The Long Night

by Hartley Howard

  She went very quiet. And when a dame thinks too long, it generally means trouble’s cooking. At last she said, “You don’t believe I was on the level about him . . . do you?” Her voice was still golden cider on a summer’s afternoon but the sun had gone in. She was just a little bit too restrained.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It would’ve been more honest, perhaps, if you had.”

  “Meaning you’re rejecting the invitation without thanks?”

  “I’m afraid so.” There was real regret in her voice, too.

  “Instead of all the talkie-talk, wouldn’t it have been better to say you didn’t want to come?”

  “But I do want to come. Only you can’t understand that a girl doesn’t like being told she’s beautiful one minute and a liar the next.” As if the sound of her own words put a light to her indignation, she added, “And I’m not used to being asked to account for the kind of life I lead. . . .”

  In the background, several voices made a jumble and I could hear someone calling, “Miss Van Buren! Has anyone seen Miss——”

  Carole said hurriedly, “I’ll have to go now . . . thanks again for trying to be nice even if I’m not quite the kind of girl who deserves it . . . good-bye.”

  I said, “In spite of your sarcasm——” But she had gone.

  If you live long enough with a problem, the general design begins to take shape even if the details of the pattern remain obscure. When there are too many personalities involved, you can’t see the wood for the trees. Now, at least, I had separated my queries into separate groups.

  I thought I knew why Judith Walker had had to die, although I wasn’t yet sure of the mechanics of her death. And the nearer I came to the ultimate solution the more I felt that there were two problems instead of one. The first one I might be able to answer but the second might be beyond me. It was the second that hid the identity of the party who had fastened a belt around her neck.

  Lloyd Warner and Gilmore and Judith herself belonged to group A: Deborah Warner and sister Sue to group B. Carole had eliminated Ivor Kovak. That left Clive Van Buren—ex-con, ex-lover, and maybe killer. It also left Mrs. Ivor Kovak. And Mrs. Kovak remained a big query . . . a very big query.

  All along the way to my office, I kept peeking into the bag that held group C—Mrs. Kovak and Clive Van Buren. Both could’ve been bitten by jealousy. He’d come out of jail to find his sweetie had got herself another guy; she could’ve learned that hubby was playing around with one of his models. She might’ve put the bee on Judith Walker.

  Which meant she’d had the goods on Judith . . . but Ivor had a yen for Carole Van Buren. If wifie had been keeping tabs on him, she’d have found that out; she’d have been the one to dope Carole’s rye—not Judith. And Carole would’ve occupied that drawer in cold storage—not Judith. If Mrs. Kovak had been burned up with jealousy bad enough to plan the death of the woman she thought was her husband’s mistress, she wouldn’t have picked on the wrong woman.

  As I saw it, Judith was the right woman; she’d died because she was the right woman. She’d either done or been about to do something that made it necessary for her to die. And King Gilmore might’ve been responsible . . . except that he wouldn’t have left me lying on the floor of the apartment. He had no reason to frame me. He had bigger things on his mind right then. And he wouldn’t have relied on chance to take me into the bathroom. King Gilmore never left anything to chance.

  There was one tiny detail that kept nagging at my mind and gave me no peace: the trick Judith had worked with the bottles of rye. She’d bought them and she’d doped them both and she’d given one to Carole. It could’ve made sense. If she’d wanted Mrs. Kovak to find Ivor and Carole Van Buren together apparently paralytic drunk, it was as good an idea as any. But she hadn’t known which night Kovak would see Carole home . . . and she hadn’t tipped off Mrs. Kovak or Mrs. Kovak would’ve visited Carole the night Ivor passed out . . . and she hadn’t done any visiting.

  If it didn’t make sense that way, it made even less when I tried to explain to myself why Judith should’ve drunk her own spiked liquor and lain down on the bed so somebody could shut off her wind with a belt. Yet . . . two bottles . . . both laced with chloral hydrate . . . one for Carole Van Buren . . . and one to keep—for whom?

