The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  They went back, to the bedroom and Crombie pointed to a cardboard laundry box which was now open on the bed.

  “I found it ’way back on the closet shelf. It was pretty dusty.”

  Rick looked at the two shirts which lay next to the box, one white and one blue and cut from Oxford material.

  “The way it looks to me,” Crombie continued, “these were at the laundry when the guy moved out of here for good. The laundry sent ’em back and your wife tossed them on the shelf and forgot about them.… Size sixteen,” he said. “Thirty-three sleeves. A pretty husky guy.”

  “Yeah,” said Rick and thought immediately of Tom Ashley.

  “The other shirt is a fifteen-and-a-half with thirty-four sleeves. Who would it fit?”

  Never having seen Stuart Gorton, Rick could only think of Austin Farrell. He said so, adding that Farrell was a couple of inches taller man he was and probably twenty pounds heavier.

  Crombie nodded. “Maybe it’s time to talk to Tony. Have you got any money? If not I can slip him something and charge it to expenses.”

  Rick found he had a twenty, two tens and two fives. Crombie took the fives. “I’ll get him,” he said.

  Rick was sitting in the front room when Crombie came back with the janitor. He closed the door and told the man to sit down. When he obeyed he swung a second chair near the desk and put the two bills on it.

  “The first five is for your time, Tony,” he said. “If your memory works okay you get the bonus.… Now, how often did Mrs. Sheridan use this place?”

  “You never could tell. Maybe sometimes she uses it and I don’t even know.” He hesitated, but when Crombie’s eyes stayed fixed he said: “Sometimes not for a week; sometimes two or three times.”

  “Sometimes she slept here.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Alone?”

  Tony’s glance slid to Rick and he pulled it back. When he hesitated Rick said:

  “Okay, Tony. I know she was seeing other men. What we want from you is the truth.”

  Tony shrugged. “Sometimes she’s not alone.”

  Rick’s glance moved to the bookcase, and when a new thought came to him he walked over to it and inspected the titles. Two of these interested him and when he pulled them out, he saw the photographs on the back of the dust jackets. The first was a picture of Tom Ashley in an open-necked sport shirt, a pipe in one hand. The second photograph showed a thin-faced man with a brooding look and dark-rimmed glasses that had heavy sidebows. Rick had never seen him before but the book had been written by Stuart Gorton.

  Tony nodded when he saw Ashley’s photograph. “Sure,” he said, “he used to come a lot but not for a long time now.” His eyes moved to the five-dollar bills and he wet his lips. “He use this place more than she did. He work here plenty. I can hear the typewriter going, mostly when he is by himself but sometimes it goes when she is here, too.”

  “How long did this go on?” Crombie said.

  “Three months maybe.”

  “And they stayed here some nights?”

  “Look, mister,” Tony said. “I got plenty work to do. How can I tell—”

  “You’ve got your rooms in the basement, too,” Crombie cut in. “And a couple of those windows overlook the front steps.”

  “All I know,” said Tony, “is a couple times I see the two of them leave together in the morning.” He gestured vaguely with one hand. “Maybe she come before this to have breakfast or something but I doubt it.”

  “What about this guy?” Rick asked and displayed the picture of Stuart Gorton.

  “Sure,” Tony said, “but not so often and I don’t think he stay. Couple times I see them come in together but pretty soon he go away by himself.”

  “When did you see him last?” Crombie said.

  “Not for months.”

  “All right,” Rick said. “Has any other man been coming here recently?”

  “One.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Taller than you and maybe a little older. Dark hair. Always good clothes. You know, dressed up. Not like him,” he added, indicating Ashley’s picture. “That one looked more like a bum.”

  Rick glanced at Crombie and the detective said: “How long’s he been coming here?”

  “Oh, maybe two—three months. Not very often at first; lately more often.”

  “What time of day did they usually come?” Rick asked.

