, and sent him volplaning back on his shoulders against the carpet.
Perry’s moonfaced and bald head were white as an ostrich egg with long-nursed resentment. “Get out of here!” You’re fired! Bring bums into my house so they can commit suicide on the premises, will you? You’re through!”
“Fired?” Striker gave him a smoldering look that made Perry draw hastily back out of range. “I’m quitting, is what you mean! I wouldn’t even finish the night out in a murder nest like this!” He stalked past the manager, clenched hands in pockets, and went up to his room to pack his belongings.
His chief problem was to avoid recognition by any of the staff, when he returned there nearly a year later. To achieve this after all the years he’d worked in the hotel, he checked in swiftly and inconspicuously. The mustache he had been growing for the past eight months and which now had attained full maturity, effectively changed the lower part of his face. The horn-rimmed glasses, with plain inserts instead of ground lenses, did as much for the upper part, provided his hat brim was tipped down far enough. If he stood around, of course, and let them stare, eventual recognition was a certainty, but he didn’t. He put on a little added weight from the long months of idleness in the furnished room. He hadn’t worked in the interval. He could no doubt have got another berth, but he considered that he was still on a job—even though he was no longer drawing pay for it—and he meant to see it through.
A lesser problem was to get the room itself. If he couldn’t get it at once, he fully intended taking another for a day or two until he could, but this of course would add greatly to the risk of recognition. As far as he could tell, however, it was available right now. He’d walked through the side street bordering the hotel three nights in a row, after dark, and each time that particular window had been unlighted. The red tag would quickly tell him whether he was right or not.
Other than that, his choice of this one particular night for putting the long-premeditated move into effect was wholly arbitrary. The interval since the last time it had happened roughly approximated the previous intervals, and that was all he had to go by. One night, along about now, was as good as another.
He paid his bill at the rooming house and set out on foot, carrying just one bag with him. His radio and the rest of his belongings he left behind in the landlady’s charge, to be called for later. It was about nine o’clock now. He wanted to get in before Maxon’s shift. He’d been
more intimate with Maxon than the other clerks, had practically no chance of getting past Maxon unidentified.
He stopped in at a hardware store on his way and bought two articles: a long section of stout hempen rope and a small sharp fruit, or kitchen, knife with a wooden handle. He inserted both objects in the bag with his clothing, right there in the shop, then set out once more. He bent his hat brim a little lower over his eyes as he neared the familiar hotel entrance, that was all. He went up the steps and inside unhesitatingly. One of the boys whom he knew by sight ducked for his bag without giving any sign* of recognition. That was a good omen. He moved swiftly to the desk without looking around or giving anyone a chance to study him at leisure. There was a totally new man on now in Dennison’s place, someone who didn’t know him at all. That was the second good omen. And red was peering from the pigeonhole of 913.
His eye quickly traced a vertical axis through it. Not another one in a straight up-and-down line with it. It was easy to work it if you were familiar with the building layout, and who should be more familiar than he?
He said, “I want a single on the side street, where the traffic isn’t so heavy.” He got it the first shot out of the box!
He paid for it, signed A. C. Sherman, New York, and quickly stepped into the waiting car, with his head slightly lowered but not enough so to be conspicuously furtive.
A minute later the gauntlet had been successfully run. He gave the boy a dime, closed the door, and had gained his objective undetected. Nothing had been changed in it. It was the same as when he’d slept in it that first time, nearly two years ago now. It was hard to realize, looking around at it, that it had seen four men go to their deaths. He couldn’t help wondering. “Will I be the fifth?” That didn’t frighten him any. It just made him toughen up inside and promise, “Not without a lotta trouble, buddy, not without a lotta trouble!”
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