  Time and time again, my thoughts came back to the hunch I’d had the day I took a trip to Washington. It answered most everything—except the identity of Judith Walker’s killer. So the hunch was not enough. She meant nothing to me, I could hardly feel even pity for her—but I had to know just what had happened in her apartment after I’d been slugged and half-drowned in rye. I had to know why she’d set a trap and sprung it herself.

  No one was around when I went up the stairs and opened my office door nice and quiet and slipped inside and locked it again. Which was how I wanted it. Explaining how I’d skipped out of my date with the shovel gang would’ve been embarrassing.

  But, if no one was around right then, it didn’t mean my hole-in-the-wall had lacked visitors. I’d read the notice stuck outside the door on my rapid way in.

  It was short and very much to the point. And legal. Very legal.

  This office has been sealed by court order. All enquiries should be made to the New York City Police who are holding the keys in Department K4. Homicide Bureau. All incoming mail addressed Glenn Bowman to be re-directed to the Bureau until further notice.

  A lot of big feet had trodden all over my antique carpet. Some guy who was a wet smoker had stubbed his cigarettes in my ashtray. The drawers in my desk had been pawed through and carelessly left sticking out. My safe was unlocked.

  I didn’t need to look for the .45 I’d taken from Tad. I knew it wouldn’t be in the drawer where I’d left it. And I was right. In its place I found a slip of paper I didn’t need to read, either. It was a receipt from Department K4.

  The thing I’d come to collect was gone, too. K4 had taken possession of the letter from Judith Walker. Which implied that one Lieutenant Cooke had probably been directing operations.

  Not that I had much opportunity to consider probabilities. I hadn’t been in the office more than a couple of minutes when the phone rang.

  It was my office and my phone, but I stood looking at it until it stopped ringing. I was curious but not that curious. Nobody I knew should’ve been calling me. Whoever it was ought to have known I was dead . . . except two people. And it would hardly be Ivor Kovak. But it might be Carole . . . knowing I ought not to be there . . . but hoping I might be . . . so she could say she’d changed her mind. . . .

  Maybe I was getting old. When the bell clamoured a second time, I still wasn’t keen to take the call. But it went on ringing and I got worried in case Tom the janitor might’ve had orders to use his key-mate and . . .

  The party at the other end wasn’t Carole. It was a guy with a sharp voice that had an overtone of anxiety. He said, “Are you Bowman?”

  “Bowman’s dead,” I told him.

  “Yeah, I know. But Carole said I should call this number and I’ve been trying to get you since three o’clock. She said I should mention her name and you might be able to help me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m in trouble—that’s why.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I’ve got an idea the police might be trying to hang a murder rap on me.”

  “You get cute ideas, don’t you?” I said. “Didn’t Carole also say you should mention your own name since she’s been so darn free with mine.”

  “Don’t get sore with her. I won’t tell anybody. If you want to play dead, it’s O.K. by me.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that. But I’d appreciate it a damn’ sight more if you’d tell me who you are.”

  In a tone of vague surprise, he said, “I thought you might’ve guessed. I’m Clive Van Buren. Carole is my half-sister. Didn’t she talk about me?”

  “No, but I did,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly bursting
to discuss her brother who’d been sent up for two years. Where have you been since you graduated?”

  “Licking my wounds . . . and thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “A guy called King Gilmore and a sucker who was railroaded to the pen and a two-timing tomato who helped to railroad him.”

  “Suckers always get what’s coming to them. Instead of brooding, why not chalk it up to experience?”

  “Two days after I came out, I decided to do just that,” Van Buren said. His voice was suddenly harsh. “But two days after I came out Judith Walker went and got herself an original kind of necktie.”

  “So?”

  “So I started looking around for an alibi before the cops started looking around for me. I’d seen this sort of thing once before and once is too many.”

  “How did you make out?”

  “Not good, not bad. But now the word’s got about that the heat’s on properly. I’m in a spot where even my best friend wouldn’t believe me—if I had one.”

  “What’re you supposed to have done?”

  “Let off a cannon at King Gilmore,” Van Buren said. “Somebody who loves him even less than I do threw a couple of slugs at him and they’re blaming me for it.”