  “Mostly at night. Maybe once a week I happen to see them come in. Sometime together but other time he is alone and I haven’t see her come in before so I don’t know if she is here. Sometime I hear somebody leaving very late but I don’t get up to see. So long as there is no noise or trouble, what do I care?”

  “Didn’t you ever hear them talking? Didn’t she ever call him by name?”

  Tony scratched the back of his neck and shook his head and then he stopped and glanced up obliquely. “Yeah,” he said. “Once I am sweeping the steps and they go past me and in the hall they are talking about something and I heard her say: ‘But Austin, darling.’ Like that she said it.”

  The announcement confirmed what had until then been speculation in Rick’s mind and he watched Crombie lean forward and push the two bills toward the janitor.

  “Okay, Tony,” he said. “You earned ’em. If we need any more help we’ll let you know.” He stood up as the janitor left and put on his Panama. “I’d better get something started,” he said. “I’ll get a man on Gorton and see what he turns up. Maybe we can find out where he was last night around nine o’clock. The same with this Austin Farrell. If he’s a literary agent I can get his address from the telephone book.”

  He took out his wallet, extracted a card, and penciled a number on the back of it. “That’s my home number in case you want to get me after hours. Are you going uptown?”

  Until that instant Rick had given no thought as to what he would do next. Now he suddenly felt tired and depressed and in his mind there was only doubt and indecision and an over-all feeling of inertia.

  “You go ahead,” he said glumly. “I guess I’ll just sit and brood for a while.” He gave the detective a wry grin. “Maybe I’ll think of something but right now I haven’t got energy enough to move.”

  “Sure,” Crombie said. “Take it easy. I’ll see what I can get on Eastman, too. If Ashley is a neighbor of yours maybe you can do some checking on your own. I’ll be in touch with you when I’ve got something.”

  Chapter 8

  For several minutes after Sam Crombie had left, Rick sat where he was and tried to realign his thinking about his wife. The things he had heard in no way surprised him but they did force him to alter his opinion of how she had lived since their separation. Until the question of a divorce arose he had thought very little about her at all but now he had to think because it seemed likely that one of the four men most closely identified with her pattern, of living had killed her.

  When his eyes strayed to the open manuscript box he reached for it, wondering what sort of man this Stuart Gorton was and curious about what he wrote. As he scanned the top sheet a new impulse came to him and he put the box aside. For suddenly he felt very much in need of a drink and now he went into the kitchen to explore the cupboards.

  He did not have to look far and he found that the assortment on the second shelf included Scotch, bourbon, brandy, and gin. A lower cupboard revealed a quantity of soda splits, and Schweppes, and when he had pried an ice tray from the refrigerator and loosened a few cubes he made himself a gin-and-tonic. Because he felt both warm and thirsty, he took a long pull as he stood in front of the sink and then, as an afterthought, spiked his glass with a bit more gin and topped it again with tonic.

  Back in the living room, he pulled his chair closer to the window and put the drink on the floor beside him. When he had a cigarette going he began to read Troubled Seas.

  The first page and a half, which set the scene, was smoothly done an
d put him on the water front of a fictitious island, apparently somewhere in the Caribbean. The focal point soon became a schooner tied up at the end of a jetty, and he garnered that the boat had been chartered by its owner to a vacationing group who had sailed it down from the Virgins. Holding the stage as the story got under way was the sunburned, steely-eyed young skipper and a busty girl in a bathing suit.

  They were sitting on a hatch cover watching the rest of the party swimming near by and it soon developed that she would probably turn out to be the heroine because she was the niece of one of the older and wealthier women and had been brought along to serve as a sort of companion/social secretary with certain tasks to perform while the others had all the fun.

  Until Rick got into the dialogue between the skipper and the girl he had gone along with the author. The illusion of the tropics had been skillfully done and carried conviction. The narration was interesting and he was ready to like the two characters around which the opening had been constructed. But the phrasing of the dialogue bothered him, though he did not know why.

  He took some more of his drink. He read stubbornly on, his frown growing as doubt clouded his eyes. Finally he put the manuscript in his lap.

  “For God’s sake,” he said, and now he read the next two or three lines aloud to see how they sounded.

  Hearing the words seemed to make them worse and though he was not a great reader and certainly no connoisseur, he found the phrasing and words stilted, old-fashioned, and unconvincing.

  “People get paid for writing this sort of thing?” he muttered.

  He shook his head and put the manuscript aside, knowing this must be true since he had already seen Frieda’s letter of acceptance.

  He glanced out the window to find that dusk was thickening fast and obscuring the doorways across the way. When he looked at his watch he saw that it was after eight and he knew now why he felt so empty inside. He’d had no lunch, and though he was not particularly hungry, he knew it was time to get something to eat.

  He looked at his empty glass and decided against a refill. He rinsed out the glass in the kitchen and put the manuscript back in the box, intending to come back after he had eaten and try another few pages just to see if his first impression would persist as the story progressed.

  He still had the key, so he let the door lock behind him and felt rather than saw his way down the stairs to the street. This particular section of the city was not familiar to him, so he turned left and started to walk, coming finally to this restaurant on a corner and a block and a half away. It was a small, cheap-looking place with counter on one side and a few booths at the rear about half of which were occupied. There were two men in working clothes at the counter and he slid up on a stool near the front end.

  The specials listed on the board above the steam tables did not stimulate him greatly and he wished now he had taken the second drink. When the counterman slid a glass of water before him and dropped the knife, fork, and spoon, he asked for the chopped sirloin, medium, and a lettuce and tomato salad.

  While he waited for his order he forgot about his surroundings and paid no attention to the conversational exchanges between the counterman and the two nearby customers who apparently were regular patrons. Instead he found himself thinking about Troubled Seas, and Stuart Gorton, and as he recalled the comments Clyde Eastman had made earlier he found it difficult to see the writer as a murder suspect.

  According to Eastman, Frieda had used Gorton when she needed him, enticing him away from another publisher by devices best suited to the occasion. Gorton could have been a suitor at some period but apparently with little success. From things Rick had read he knew that jealousy was a factor in many murders and certainly an unpredictable element. But the fact remained that Gorton had still submitted his last book to Frieda under the terms of his contract. On the face of it, he seemed a less likely suspect than Eastman, who not only was frustrated in his pursuit of his partner but had been forced to sit and watch her push the firm onto the thin edge of bankruptcy.

  But what had been the catalytic factor that had brought on murder at that particular time? What had Frieda done that made the guilty one—Eastman or Gorton or Farrell, or Ashley for that matter—kill last night instead of last week or the day after tomorrow? Or was this a matter of circumstance after all. An attack by someone whose hate or fears had reached the critical point at some earlier moment to be held in check until the opportunity presented itself?

  The arrival of his chopped sirloin ended such speculation, and with the first juicy mouthful he realized he was hungry as well as empty. He cleaned his plate in an unhurried but workmanlike fashion, and while he sipped his coffee he inspected the pies that were displayed behind the glass case, finally settling for a piece of apple. A second cup of coffee and a cigarette completed the meal and when he went back along the darkened street his mood was greatly improved and a new idea was growing in his mind.

  Instead of struggling any longer with Stuart Gorton’s latest fictional effort, why not turn the manuscript over to Nancy? Reading was part of her job. To write copy she had to know the books that were to be advertised; she might even have read some of Gorton’s earlier work. In any case she could give a sound reaction to Troubled Seas.

  The thought became more intriguing when he understood that this would give him a chance to see her again for a few minutes, and such speculation left him rather pleased with himself as he fumbled with the key in the lock. Then he was moving into the darkened apartment and starting to swing the door behind him as his other hand groped for the electric switch.