  Chapter XVII

  Only Fools Pay

  Trans-Continental Investment Corporation was two floors of a sixteen-floor building not far from Radio City—the top two floors. They had their own elevator that made no stops before it got to fifteen. And it travelled in a hurry. I felt like I’d been automatically ejected from a fighter plane.

  The jockey wore a neat brown uniform with one empty sleeve and he had a veteran’s badge where he should’ve been wearing a medal. At the fifteenth floor, he said, “You wanted the general office, didn’t you?”

  I said, “No. I want Mr. Lloyd Warner.”

  His eyes went through my pockets and all over me twice like they could feel as well as see. He said, “Mr. Warner? You got an appointment?”

  “No. But I’m hoping to do something about that.”

  “He won’t see you,” the jockey said. “And we don’t go any higher than this.” He opened the doors and went out and looked back at me. “Sorry . . . but those are my orders. You can take it up with Miss Armitage, first right, end office. . . .”

  Miss Armitage had tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses with broad ear-pieces and mousy hair piled up over one eyebrow. She used lipstick but no rouge or powder. Her expression made me think her corset was killing her.

  She said, “I’m afraid Mr. Warner won’t have a spare moment before quitting time. It’s a pity you didn’t call me to make an appointment.” She made it sound like I was a moron.

  I said, “Miss Warner should’ve told me that. Wonder why she didn’t?”

  One of her whalebones gave Miss Armitage an extra bite. She made a pointed mouth and looked up at me quickly. “Miss Warner, did you say? Which Miss Warner was that?”

  “The only one I know—Miss Deborah Warner,” I said.

  “Oh . . . I see.” She wriggled again and went into a huddle with herself while she doodled on her blotter with a neatly-sharpened pencil. Then she said, “Of course . . . if you’re a friend of Miss Deborah. . . .” She had no need to say she didn’t think much of Deborah’s choice of friends.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She laid down her pencil and fiddled with the intercom on her desk without taking her eyes off me. I’d had the same overall inspection from the elevator jockey.

  The intercom said, “Yes?” It was the kind of yes that didn’t invite a lengthy conversation.

  Miss Armitage said, “There’s a Mister——” her face screwed up questioningly.

  “Wylie,” I said. “Cliff Wylie.”

  “—Mr. Wylie in my office. He wishes to see Mr. Warner. Hasn’t got an appointment but says he’s a friend of Miss Deborah.”

  The guy in the intercom said, “Does he say what his business is?”

  She etched another flock of wrinkles in her face and cocked her head on a side. “Would you like . . .?”

  “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t like. This is a personal matter.”

  “He says it’s a personal matter,” she told the intercom.

  Nobody said anything while the box on her desk thought it over. Then the speaker said, “Hold him there till I see what the boss says. . . .”

  We waited. Miss Armitage didn’t seem to have anything better to do than keep me company. And I passed the time thinking about Clive Van Buren and the spot he was in because I’d put on an act to satisfy the homicidal tendencies of Mr. Lloyd Warner’s dark and beautiful daughter, Deborah.

  I wondered if Warner would try to pull a bluff and what he’d say when I told him I was a hired gun and how he’d feel about his daughter offering ten grand for King Gilmore’s head on a platter. No guy is pleased to learn——

  The intercom said, “O.K. You can bring him up.”

  Miss Armitage went first. I followed her along a quiet corridor and up a flight of stairs with rubber treads. At the top, a guy was waiting to receive me.

  He was an ordinary guy wearing ordinary clothes with a stiff white collar and laundered cuffs showing half-an-inch below the ends of his sleeves. The points of a white handkerchief stuck out of his breast pocket. He could’ve been a junior executive or a clerk.

  But neither an executive nor a clerk wears a shoulder holster to spoil the hang of his coat. Nor do they ask business callers if they’re armed, like this guy was asking me.

  “I’ve got a gun in my inside pocket,” I said.

  In an expressionless voice, he said, “ Turn around and hand it to Miss Armitage—slowly and butt first. She’ll take care of it until you leave . . . O.K.?”