  In the brief instant that followed, instinct was no help to him because instinct was not working. So occupied was he with his own thoughts that even intuition had no chance to warn him. By the time he felt its first chilling thrust and sensed that he was not alone it was too late.

  One hand was still outstretched when he heard the whisper of sound in the blackness beside him. There was a stirring of air, some unseen movement, a faint sound of an expelled breath that was not his own.

  He stiffened in his astonishment but there was no time yet for fear and he said: “Hey!” softly, and tried to turn in the direction of this unexpected threat. He reached out, his finger tips brushing fabric, and with that his head was rocked as a fist exploded against the side of his jaw.

  Off balance as he was he had no chance to set himself, and the force of the blow knocked him staggering backward. Before he could get his feet under him, one heel caught the leg of a chair and he fell heavily, twisting as he went down and striking on one shoulder.

  More stunned than hurt he rolled over, and even if there had been adequate lighting in the hallway outside he could not have seen who had hit him. For the door slammed before he could turn, and as the darkness swirled about him and he struggled to his feet, he lost his bearings in this unfamiliar room.

  Groping blindly as he moved in the general direction of the door, he knocked against the same chair. He spun it out of his way and ran into the wall, both hands spreading along its surface until he felt the edge of the casing. Then, aware somehow that he was already too late to take up the chase, he remembered that the two windows overlooked the street.

  He could see the oblong outlines now against some outside light and he moved swiftly forward, dodging the furniture that was silhouetted in between. He put his head against the cool pane and bent his gaze obliquely downward. He could not see the entrance, nor the sidewalk immediately in front of it, but already some shadow darker than the rest had moved at the edge of the pavement.

  A second later he was sure of it. The shadow became the figure of a man moving swiftly across the street, but it was a vague and indistinct figure, so foreshortened by the angle as to remain unrecognizable. Then, even as Rick strained his eyes for a better glimpse, a taxi rolled down the street, its roof light glowing.

  It swerved and slowed as Rick watched it. The man stepped toward it. He turned to face it, and there was a moment when the dimmed headlig
hts outlined his figure and glanced from a rugged face topped by thick curly hair.

  That was all. The one glimpse.

  Not enough for any positive identification of a stranger, but this was no stranger. This was Tom Ashley and there was some object, under one arm that he thrust before him as he ducked inside the cab. Then the roof light went out and the taxi picked up speed.

  Rick exhaled noisily and stepped away from the window, his fingers absently exploring a tender area along the angle of his jaw. He flexed it experimentally and knew that no great harm had been done. He felt along the top of the desk until he found the small goosenecked lamp and twisted the switch. While the room took on size and shape he walked across it and down the hall to the bedroom. When he turned on the light his glance went immediately to the bed. The laundry box that Sam Crombie had left there was missing; so were the two shirts which had been placed beside it.

  So Tom remembered them, he thought. And he’s scared. He went back to the outer door and examined the lock and molding. When he could find no signs of a forced entry he completed the thought: And maybe he still had a key he forgot to return.

  Back in the bedroom, Rick took a final look around and turned off the light. He came slowly into the front room, head slightly bent and his brows warped above the shadowed, brooding eyes. At the desk he sat down and stared a while at the manuscript with very little in his mind but confusion. Finally, rousing himself, he put the pages back in the box and, as an afterthought, placed the letter of acceptance on the title page. He had replaced the cover and was reaching for a cigarette when he heard the new sound at the door.

  He had no way of telling how long he had been sitting there or how long it had been since he had seen the taxi drive off with Tom Ashley. He did realize that whoever was at the door was having trouble with the lock and now, as he jumped to his feet, he snapped off the lamp and moved quietly through the darkness to the door.

  He heard the knob rattle and then stop. A second of silence followed and then the sound of a key came again. Three times this sequence of sounds was repeated without success and when the fourth attempt clicked the bolt he drew back along the wall and flattened there, breath held and muscles tensing.