  “O.K.” I said. Miss Armitage was close beside me. I turned to face her and brought out my Smith & Wessen slowly like I’d been told. She didn’t look too happy at the idea but she took the automatic from me and backed away carefully until she was out of my reach. Then she said, “You don’t want me for anything else, Philip . . . do you?” She sounded breathless like she’d have been glad to loosen something.

  The guy with the shoulder holster said, “No . . . I’ll bring Mister—Wylie down to your office when he’s ready to go. . . .”

  She went downstairs with the .38 held close to her one-piece chest. At the foot of the stairs, she glanced back. I stood listening to the sound of her tight skirt going she-she-she-she along the corridor that soaked up her footsteps in the thick-pile carpet.

  Behind me, Philip said, “Hold it like that, Mr. Wylie, for just——” His hands patted me around the waist and over the rump and flitted down my legs. “Thanks. You can turn round now. I was only making sure.”

  When I faced him, I said, “Your boss must be badly scared of somebody. Is it all right to ask who’s gunning for him?”

  “Sure it’s all right,” Philip said. “Maybe he’ll tell you, too.” He stepped back and then stopped. With a worried look in his eyes, he said, “Don’t I know you?”

  I said, “Do you?”

  He put his head back and studied me from several angles while he chewed at his lip and pushed one eyebrow up towards his neatly-parted hair. After a few seconds, he said, “Haven’t you seen me before?”

  “Where should I have seen you?”

  “The Woodkirk Hotel in Bridgeport. Mr. Warner owns it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Philip said. “I’m the house dick there.”

  “Until there’s trouble,” I said, “house dicks should be neither seen nor heard. And I never get into trouble. Furthermore, I’ve never been inside the Woodkirk Hotel. So I haven’t see you before. Satisfied?”

  “For the moment. But I’ve still got an idea. . . .” He shrugged. “If I’m right, it’ll come back to me later. Mean time——” he beckoned me to go ahead of him “—I’ll take you to the boss.”

  We walked along another corridor like the one on the floor below—Philip just a long pace beh
ind me. Where the corridor intersected a narrower passage, a guy who could’ve been Philip’s brother was balancing a wooden chair on its hind legs and resting his shoulders against the wall. When we got nearer, he let the chair down on to its four legs and stood up. He was wearing a shoulder holster, too.

  With his eyes dismantling me and poking among the pieces, he said, “Have you frisked him?” The way he said it made me feel like I wasn’t there.

  Philip said, “His name is Wylie unless he’s a liar. I think he’s a liar. He was carrying a Smith & Wessen. 38 and he checked it with Miss Armitage without making any fuss. I’d say he’s a widehead who thinks he knows all the answers. Watch him.”

  The other guy made big eyes at me and grinned like he was using somebody else’s face. He said, “Clasp your hands behind your head, Mr. Wylie, and forgive me taking liberties with you . . . but sometimes Philip isn’t too strong on details . . . and there’s . . . an old saying . . . that it’s better. . . .” His voice ran on while he searched me in all the places Philip had searched and a few more besides, “. . . to be safe . . . than sorry . . . thanks.” Then he stepped back and nodded. “O.K. You’re clean.”

  I said, “Any more guys with familiar fingers between here and the inner shrine?”

  “Don’t act smart,” Philip said. “You might fall down the stairs on your way out. . . . Nat will take you to Mr. Warner and bring you back here to me. Be seeing you.” He talked like a man using one half of his mind while the other half tried to recall something elusive. I hoped he wouldn’t remember what it was too soon.

  Nat kept step with me along the narrow passage. We passed a couple of rooms that were too quiet to be anything but unoccupied. At the end of the passage there were two more doors facing each other. Behind one, a noiseless typewriter made a string of rapid dum-dum sounds interspersed with the slap of the carriage return and the ping of the bell.

  We stopped outside the other door. Nat tapped lightly with the tips of his fingers and watched me from under his brows. After a moment, he tapped again.

  A pleasant voice said, “Come in,” and a chair creaked as Nat turned the knob and pushed the door open. With a cold, warning light in his eyes, he murmured, “I’ll be right here all the time you’re in there . . . keep your nose clean——Mister Wylie.”